Sam's Paw and Foxtail

We have been overrun with foxtail this year.

We hate foxtail!

It gets stuck in everything.

Thankfully we haven't had any goats get foxtail stuck in their throats, they generally don't eat it.

In the past we've pulled it out from between Sam's teeth. (Sam's a fluffy large mutt dog who is gentle and kind unless you are trying to get into the house and you don't belong here!)

Sam's been licking his paw raw. We couldn't see anything in there. Sometimes he gets nervous and licks his fur off his paws. So we put a 'cone of shame' on him. That usually does the trick.

This time it didn't heal.

I decided to soak his foot in epsom salts to see if we could sooth his foot as well as pull out any infection. We were able to get some of the infection out. But his paw was still hot and shiny.... a sure sign that something is still wrong inside.

Vet2Be decided to soak his paw again today, and see what happened. He was able to see the very end of a piece of foxtail. You can see it in the picture above, it looks like a little "V".

What a good dog! He'll let us soak his foot, poke it and squeeze it (gently) to see if we can get anything (or any pus) out. He just sits there!

If we couldn't make some progress on his paw today, we were taking him to the vet tomorrow. Vet2Be has seen many dogs who have paws that look like this. The diagnoses is almost always a piece of foxtail that has worked it's way into the paw.
 
Vet2Be soaked Sam's paw again later. We'll do it twice a day for the next few days until it looks nice and pink instead of shiny and red. We've also been spraying it with a disinfectant, and then with Vetericyn. If you haven't tried Vetericyn on wounds for animals before, you might want some in your animal first aid kit. It's wonderful stuff! Kills 99.9% of lots of different types of infection from staph to MRSA. Click here to see what else it kills.

Since the 'cone of shame' is so awkward and hard to eat and drink through, I found a pattern for a dog bootie on the internet. This stays on much better than a sock or any other bandage we tried (which is why we went back to the 'cone of shame')

The dog bootie stays on well and it doesn't seem to bother Sam much at all. You can find the pattern (easy!) at Tammy's Craft Emporium. She has a great tutorial! She makes them for her Springer Spaniel who needs boots when she's running around in the snow.

We've also been dealing with some udder infections on the goats. One has staph, so she's in a tee-shirt to cover her udder. The other one still has the tee-shirt on to keep whatever is causing her allergic reaction off her udder.

It's been a long few weeks!

I'll have some photos of the udder in a few days. We've been soaking both goat's udders in epsom salts, too. It's helped alot!

Thank goodness they're Saanens!

Gentle and easy to work with, even when they are under stress.