Posted by pamela weaver on October 2, 2006

Q: I had a 2lb pomeranian dog. She became quite ill. I had left her out all day since it was nice outside (i worked 8-5 that day) I didn't notice anything wrong with her when I let her in that evening (she has a companion pomeranian and they are always together)except the bathroom was messy where she slept. I thought one of the dogs had runny bowls. The next day I had her inside (raining) On the following day, she was out until I went to work at 3pm...I noticed she was moving really slow. When I arrived home that evening her coat was saturated (I thought it was mud, but turned out to be blood) She had been obviously bleeding the whole time. I picked her up to give her a bath and look at ther coat and she was infested with maggots in about 6 wounds. I cleaned her up the best I could, there were just so many of them. I put peroxide on the wounds, but noticed her skin coloring around them turned brown. She never actually came out of it after that. She couldn't eat, threw up several times, too weak to stand up. In the morning I took her to the vet who said she was already gone. The vet also stated the lesions looked like spider bites. The vet also stated she was necrotic (skin coloring)and most likely passed due to poisoning and/or sepsis. I responded to the vet, dogs don't die of spider bites. Her response to me was that they had seen a few. My question is what is going on that spiders would actually fatally bite a dog (about 6 lesions were on her body). What kind of spiders are these? I noticed when I mowed the yard yesterday and along side the house there were many spiders (at least 3 different kinds0 running from along side/next to the house. They did not have webs. They were hiding int he grass. One was LARGE BLACK...the others were dark, I was just killing all I could see, but there were lots. I live in a very residential area. How can that many spiders be hanging out togeter, no webs. I have never seen spiders group togeter..

State: Indiana

A: I don't want to dispute your vet, but I'm 99% sure your dog did NOT suffer from "spider bites". To begin with, spider bites shouldn't cause bleeding. Granted, a spider bite (these are much rarer than people think) can get infected or cause a lesion but this is highly unlikely. Spiders have chelicerae (fangs) that are needle sharp and this is what they use to pierce their prey. Therefore a bite consists of two tiny puncture wounds - no blood lost.

If your dog was bloodied, I'd suspect some mammal was in your yard and fought with your dog. My first thought would be that your dog cornered an Opossum which bit in self-defense. I can certainly understand your eagerness to get this solved so your other dog can use the yard but killing spiders in the yard will not solve the problem, believe me. Spiders are quite common in yards and once one begins looking for them, you realize just how numerous they really are. Are they ganging up on other animals, absolutely not! There are many different kinds of spiders and you may be seeing wolf spiders. These don't spin a web but run down their prey instead.

Hope you can get to the bottom of this mystery but I'm quite confident you can forget about spiders as the culprits. Best of luck to you and thanks for writing.

John Wiessinger ( October 3, 2006)