GoldenMom! Dog killed bat in house! Advice?

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