Hero dog nearly died after being bitten on nose by deadly snake while protecting family

A dog in Australia's Gold Coast is being hailed a hero after he saved a family from a deadly brown snake. One-year-old Staffordshire Terrier Jeff came close to death after being bitten on the nose. Now the Moskwa family is praising him after he alerted them about the dangerous reptile in their vegetable garden. When Jeff wouldn't stop barking on Wednesday morning, Tamara Moskwa said she knew something was wrong.

"I heard him barking like crazy," said the Willow Vale resident. "I kept calling him but he would always bolt back to the garden. But when I went to see what was happening, at first I didn't even see the snake." Mrs Moskwa was soon greeted by a sight of horror. "It was like he was trying to tell us something, so I went back," she said. "He bolted one last time to the garden and that's when I saw what had happened. He was just lying next to a big 2m brown snake." The mother-of-three realized the staffy had been bitten by the snake.

It was now a race against time. "It was horrible and scary to see it in our garden, right where the kids play every day," said Mrs Moskwa. "My husband Michael took a photo of the dead snake and rushed off to the vet. When we got to the vet we had a choice - we could try to save him, even with very low survival chance, or we put him down." The Moskwa family decided to spend the $2,550 required, to save their beloved pet's life. "We almost decided to let him go because of the cost, but then we thought `one of our kids could have been bitten instead of the dog'," said Mrs Moskwa.

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"The least we could do was to try and save his. We felt really lucky, we feel like he's meant to be here to be our protector." The vegetable garden is where eight-year-old Mackenzie and his younger brothers Nate and Billy often play before breakfast. Snake catcher Tony Harrison says the eastern brown snakes are one of the most deadly in the world, and are renowned for having a bad temper. "One drop of venom has enough power to take out 16 healthy adults, so one bite can take out 100 people,” he said.