Question for an Aus-friend! Do dogs in Australia have an inherent wariness of snakes (and spiders and all the other dangerous things you have!)? Or do you just have to be really careful where they go sniffing around? Adder bites in dogs are quite common in the UK, so probably if a UK dog went to Australia it'd be clueless!
I don’t think anymore than other dogs in other countries…breed and personalities depending of course. I swear, some dogs are drawn to dumb dangerous situations (terriers omfg)
Absolutely have to be careful in summer when the snakes come out. Nothing better than a path in a popular walking spot for a snake to want to sun itself! In summer I don’t go to our usual walking reserve at all - all it is is 1080 baiting for foxes and happy fat snakes lazing about. As the weather changes they’re moving closer and further about.
I’m super diligent in summer on mowing my lawn because I’m not far from a nature reserve at all and I don’t want a snake coming into the yard.
There’s usually a couple of dogs bitten in my area each summer :( last year my friend lost her 16 year old Jack Russell to a snake that wandered onto their property… :’(
I’ve only done this with Thistle so far, but I have familiarised her with some domestic snakes so she’s not super excited and obsessed about them. She’s been rewarded heavily for moving away from them. It’s not the same as a wild snake but better than nothing.
Not available locally to me, but not something I’d pass up if the option became available, is the snake-deterrent training. The tl;dr is a dog investigates a native poisonous snake (smells different to the pythons I practice on, it’s a copperhead usually used in the training I believe), dog gets zapped hard with an e-collar, dog now finds the scent of the snake incredibly aversive and will hopefully avoid approaching them in the future (nothing is 100%). With that and a solid recall, I’d hope to get that time I need to take us away.
Honestly the best measure is to just avoid snake prone areas, leave snakes alone, work on your leave it and avoid avoid avoid but any fraction of a second could be beneficial.
Oh, every summer I check which vets have anti venom in stock locally to areas I’m going. For example, come summer I DONT go to the heritage place of logs because it’s a snake’s paradise but I do suddenly go to lots of cool rainforesty walks.