Foxtails
Foxtails are grass-like weeds which resemble the tails of foxes. Southern California has a variety of such wild grasses. These annual grasses are often found in weedy areas along paths and roads. From January until about March, they are soft and green. In late spring, however, the seed heads begin to dry and the danger begins.
The seeds of the drying or dried grasses detach from the plant and stick to a person’s clothes or an animal’s hair. They can easily become lodged between a dogs toes, in its ears, and in its eyes. Since the seeds are barbed like a fish hook, they can be very difficult to remove. Once embedded, foxtail seeds cause severe infections and abscesses.
Symptoms
A foxtail seed can cause an inflamed, painful, infected lump anywhere on an animal’s body. Depending on the location of the seed or seeds, symptoms can include compulsive licking and biting at a paw or around the groin or rectal area or whining and crying with no obvious injury.
In addition to causing pain and localized infections, foxtail seeds can migrate and lodge in the spine, in the lungs and in other internal organs. They enter through the nose, ears, paws, eyes, urethra or just through the skin and travel through the body The seeds are very small, making locating them a painful and difficult procedure. Depending on where a foxtail seed has traveled to inside the animal, it can even be life threatening and will require prompt surgical removal.
We’ve seen foxtails on hikes with our dogs already this summer throughout the Santa Monica mountains. After every venture outside please:
- Examine your companion animal carefully. Brush his or her hair, while feeling for any raised areas on his/her skin. Check inside and under the ears; check between the toes, under the armpits and in the groin area. Keep long haired and thick coated breeds especially well-groomed.
- If you see a foxtail seed sticking in the dog’s skin, carefully pull it straight out, making sure not to break it off in the process.
- If you think a seed might already be embedded in the skin, in a paw, in an eye or an ear, or if a dog who has been eating grass seems to have a throat problem, get your companion to a veterinarian as soon as possible. Waiting can only make it harder to find, allow it to migrate and become more dangerous, and make treatment more difficult.