The Inconveniences of Fencing and of Vinegar

SUMMARY: Related to dogs.

Posted on FB 10/8/21. Edited to post here.

This story has two parts.

Part 1: Fencing

Someone has to stay inside until late this afternoon. This never happens. He has words to say about this.

The middle portion of my north-ish fence began leaning/bowing in towards my yard last winter, I believe. But it stopped when it encountered a tree to lean on, so... [shrug]

I'd been meaning to take a photo of its relaxed state for months.
Too late--the fenceman had already propped it up to work on it
before I realized something was happening.

While I think that it is super cool that apparently the neighbor has hired someone to replace the rotted posts in that section of fence between us at his own expense (since he has said nothing*), I think that it would have been wise--given that he knows that I have dogs, having lived next to me for 20 years--to give me advanced notice that the fence would be down for half a day.

I am sooooo thankful that I was home when they started sawing away at the posts.

---

 * Just saw him, I said let me know what I owe you. He grinned, waved it away, and said, "Don't worry about it." After he denied me a 2nd time, I'll take it. 🙂

Part 2, later the same day: Vinegar

I sit in the green chair. Zorro is on a 15-foot lead. 
He'd rather be on his own.
That fence thing is still in progress across the yard and he must see!

Poor Zorro. Has an uneducated Human Mom.

I had potstickers for lunch. I love them with white vinegar, so I poured it onto the plate from the large bottle. When I finished, some vinegar remained on the plate along with Maybe half a dozen crumbs from the potstickers themselves. I put it on the floor to see whether he'd lick it (he hardly ever turns things down), thinking that he probably wouldn’t like the vinegar. He definitely tried to stay away from it while he tried to pick out the orts. I left him to it.

Now the gross part:

About 10 minutes later, he walked down into my office and threw up a good portion of his breakfast (of course onto the carpet, not three inches farther onto tile floor).

While I tried to keep him from re-eating it (a dog's first instinct, of course), his head made that little bobbing movement, and I pushed him over the tile floor where he threw up another large portion of breakfast. And after that, while I petted him and he eyed the two yummy piles of food, it started again, and I kept him on the tile for a third portion. Stomach pretty much emptied according to that third one.

OK, so at this point I didn’t even really have to look it up. But I wanted to know how much gastrointestinal distress or damage the vinegar might have done. Online vet sources say "some dogs can't tolerate it" and it could cause vomiting and diarrhea--for up to 48 hours afterwards!

OMG. OMG. And of course today is the only day in his Entire Life that he has been restricted to the house, without free access to the yard. (Maybe a few others here or there). 

Pretty sure he had been intending to go out to the yard to handle his upset because where he decorated the floor was only about 2 feet from the actual door he would normally go through.

So I’ve been outside with him for about 20 minutes. Shows no signs of wanting to throw up or poop. just hanging with me. 

Fingers crossed. I need to go back inside.

If I had a good place to hook his 15 foot lead without risk of it tangling up, I would do that. But I don’t.  And unwilling to try to set up a fence for just a couple more hours. I already went through that when I thought there was a skunk in the yard. And it was exhausting and painful.

So, here we are.

Oops. Now what?

An hour later, he still seems healthy. I just happen to have some leftover steamed white rice. 

"Ready?!?!"
That always perks him up.
Gave him the rice. He loved it. 

Foxtail Tales

SUMMARY: So small, so dangerous

Started with my response to a Facebook post about dogs wearing anti-foxtail covers over their heads.

They can be beautiful, early in the morning, glistening with dew

I've experienced two unpleasant foxtails encounters, and others not so bad, with my dogs. In the early '90s, one evening while out in our big yard, my husky Sheba started sneezing and couldn't stop, and then started sneezing blood. Ran her to the nearby open-at-night emergency vet , where they sedated her and found and removed a teeny tiny foxtail way up in her sinus. Expensive. And of course the toll on the dog.

And Jake, in the late '90s, we were out of town at an agility competition--we went hiking at a nearby lake one evening and the dogs went swimming [this is where I discovered that Remington loved loved loved swimming; that's a different story]. Foxtails in prime sticking form surrounded the trail to the lake. Back at the car, I must've spent half an hour trying to get them out of Jake's long silky coat and tail.

A trail like this: Narrow; foxtails ripe and abundant.
All it takes is the dog to stick his nose into those for just a moment...

There they are, almost ripe and each
seed ready to torture a dog

The next morning, before the agility competition began, he started scratching at his ear (he had long floppy long-haired ears) and shaking his head. He was prone to ear infections, so I always carried special goop from the vet.  I figured he'd gotten water in his ear while swimming and an infection was starting.  Applied goop per the normal schedule. We went to the vet when we got home--actually the next morning when they opened. Vet said, nope not an infection, but was able to pull a foxtail out of his ear fairly easily without anesthesia--he said that's because the goop had softened it so much that it couldn't stick in anything and he could just grab it with long tweezers(?) and glide it out, no anesthesia. Disaster averted.

So, not too expensive, but of course going to the vet just costs.

Tika had extremely dense fur. Like a husky's. Fun fact: Dogs have, on average, 15,000 hairs per square inch. A husky can have up to 83,000.  (Otters have even more!) Tika had such dense hair, particularly with her winter coat, that I'd have trouble seeing even a speck of her skin.  Her hairs were not particularly long--in memory, I think 1-1.5 inches. But they were perfectly straight and, as it turned out, exactly the length and texture of a foxtail seed. When she managed to dash through a field of foxtails, you couldn't *see* whether she had any in her coat, even though she'd have dozens and dozens.  You'd have to hunt. Wrong kind of treasure hunt, but it was what it was. (Not something I encouraged, I assure you.)

Once, when petting her at home, I found a foxtail halfway embedded into her skin. Fortunately, when I tugged gingerly at it, it pulled out fairly easily with minimal blood. I cleaned the spot and added a little neosporin, and no infection. I tried not to think about what might have happened if I hadn't accidentally found it.

"Bubble head" protectors--friends have posted about their dogs wearing them for several years now. Two people today recommended OutFox brand. Expensive. But compared to some of the horror stories shared in comments to that post...

Note: I have so many photos of foxtails! They are gorgeous, actually. These photos came from different years and locations.

Ears

SUMMARY: Random Chip. Because. So many things to remember.

Backfill: Originally posted on FB 6/28. Posted here July 2.