THE owners of this playful pooch are breathing a sigh of relief after he survived a life-threatening snake bite.

Surprisingly, the snake attack was not in a remote field or woodland, but in the centre of Malton in Swinton Road, between Newbiggin and Malton School.

Graham Piercy, a former fishmonger, had finished taking Scamp, his 14-month-old Yorkshire Terrier, for a walk, and was just returning home when he noticed something was awry.

He said: “Scamp was walking in the grass when he started jumping up and down on his back leg. I thought he’d been stung by a wasp, but I had a look in the long grass and I couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t walk, but we were only five minutes from our house so I carried him home.”

Back at home, Scamp’s condition became desperate.

Graham said: “He vomitted, couldn’t stand up and he was shaking all over.”

Scamp was taken to Eastgate Veterinary Centre in Pickering, where the vet said that he had severe anaphylactic shock, caused by an adder bite.

Graham and his partner, Joan, and daughter, Gemma, had a three-hour wait before being told Scamp would be OK.

Graham said: “The vet said it was one of the worst cases of anaphylactic shock he had seen in a dog. It was frightening, because we weren’t out in Dalby Forest, or somewhere else you might expect wild animals. We had just gone for a stroll up the road in Malton. Scamp is a lovely little dog – very scampish – and it is terrible to think we could have lost him within half an hour if we hadn’t taken him to the vet.”