Here in California, it’s foxtail time. This grassy weed is everywhere outdoors – in the wilderness areas where we hike, yes, of course, but also alongside suburban sidewalks and coming up in cracks in city parking lots. They are in my backyard and front yard and side yards. I spend hours each week pulling them up by the roots and carefully discarding them in the green waste bin, because there is a tiny seed at the base of every single strand on every waving frond on every plant that will grow another foxtail plant next year. If you have a very small yard, with enough years of dedicated weeding, you can eliminate them from your yard. I have a large yard and I will never see the end of them.

Why are they a problem? They are so pretty! You can run the fronds through your fingers and they are so soft – as long as you stroke them from bottom to top. If you try to reverse the direction of your caress, you learn instantly why they are the most reviled weed in the west.

Every single strand is lined with nearly microscopic barbs that catch on anything they touch, from fur to collars, clothing to bare skin. When the barbs come in contact with anything, they propel the strand forward, pushing the sharp-tipped seed at the end forward – relentlessly forward. The barbs can be felt when the grass is green, but as the plants dry out in the late spring – like, right now – they get sharper and more defined, like a brand new metal nail file. So when your dog walks through the drying grass, they practically fly off the plant and attach themselves to his fur, where they relentlessly drive those seeds into his flesh.

Top four favorite places for foxtails to invade: between dog toes and in dog noses, ears, and eyes. But they don’t discriminate; they are just as happy to burrow into dog armpits, urethras, vaginas (when girl dogs squat to pee) – anywhere there is a bend or soft, sensitive flesh.

Foxtails have sent my adolescent dog Woody to the vet twice this WEEK! He managed to do something unique – new at least to me, the vets have seen it all before. He indiscriminately ate some grass and apparently managed to include some foxtail awns. I heard him making a Bill the Cat noise (“Ackk!”) and immediately thought he must have swallowed something he shouldn’t have, and off to the 24-hour vet clinic we went. The vet looked inside his mouth and said, “Yup, foxtails…I can see one sticking out of his tonsils!” Woody is a compliant fellow, but to make sure she got them all, the veterinarian had to knock him out and thoroughly inspect his throat. She found several in the area of his tonsils, and more jammed in his gums by his molars. Good heavens, Woody! You are not a herbivore!

Five days later, Woody suddenly sprouted a lump on his cheek, the size of a small egg. There wasn’t a nick or cut that might indicate that he ran into something. I looked inside his mouth and saw something that looked like a little pimple, which made me think “$%^&*@* foxtails!” again. Back to the vet for a little exploration of Woody’s cheek.

The classic sign of a foxtail – the sign you actually want to see when you suspect a foxtail – is a little wet hole in the dog’s flesh, perhaps one that’s oozing a bit. That’s where the vet starts the search, with a little local anesthetic and a long, skinny alligator forceps. The foxtail will sometimes create a little track in the dog’s flesh, that the vet will try to follow to its end and pull it out backwards with the forceps.  That’s the best case scenario.

More often, it goes like it went with Woody’s cheek; a little pimple indicating where the foxtail seed may have entered his flesh, but no track to follow and no ooze indicating where the seed is causing an infection that can be lanced and cleaned. The vet lanced the spot, found nothing, and now we have to wait and see. Was the piece of awn or seed small enough for his body to break it down and the swelling will subside? Or is the awn big enough to resist a quick disintegration? Will it keep traveling and cause trouble elsewhere? I’ve heard horror stories of foxtails traveling into dogs’ hearts, lungs, brains – you name it. I’m telling you, I HATE THESE PLANTS!

If anyone needs me for the next few days, I’ll be outside, weeding. Or using a flamethrower. We’ll see.

* To all of you who don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, count your blessings. On the other hand, those of you who live in chigger country, or where your ticks are epidemic and carry Lyme or Rocky Mountain Fever, you got me there. 

After having a medical issue of my own recently, I had an epiphany: I’d rather see a veterinarian than deal with the human medical system.

The usual routine with human medicine: If something serious happens suddenly, you have to go to the emergency room; your own doctor can’t see you right away for anything serious.

The ER patches you up enough to be released and tells you to follow up with your own doctor. At the day of the appointment, your doctor decides you need an xray or ultrasound or other test – and sends you to another clinic or testing laboratory where this is done. It takes days for the results to get back to your doctor, and then he gets them, he sends you elsewhere for treatment. At least, that’s what happened to me, recently.

If the same event had happened to my dog – although, I don’t know why my dog would have been on a ladder cleaning gutters – my veterinarian would most likely have seen my dog that day unless it was after hours, in which case I would have taken the dog to the animal ER, a 24-hour clinic in the next town over. They, too, would have patched up the dog and told me to follow up with my regular vet.

