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GoldenMom! Dog killed bat in house! Advice?

13778 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  steff bugielski, 
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GoldenMom and others - can you give me some advice?

We live in an 1865 WI farmhouse and there are bats that live inside the house's aluminum siding. We have real winters and bats hibernate, but about once each winter we find a bat flying around the inside of the house.

We use brooms to herd the flying bat out the back door, but we have 3 dogs and on a previous occasion when we weren't home a bat was killed and mouthed by at least 2 dogs.

I live in a poor rural county that doesn't have an animal control dept and the health dept doesn't do anything about bats unless a human has been bitten.

My vet is in a "richer" urban city in a different county. Under normal circumstances, when the bat was killed by a city dwelling dog, she would send the bat in to the city for rabies testing. When my dogs killed that bat, my vet couldn't do anything for me because I live in a different "poor" county. My vet had me bring in the dogs who hadn't gotten a recent rabies shot and she gave them another rabies shot.

I was later told by someone that giving the dogs another rabies shot after killing the bat didn't do anything for the dogs; it didn't protect them in any way from rabies.

Tonight we had another bat in the house and my older dog killed it. I got the bat away from my dog, but my dog had already bitten into the bat and drew blood. The dead bat is in a box on the back porch and it is probably frozen already.

GoldenMom, Anyone - is there anything I can do for my older dog that killed the bat? Are rabies shots after killing a bat ineffectual? Help!

My husband has been out of work since the end of August and money is tight, but I want to do the right thing for my dogs.

Deb
in WI
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Annie, the bat killer, and my other dogs have always been vaccinated. Annie - 10 yrs and Becky - 5 yrs had their shots in 2006 and Blue - 4 yrs had a rabies shot this year.

Before I knew what was really happening there was a moment when all the dogs were scuffling after something in a dark corner of the living room (I thought it was a mouse) and then the bat flew out & into the study where Annie killed it. I can't be sure that the other dogs didn't contact the bat during the scuffle so I think I had better get a booster shot for all of them ASAP.

I will call the State health dept tomorrow as well.

Thank you so much for responding so quickly. I have been feeling so stressed with everything going out of control. DH's job was eliminated at the end of August then the entire economy went to pot before he got another job. The credit crisis is affecting my work since our customers can't get credit and my employer is adjusting employee benefits due to the lack of work. I've been worrying all day and having Annie kill the bat just put the icing on the stress cake for me.

Thanks again!
deb
in wi
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