When I was 10 years old, I was hunting with my grandfather in a very rural area of Alabama. We had our coon dogs searching out things. The dogs started to bay and when we got to them we found they had surrounded a huge diamondback rattler. It must have been 6 to 7 feet in length and maybe 8 inches in diameter of thickness (a little awkward language there). As we arrived we saw one of the dogs get too close and get bitten.
Grandfather dispatched the snake with a couple shotgun rounds but he had the problem of what to do with the dog. There was no vet in the whole county. In retrospect he should have shot the dog. It died a horrible choking death as the snake's venom paralyzed the muscles which control the lungs.
I will never forget that day.
When we lived in the country outside DeFuniak Springs, our neighbor’s dog got bitten by a coral snake. The dog smelled him and was digging through rotten wood to get at the snake when he got bit.
The next day the dog’s head was really swollen but he eventually got over it. They didn’t take him to the vet.