But when I would have followed up with my regular vet, if she thought my dog needed an ultrasound or xray, she would have done it. And if she thought that my dog’s massive hematoma needed to be aspirated, she would have done that, too. And if she thought my dog needed an antibiotic or something, that, too, would have been dispensed right there at the veterinary clinic.

My husband once had an ugly cyst develop on his neck. His doctor, too, referred him elsewhere to have it lanced and drained. Again, if that had been my dog and my veterinarian, it would have been one-stop shopping.

I wouldn’t expect my “family veterinarian” to also treat my dog for an exotic eye disease or even cancer; I’m happy with the idea that there are veterinary specialists that one can see for special health problems. But boy, am I grateful for the fact that most veterinarians are both fully prepared and fully capable of triage, diagnosis, and hands-on treatment of our animal companions.

Are there still doctors out there who work like vets, diagnosing and treating problems on the spot?

Are there vets who don’t?

All I know is, I’m sending my vet some flowers.

Here’s another post to provide closure to some of the foster-dog stories I’ve shared with you in recent months.

In mid-March, I wrote about being fairly depressed by the arrival of two foster dogs. I had pulled the first one from my local shelter as a prospect for a friend of my son, who was looking for an athletic, medium-sized dog. I had never seen the dog outside of a kennel, first at my local shelter, and then, after we evacuated the shelter during the Oroville (Calif.) Dam scare, at a friend’s house (she took in about 20 of the shelter’s dogs!). He had a darling face, seemed quiet in the kennel, and looked like a Poodle-something-mix. As soon as it was safe for me to go back home after the evacuation, I asked to foster him.

It wasn’t until I got him home that I saw he wasn’t going to work for my son’s friend. That young man is a professional athlete, and was looking for a dog he could take out for runs; this dog could barely stand up! He had as little muscle tissue as I’ve ever seen on a dog, and he stood and walked way back on his “wrists.” It seemed clear he had been kept in a crate or tiny pen for most of his life. He also had a bad habit of barking LOUDLY when he wanted something or when he was frustrated. This, too, seemed like a trait he had likely developed while being stuck in a crate. He didn’t have any other tools for dealing with his frustration.

Despite this bad start, he was friendly and sweet and playful. I called him Muppet, because he looked like one, with those long legs and tufts of hair flying every which way. Based on his uncoordinated, weak gaits, my husband, who gives nicknames to every dog that passes through our home, called him Floppy. Indeed, he flopped about wildly as he tried to play with and chase my adolescent dog Woody around my yard. It was sad but funny when they would play tug of war over a toy; they would stand braced and pulling, and it would look like an even match, but if strongly muscled Woody would turn his head to look out the window, Floppy would go flying in that direction. It only looked like it was an even match because Woody was tempering the strength of his own tugging.

Still, it takes a special person to make a home for dogs with physical and behavioral deficits, and I despaired that I would be able to find a suitable family for him. Then I received a message from Jill Breitner, developer of the terrific Dog Decoder app and a trainer who recently relocated in southern Oregon. She said that she had a couple of clients that Muppet might be perfect for, and that in either case, she would first take possession of him for a month or so, and then spend some time with the owner, to make sure they knew what to expect from the dog and to smooth over their new relationship.

As it turned out, another friend was driving a couple of dogs from our local shelter to central Oregon, where she would meet another driver who would take them to adoptive homes in the Seattle area. I asked if Muppet could catch a ride on that transport, and a few days later, he was on his way.

As luck would have it, the person doing the transport had car trouble on the morning that all the travel arrangements were made, and instead of being crated individually in the back of a truck with a camper shell on it, the dogs were going to ride in a car – the back seat and the “way back.” And as they drove, one of the dogs being transported was quite unhappy with the seating arrangements, and made the other dogs in the car nervous enough that by the time Muppet got to Jill’s town, he had diarrhea and no appetite. It took a couple of days of gentle care and low-stress, loving handling before he regained his adolescent energy and spunk.

I’ve asked Jill if she would write an article for WDJ about her approach to this sort of fostering/training arrangement, and she’s agreed. Briefly, she said she tries to give the dog a soft landing from his previous placements, and give him time to feel safe and loved in the most enriching environment possible. She observes the dog carefully to see how he moves and operates, and so she can share her insights about his behavior with his new owner when it’s time. Jill kept Muppet for over a month before his new owners drove up from Arizona to get him! They spent two days with Jill and Muppet getting to know their new dog and his newly trained behaviors, before driving with him back down to Arizona. Jill says they are in love with their new guy, who has been permanently renamed Buffett (after the musician). Super happy ending!

