No i'm not putting a lawn down but some or all of you may know the dangers of grass seed, one of our pups why we call them pups still i have no idea they are both 5 years old, anyway she developed a very sore paw on closer inspection it appeared to be two small puncture holes now one of our older dogs was biten by what we think was a spider some time back and his paw blew up like a balloon so thinking the litle blighter had struck again straight to the vets, no not a bite so we were all puzzled then more punture holes further up the paw by this time we were really puzzled thinking mites, parasites then what appeared to be a large infected blister further up her leg, each wound being dressed every day and paw immersed in disinfectant, removing the dressing on the blister low and behold a grass seed then another close to the wound with another actually sticking out of the blister within a couple of days her leg improved tremendously she has now got just a couple of marks on her leg which in a few more days will be gone so 7 weeks and almost 500€ in antibiotics steroids anti imflamitaries plus dressings and antiseptic, the vet had ruled out grass seed at this time of year but he admitted he was was wrong and told us how serious it could be with seeds travelling into vital organs, as all 4 of our dogs have access to the field this is something we have been aware of and checked between their toes so even during the winter we must check for seed
Ouch!! Thanks for the warning - never thought to check during the winter ...
Will keep eyes peeled. With the strong winds we've been having (with more forecast for this weekend) these things could easily be blowing into our 'patch'. And thank you for the info John.
This is wild seed from the field they are about half an inch long very sharp pointed at both ends they will actually pucture your finger if you are so inclined as to try, with the dogs having very large hairy paws the seeds tend to bunch up between the toes but we very often found seeds stuck into their bellys or their fronts as they pushed through the long grass
Oh my gosh, John - thank you for the warning! I was going to get some seed to do the bald patches on the grass and of course my two (and the 3 cats - wonder if they would suffer the same thing?) are racing round on there daily. I'd never heard of that before. Invaluable information.
Oh blimey! I'll start cheching them all, we dont need that!!!!