Have You Ever Gone Nose-to-Nose With a Deer?
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Phil has.
Walking down the street early this morning, we saw a deer in a yard behind a waist-high fence. The deer looked at us. We looked at the deer. I took my phone out and took a couple of pictures.
And then the deer ambled over to us. It reached down and almost touched noses with Phil. A micro-second later, it biunded about ten feet away and then stopped to stare at us again.
Only a few blocks from the downtown area.
I have a pic of the deer but I cannot figure out how to post it … it told me the upload was too big. Wtg will no doubt show me the error of my ways.
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Yeah, I usually post them privately on FB then from there to get around it. That’s how I did this one.
We had a deer in our front yard, about ten feet from the driveway this afternoon. We pulled in slowly, stopped and looked a while then pulled on into the garage. It did not bother her at all. It’s very dry here and she was drinking the birdbath as the creeks are dry.
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Here's a thread with some info where @Axtremus provides info about how to post photos, YouTube videos, etc.
Also...if you're on an iPhone, @dolmansaxlil has come up with a Shortcut that will resize your photo automatically. She posted it in the same Tips, tricks, and how-tos thread.
https://wtf.coffee-room.com/topic/22/tips-tricks-and-how-tos
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Just thought of something..was that deer a total fluke, or are they regularly in the area? Thinking about deer ticks and Lyme disease…I’m guessing Phil is on flea and tick preventive but you guys probably aren’t. Stay alert for signs of the famous bull’s eye rash.
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@wtg There are many deer in town. We stayed at an AirBnb a couple of years ago where we regularly woke up to six deer in the small back yard.
Phil met his new vet on Saturday, who immediately scheduled him for the Lyme vaccine, so you are right on target.
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A canine Lyme vaccine has been around for a while. I'm not super up to speed on them because that particular vaccination is considered non-core in our area. The early version was apparently not terribly effective and it had a lot of side effects, so I don't think it was in very wide use. I think newer versions have beare now available, one from Merck and one from Boehringer.
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I see the recent news. Osteosarcoma, pretty amazing. Has always been a death sentence.
https://news.yale.edu/2024/03/05/novel-cancer-vaccine-offers-new-hope-dogs-and-those-who-love-them
Also saw some earlier news releases about other vaccines, including one for glioblastoma, another deadly cancer.
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@wtg he’s on a preventative and supposed to get the Lyme disease vaccine … which, for reasons that are not clear, has only been developed for dogs and not for humans.
I asked my vet why once, and he said there wasn’t enough money in it.
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Canine Lyme and leptospirosis vaccines have the highest rate of side effects. And the need for them tends to be regional, so they aren't included in the core vaccine protocols and they get bumped to non-core and are administered when the risk of the disease outweighs the risk of possible side effects. Almost no vets around here do Lyme, but some do lepto even though it's not a very good vaccine. But incidence of lepto is on the rise, so it's better than nothing.
I had Lyme in 2019 after a trip to our Door County house. Lots of deer in the area. Never saw a tick, but a few days after I got back I got the rash on my neck. My PCP thought I had some kind of heat or allergic rash and was going to send me off to the dermatologist, but I alerted him as to where I had recently traveled. He said he doubted it was Lyme but ordered the blood tests anyway. Came back positive big time (doc was pretty surprised at my immune response) and I went on doxycycline for three weeks. My rash subsided by half after the first dose of the antibiotic. Haven't had any problems since. Glad I didn't get chronic Lyme, which can be nasty.