Despite the frustration I expressed when I wrote that first blog post about hard-to-place dogs, the other dog I was writing about also has found a terrific forever home. Twig is an anxious little guy with funky-looking knees, who had scrapped with his previous foster person’s dog and needed a new home before he got hurt. I asked Lisa, a friend who is involved with a local rescue group, if she could foster him for me when I went on vacation, and when I got back, she said she could keep him a little longer, trying to promote him through her network of rescue folks.

Lisa has cultivated a relationship with the local television station, who will sometimes feature an “adoptable pet of the week” on its morning show – and make the clip available for linking and sharing on social media. Lisa got onto the show with Twig, and lo and behold, the perfect couple emerged within a day asking to meet and adopt him. They are an older couple with no other dogs, and he reminded them in many ways of a beloved dog they had years ago. They took him home for a trial and say he fits into their lives perfectly. Hurrah! Networking (literally) rocks!

More recently, I complained about these adorable siblings, who have been in my local shelter since just before Christmas. I shared my theory that they looked too much like pit bulls to attract people who did not feel comfortable with a bully breed, and not enough like pit bulls for those who specifically wanted a bully breed.

It so happened that I was at the shelter one day for an unrelated task (actually, helping Lisa, hero of Twig’s story, check to see if the next dog she was about to foster had any issues with cats), when I saw someone else I know at the shelter, taking a shelter ward to one of the outdoor runs. I wandered over to see what she and her husband were up to, and they said they had lost two senior dogs, one after the other, earlier this year, and their remaining dog is depressed and sad, and so they decided it was time to adopt another; they were just looking. I went into total car salesman mode. “Have I got a dog for you!” I told them, and ran to get a leash. I ran back to the boy dog’s kennel, telling him, “Now don’t blow this, it’s a great opportunity for you…” I showed them everything the dog knew: sit and down on cue, polite fetching, and best yet, a default sit and wait when you just look at him, or when you walk up to a door or gate. Long story short: He got adopted!

Now I’m concentrating all my efforts on his sister. I brought her home over the weekend, and this week, she’s spending time as a special guest at The Canine Connection, my friend Sarah Richardson’s training, boarding, and daycare center. Sarah’s assistants are lavishing care and training on her, and she’s getting lots of opportunities to play with other dogs. After I send the next issue to print, I hope to host her again while promoting her as widely as I can, in any way I can. And then, I might have to take the rest of the summer off to play with my own dogs only!

In the comments to the above-mentioned blog posts, you guys have contributed some great ideas for helping shelter dogs get adopted. Keep sharing! And thanks!

Way back in November I wrote about finding a great prospect for my sister-in-law Leslie and my seven-year-old niece, Ava. Leslie had put me in charge of looking for just the right dog for her and Ava: not too big nor too small, sweet, and trainable. On their behalf, I wanted to find a dog that would love and be fascinated with kids, because Ava absolutely loves dogs and most loves dogs who love her back.

In my local shelter, after looking for months, I found a darling young Shepherd-mix who impressed me as having superior self-control for being such a young dog, as well as infinite sweetness and affection for people. On the other hand, she was  a younger dog than I had originally considered for them, and who seemed to have the potential for being larger than I had originally hoped. But she was just SO SWEET and fun and smart; she loved engaging with people, loved kids, loved to cuddle, and learned things fast. I discussed her with Leslie, and then brought her home for to evaluate her further. (Because I foster so much for my shelter, I get special privileges when it comes to taking dogs for a trial. Plus, I have a nearly perfect success rate at finding homes for my foster dogs.)

Every day I had the dog, I liked her more. She loved playing with my young dog Woody, was able to finesse the grumpy response she got from my older dog, Otto, and met all my other friends and their dogs in a happy, friendly way.  Leslie and Ava came to meet her, and really hit it off. Ava named her Rosie, and I committed to keeping and training her for a few more weeks while Leslie would work to find a dog-walker who could help them for a few months, so they could get through Rosie’s puppyhood and go on to a happy life together. It all seemed like it was going to work out perfectly.

But there was a perfect storm of things that caused this match to fail, not the least of which was a literal chain of storms! First, though, was this: Leslie and Ava were going to take Rosie for a week, a little before I would have wanted them to, ideally. I wanted her to have more training and reliable house-manners, but I had to go to a conference out of state. So we planned for them to take Rosie for a week, after which she’d come back to my house for more training.

