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| Where my dog Leo apparently got sting my a yellow jacket wasp |
| photos taken by Jeff Opal, 21-May-2002 |
| Around once a month I take my two dogs out to a large field that is shown (partly) in the top photo. The field is used by the LSU band for practicing, in preparation for football games. When such practicing is happening, a teacher will stand on this contraption so as to have a clear view of all the band members as they walk around and react to her commands (given via a loud megaphone he/she holds). The last time I brought my dogs to this field, my large (around 19 pounds) dog Leo suddenly behaved very strangely after he had stood for around ten seconds near one of the wooden "feet" of this contraption. He suddenly behaved as if his front right paw had been stung by some kind of poisonous creature. In the bottom photo, I positioned the brown tree leaf exactly where he was standing when he did the strange behavior. What he did was to suddenly walk away (to a spot around ten feet away from where the leaf is shown), while oddly holding his front right paw off the ground (i.e, he was suddenly limping). I panicked and brought him back to my apartment, and phoned my veterinarian's office. A worker there was puzzled by my description. We both suspected a poisonous bite of some kind. Around two hours later I rode my bicycle out to this spot, so as to search for spiders or any other kind of plausible culprit. I found a very plausible culprit: two yellow jacket wasps were walking around on top of the two "feet" of the big contraption (one on each foot shown in the bottom photo). I've become certain that Leo was stung by a yellow jacket that is part of a nest that has burrowed into the wood of the "feet" of the big contraption. (Yellow Jacket wasps make nests inside wood that they burrow into.) I haven't seen the nest but I'm sure it's in this wood somewhere. (Two days later, I visited this spot again, so as to take these photos, so that I could make this page and give its URL to my veterinarian, so that they can help other customers deal with similar threats to their animals.) Hey people, isn't the internet wonderful?! The end of the story is this: after speaking with the vet worker, I decided that it probably was merely an insect sting, and that I didn't need to bring Leo to them. I then walked Leo around outside, and could clearly see that he wasn't limping any more. He clearly was still experiencing pain (because he would quickly pull away from me his front right paw whenever my |
| probing-fingers would touch the right-most digit of his front right paw). This was around 20 minutes after he first showed evidence of a sting. The obvious reduction of his limping seemed to strongly suggest that some kind of poison had been injected into his paw, and that it had caused a lot of pain, but had subsided. |