Trent Kleppen knows his hard-running English pointers could encounter more than birds any time he turns them into the field, so he collects country veterinarians ’ phone numbers the way Little Leaguers collect baseball cards. But when his Mattie squalled just as she wheeled into a South Texas brush patch on New Year’s Day, all Kleppen knew was that her encounter was not with a covey of tight-holding bobwhites .
He immediately called to Mattie, but he wasn’t prepared for her appearance as she rounded the granjeno and came toward him.
“She was mostly red, bleeding from multiple wounds, some of them great gashes, and I was just praying that I wouldn’t see entrails,” says Kleppen, a Montana bird hunter who annually chases South Texas quail. As he deciphered the situation, Kleppen realized that Mattie had surprised a squadron of javelina in that brush patch. At least two of them had worked her over with their razor-sharp tusks.
“I wiped every wound at first, just so I could triage based on severity,” says Kleppen. “The deepest puncture was right below her armpit and bleeding profusely. Luckily, I was in cell service and had someone to drive, so I called a vet in Premont, about an hour from where we were hunting, and loaded her on my lap and just kept pressure on that deepest wound until we got there.”
The vet laced Mattie with dozens of stitches and left a vent under her armpit so the worst wound could drain. She was put on a high dosage of Previcox for four days and an antibiotic for another ten. By early February, she was back in the field.
A canine first aid kit should include something to remove thorns, cactus, or quills. (Photo courtesy of Andrew McKean) How to Handle Hunting Accidents with a Dog Hunt them long enough, and every working dog will have an accident, dire injury, or health scare. It’s literally part of the territory, and encounters with barbed wire, porcupines, snakes, vehicles, falls, jags of sheet metal, poison water, impaling grass seeds, and even gunshot wounds are among the countless hazards a gun dog risks on every cast.
The more hard-charging and wide-ranging the dog, the more potential calamities they encounter. How you respond, in the first seconds, then minutes, then hour after an incident, often determines whether your dog’s injury has a happy or a tragic ending.
Bryce Daviess, owner of Highsteppe Bird Dogs and Western Prairie Outfitters, hunts six months a year, starting on Montana’s prairies in September and ending in February somewhere in the Southwest. He’s had multiple medical emergencies every season—involving both clients and dogs—and has a simple hierarchy to deal with canine calamities.
“My belief is that you need to be able to work in tiers,” says Daviess. “You don’t need to be carrying a stapler or anything crazy in your vest because you’re not going to be able to do the best for the dog in the field. My mindset is always to assess. Where are we in the issue? And how bad is the scenario?”
In his vest, Daviess carries materials to stop traumatic bleeding. That includes QuikClot(emergency blood clotter), vet wrap, Super Glue, and a tourniquet.
“I carry stuff to keep a dog alive until we get back to the truck,” he says. “In my truck, I have saline spray and a stapler, stuff to keep them alive until we get to a vet. Getting to the vet is always going to be the best scenario.”
Daviess and most other sources spend nearly as much time researching good canine vets as they do places to hunt.
“I have handed over a lot of money to vets across the West, but in every case, it’s money well-spent,” says Daviess. “In pretty much every location I hunt, I know the vets, but I also know which ones are open on weekends, which ones will answer the phone if I call, and I’ll often make a call before I need them in case I run into something. Because, the truth is, you’re going to run into something.”
In his German wirehair, Hex’s case, it was a porcupine, a frequent hazard of prairie habitats. Daviess was ready with tools and removed most of the quills in the field. The next day, though, Hex encountered a rattlesnake and took a bite to the shoulder.
“Looking back on it, maybe I shouldn’t have named him Hex,” says Daviess, who immediately took the dog to a Montana vet. “He got antivenom and the vet removed the quills I couldn’tget out, except for one. It was lodged in the back of his throat, and when the vet pulled it, Hex bled out, right there on the examination table.”
A competitive coon hunter, Josh Michaelis, has an unusual demand on vets where, and when, he hunts, in rural areas at obscene times of the night.
“The most important thing in my kit is a very good vet that I know will answer their phone,” says Michaelis, who is based in northern Missouri and who runs treeing Walkers. “It’s always off-hours when we call. In the summer, we’ll turn dogs loose at 9:30 or 10:00 p.m., when no vet office is open, so it’s important to have a relationship with your vet. Let them know what you’re doing. They’re still going to be surprised when you call them at 3:00 a.m., but at least it’s not an entirely cold call.”
Coon dogs’ greatest hazards are encounters with vehicles and falls from trees.
“We have a rule that we won’t turn a dog loose within two miles of a road that could have any amount of nighttime traffic,” says Michaelis. “Because a driver isn’t expecting to see a dog, and the dogs are so focused on trailing scent that they aren’t looking out for cars.”
The most intense dogs will often try to climb trees after raccoons, and if there’s a leaning tree that invites them to scrabble skyward, they’ll often take it. Falls can cause significant internal damage that might not be visible. “These dogs are so tough and so driven that they won’t show an injury even if it’s significant, so you have to get them checked up and have an X-ray,” says Michaelis.
Post hunt checkups can help you avoid future health problems for your dog. (Photo courtesy of Andrew McKean) How to Avoid Hunting Emergencies While calamity can be expected, it can also be avoided in many cases.
“As many cuts as my dogs have taken from barbed wire, I’m still going to hunt fields with wire,” says Daviess. “But I’m probably more concerned about my dog getting a deepinfection from a grass awn, so I’ll avoid a field with foxtail, no matter how birdy it is.”
Montana upland bird hunter Tom Condon says that if you avoid all hazards, you’re going to have a pretty uneventful hunt.
“I worry more about sheet tin than I do wire,” he says. “But both are situational hazards. The best places I hunt are the ones that have the most debris. I like those farms where they still have every implement that their grandfather and father bought, all covered in weeds and tall grass. Thereason is that birds like that cover, too, so we go there, but I tend to keep my setters closer when there’s more trash laying around.”
As disruptive and potentially traumatic as a field emergency can be, Daviess says the alternative doesn’t interest him.
“We probably wouldn’t take our dogs out, knowing how dangerous the world is,” he says. “I tell people that if you want to save your bird dog and have a dog that never gets injured, never take them hunting. It’s all part of the game.”
A canine first aid kit should include something to remove thorns, cactus, or quills. (Photo courtesy of Andrew McKean) Making a Canine First Aid Kit You can buy all sorts of pre-packaged emergency-care kits for dogs , but making your own—or adding to the standard fare—can assist you in helping your dog out of some specific fixes. Here are must-haves from a handful of upland guides and trainers:
Benadryl (specifically the diphendramine products made specifically for animals, such as Vetadryl) Combat gauze (QuikClot) Felco C7 wirecutters Vetrap Mosquito forceps Nutrical Needle nose plier Leatherman Raptor Shears Super Glue Dog Carriers
In the case of a severely disabled dog, you may have to carry them out of the field. A traumatized dog can be twitchy and awkward to carry. Here are a couple of emergency port-a-dog options:
Airlift Emergency Dog Sling KwikLitter K9
