Apropos of my recent article on minor emergencies, I was chosen to have my own minor emergency last week. I was bitten by a dog. My dog. I won’t go into the exciting details of why it happened, but rather, what I learned afterward.
In Israel, in 2015, there were a reported 1,737 bites (out of ~400,000 registered dogs) according to the veterinary authority of the Ministry of Agriculture. It seems there are approximately 1,700 reported dog bites per year.
When I arrived at Terem, the EMT took a look at a puncture wound and said: “looks like stitches.” This did not make me happy. It’s one thing to take my children to be stitched; it’s quite another for me to have stitches.
However, I soon learned the current protocol, also recommended by the Ministry of Health:
- The patient should wash the wound thoroughly with water and clean with alcohol several times in the hours after the bite.
- Unless crucial, the wound should not be stitched or glued (hello, tiny wrist scar), but rather left open to allow for pathogens to leave the blood stream.
- The patient should be administered a tetanus shot (פלצת in Hebrew) right away. [This hurt! For a week afterward!]
- The patient should be given broad spectrum antibiotics [don’t forget to take your probiotics during this time period].
- If there is any suspicion about the dog, the patient should receive rabies shots (כלבת). Thank goodness our dog is fully immunized.
- The patient should report the bite to the Ministry of Health office the next day. [Whoops. Didn’t even occur to me and the doctor didn’t say anything.]
In the end, it was a minor incident, with only a sore arm, wrist, and upset tummy as reminders.
I would have thought the lesson was – Israelis need to leash their dogs or pay a fine and go to jail…
That would be logical Levi. : )
So nothing happens to them when their dog bites someone? Is that the law here?
I hear dogs viciously barking at one another outside my apartment not all the time of course, but often enough that I’ve come to the conclusion that they like it when their dogs fight with one another.
That, plus I doubt there are very many dog trainers (if any) here or they even know they are supposed to train their dog.