What to Do If Your Dog Gets Tetanus
📝 Summary
Dogs resist tetanus better than many animals, but a bad case still kills by suffocation. After a 5–21 day incubation the dog shows stiff ears, a fixed stare, drooling, and spasms, and may die within days; recovery is slow and many never fully regain muscle control. Treatment means quiet, dark nursing, cleaning the wound with antiseptic, and controlling spasms under a vet's care.
1 Symptoms of Tetanus
Tetanus has an incubation period, usually five to ten days and occasionally up to three weeks. The dog’s ears stand up stiff, facial muscles contract, and the third eyelid protrudes; even with a locked jaw, saliva drips and swallowing and breathing rhythm change. Some dogs seize, and severe cases finally die from breathing difficulty.
The course varies widely — severe cases die within two or three days, while some develop slowly, but most afflicted dogs die within three to ten days. Recovery drags on; even after a month or two of treatment a dog may still move stiffly or show rigid muscles. Tetanus also carries a poor prognosis, and some dogs ultimately die because they can no longer eat.
2 Treatment
Nursing: a tetanus dog fears light, noise, and fright, so keep it in a clean, dim, quiet place, with a blanket in winter to prevent chills. If it struggles to eat, offer easily digested, nutritious food and ensure plenty of water.
Clear the source: remove foreign matter and dead tissue promptly, disinfecting with 1% potassium permanganate, 3% hydrogen peroxide, or 5–10% iodine tincture, or inject streptomycin near the wound to knock out the infection.
Control spasms: keep an anticonvulsant such as phenobarbital at home as a standby, but use it only on a vet’s instructions because it has side effects. A dog already struggling to breathe may need a tracheotomy performed by the vet.
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