Dog With Foxtails Symptoms and Treatments

Foxtails are the dried, barbed seed heads from grasses and weeds, in abundance particularly when the weather is dry and hot and the vegetation is dry and scratchy. It is apparently named after the foxtail brome, a grass that has a plumed head, but it can be a term used to describe any seedhead that detaches itself and clings to your clothing or your dog's coat.

The seedheads are usually propagated by catching into a passing 'vehicle', like an animal, and being deposited elsewhere. However because your dog is nosing around and sniffing at everything, these little barbed seed heads will get into your dog's eyes, nose, skin and ears and cause a great deal of irritation and possible abscesses the longer they stay there.

If your dog has a lot of trouble with these seedheads it may be necessary to actually attempt to remove them surgically, since they tend to embed themselves in soft tissue and are then resistant to being teased out with tweezers. However this can be an expensive exercise considering the wide area they can be distributed round your dog's body, so the main reasons for you keeping an eye on him is for you to clean your porch and back garden and keep it swept so that he doesn't ingest anything that might cause him any hurt.

If you have been out to an area where you suspect there may have been dry vegetation it will be important to check him over to see if he has picked any seedheads up. If he starts shaking his head, or squinting, or pawing at his face, it may be a sign that he has some irritants in his face somewhere. His eyes may start to water and become red, He may yelp for no apparent reason, or scratch continually at his ears, shake himself and groom for what he thinks might be fleas, or obviously trying to rub or scratch an area of his body in a way that is totally out of character.

If you see him doing things like this it is also likely that he has ingested some too, either into the lungs or thought the mouth, and these may well set up areas of infection or abscesses. He may well also have picked some up between his toes or under his tail, so a thorough examination and a good brushing will help to make sure that he is free of any troublesome seedheads or other problems he may have picked up whilst out.

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