Two days before I left on my trip, Rosie suddenly started favoring one hind leg. I took her to my veterinarian, who diagnosed a sprained/strained hock. The veterinarian suggested that Rosie should have some crate rest and leashed-walks for a week or so, in addition to a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. That was going to be a challenge even for me, as the pup was accustomed to at least one long walk or shorter, intense, off-leash romp a day! On days when I was super busy and she didn’t get a lot of exercise, she could be mischievous and destructive. I suggested they feed her only in food-dispensing toys, give her plenty of chews and toys, and walk her as much as they could on leash.

Then, as luck would have it, the weather was awful; it dumped rain almost the whole time I was gone. And Ava had a bad cold, and wasn’t feeling well. And the dog-walker Leslie had found couldn’t start until the following week. And the trainers I had hoped might be able to help them were both out of commission. So that week was rough on all of them. Rosie had to spend her days in a large crate (though Leslie came home at lunch time every day to let her go potty), and even the food-stuffed Kongs and other “enrichment” toys and chews didn’t make this much more fun. When Leslie got home from work (and Ava from school), they would take Rosie out for short, miserable walks in the pouring rain; it took only a few of these to have Ava begging her mom to walk the dog without her. That certainly wasn’t what any of us wanted!  And when they got back inside, Rosie (understandably) wanted to play and roughhouse, not cuddle with the marginally sick Ava. Their relationship went from wonderful to completely unenjoyable for both of them in a matter of days!

I heard these reports from the other side of the country with dismay, but I know from a lifetime with animals that bad weeks can happen – and that the damage to the relationship can recover just like that, too, if it’s not too bad. I hurried to pick up Rosie from their home the day I got back, so she could recover from her sprain and get enough play and stimulation from my young dog, Woody, at my house.

In the following weeks, however, when we discussed when the time would be right for Rosie to go back to Leslie and Ava’s house, I heard Leslie hesitating. She assured me that they loved the dog and trusted that she’d be a great, well-behaved dog – at some point. And I assured her that, if they preferred, I could find Rosie another great home and find them another dog.  Leslie and Ava had several heart-to-heart talks on the subject, and as Leslie reported the contents of these talks to me on the phone, I heard some new information: Ava really wished for a much smaller dog that she could hold on her lap. And Leslie admitted she had never felt any fondness for small dogs; she wanted a big dog, but she also wanted a dog that would bond with Ava and that Ava would love to walk and play with. Leslie did not want to have to force Ava to walk the dog, but Ava was getting intimidated by Rosie’s pent-up, energetic behavior. All three of them were bound to fail!

I felt terrible for failing to ferret out the conflict about their wishes for the dog’s size and behavior earlier, but I recommended that we find another home for Rosie, and revisit the dog project a bit down the road. Leslie and Ava agreed.

I felt a little burdened; I had already been hosting and training Rosie for about two months, and having any new pup in the house takes a lot of work and management. But fortunately for all of us, a solution popped up sooner than I thought it would. I took an off-leash dog walk with my friend Sarah Richardson, a trainer in the nearby town of Chico, California. Sarah owns The Canine Connection, a dog boarding, training, and daycare facility. She thought Rosie was just adorable, and loved how good she was on our walk. She said, “I have some clients who might be perfect for Rosie. Why don’t I take her for a few days and get to know her, so I could discuss her prospects and promote her to them?” I happily agreed and she took Rosie home.

I immediately started getting report from Sarah about how much she enjoyed Rosie.

“She went through puppy kindergarten class tonight and she was beyond awesome. Did you teach her all this stuff or did she jus naturally know how to be super sweet and attentive?”

“She’s amazing!”

“She’s a ridiculously easy and sweet puppy.”

And then it happened: “Hey Nance, I am thinking I might keep this puppy!”

The intended clients be darned, Sarah had lost three senior dogs in a year, and while she hadn’t planned on getting another dog herself, she was enjoying fostering Rosie so much, she just couldn’t help but fall in love. It helped, a lot, that Rosie has a gift for meeting other dogs with nearly perfect dog manners. If she meets a fearful or hostile dog, she is deferent and calm, helping defuse any potential situation. If she meets an overtly friendly dog, she dives into playtime fun.

In short order, Sarah renamed her Piper, and started using her, as many professional trainers do, as a “neutral” dog to help evaluate new client dogs for her daycare business and even in behavior consultations. She’s not yet a year old, but Piper can be counted on to behave in a calm, predictable manner with other dogs, and handles herself beautifully. Only five months later, Sarah relies on Piper for this valuable job. Sarah says, “She’s become one of my trusted training assistants, helping me with other dogs, She has superb dog skills!” AND, Piper gets to play with other dogs daily, and enjoys canoodling with Sarah’s other dogs on Sarah’s couch and bed!

So things have turned out perfectly for Piper. . . and Leslie and Ava are waiting a bit longer before trying any other dogs. They have some negotiating to do!