Moor Snakes

Adder on grouse moor.

Last September I had my first dog-encounter with an adder.

I was working my pointers on a grouse moor in Scotland and we had walked a good, long way away from the vehicles. In fact there was about 45 minutes to walk to get to the nearest hill road. There were not too many grouse and the dogs were working hard to get anything. It was a beautiful day with drifting clouds and perfect temperature for the dogs to run, scent and point.

Gaia has found birds and is pointing.

Pontus on point.

I can’t remember how and why we had stopped, but the two hunters and the game-keeper and I were just chatting and I happened to look at Gaia, who was around 30 meters from us. I thought she was maybe on point, but it was not really a point and I was just trying to decide whether she was about to have found a bird or not when she jumped in the air and then back down, staring at something on the ground. Instinctively I ran towards her as I just thought this was NOT right. As I approached, I carefully looked down to find this:

A very healthy and rather large adder.

Looking at Gaia I tried to examine her throat and jaw to find the bites, but I couldn’t see any under her head. I then found a clear bite on the top of her nose. It was fresh and still oozing a little bit. While the paying hunting guests’ eyes were about to fall out of their heads, I grabbed the dog and sucked the venom and blood out of her. It is funny how etiquette and manners go right out of the window when you realise someone is in danger. I got a lot out and was happy with that, but adders always bite twice and I was looking everywhere on Gaia to find the other bite without success. I concluded that maybe she had moved too fast for the snake to get two bites in. She is a German Wirehaired Pointer after all……

So after this we made our way back to the vehicles and Gaia looked perfectly fine. Travelling home on her bespoke dog bed in the back of my vehicle, she seemed to be totally normal.

However, the next day, as I was travelling out west to work the dogs again, I stopped to let them have a toilet run and noticed a liquid filled lump on her throat. This was filling up with liquid nearly 24 hours after she got bitten. I was not too worried as the venom obviously just had a local effect on her and she just didn’t look very pretty, but she was totally alert and happy.

The lump slowly disappeared over the following week and Gaia was absolutely fine.