by Janice Willard DVM, from the August 2005 Newsletter

Whenever your pet goes out in the summertime, it might come back with unwanted hitchhikers. These can be ticks, burrs or grass seeds. Of the three, the seed of certain grasses, (sometimes called grass awns, foxtails or cheat grass), seem the most innocuous. But they can do some real damage to your pet.

Seeds that hitchhike on animals represent an elegant form of co-evolution. Plants don’t have mobility, so they evolved clever ways to use ours. Burrs (the inspiration for Velcro) have numerous hooked needles that get caught up in hair, where they hang on. They can cause hair to mat and irritate the skin beneath.

What seems like a diabolical plot to use animals as unwitting transporters is simply a whim of natural selection. Or as Shakespeare put it, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Now of course, Shakespeare wasn’t talking about evolution, but slings and arrows does seem an apt description of the grass awn.

Although there is no intent in a seed of grass, the grass awn is still diabolical in my book. The grass awn is torpedo shaped and covered with little barbs. The barbs all angle away from the pointy tip. Once the seed gets snagged in fur, it can only move one way: deeper into the fur. And they don’t stop when they reach the skin. If lodged between the toes or in the ear canal, they can continue to burrow in. Sometimes it is the little, seemingly harmless things that can surprise you. “No, 'tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve” says Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet of the sword thrust that kills him. So too, the lowly grass awn can pack a powerful punch as it opens a one-way path of destruction, bringing bacteria in its wake.

Grass awns can cause ear infections, punctured eardrums, swollen infected feet, internal infections and abscesses and even spinal cord injuries. Being weeds, they have a high probability of growing where we don’t want them. The only protections are vigilance and prompt attention. If you remove them before they dig in, this can prevent a lot of the difficulties. When you come in from outdoors in the summer, get in the habit of running your hands over your entire pet, paying special attention to places a grass awn might lodge, such as between your pet’s toes (on the top and bottom of the paws) and near the ear opening. For dogs with a lot of hair between the toes it is very helpful to keep the paw hairs trimmed short during grass seed season.

If grass awns escape your notice and manage to dig in, this will require a trip to your veterinarian for removal. The tough seed coats make it difficult for the body’s defensive mechanisms to break down the seeds. Your veterinarian may need to anesthetize your pet to remove them and will likely place your pet on antibiotics.

"The most common sign of a problem is a sudden onset of sneezing – sometimes with blood in it – after a dog has sniffed a foxtail into its nose," says Dr. Franklin McMillan of Los Angeles, California, a board certified specialist in veterinary internal medicine. "Another common sign is a dog licking at its paw to relieve the discomfort of a foxtail-induced infection. Head shaking and pawing at an ear is a tip-off for a foxtail in the ear."

“I have practiced in all four corners of the US,” says Dr. J. Veronika Kiklevich, DVM, a practitioner in San Antonio, Texas, “and I have found grass awns to be a problem everywhere! They are often undetected until they are causing a pet an enormous problem due to inflammation and abscessation."

“I had a patient once,” Dr. Kiklevich continues, “who over the course of about six months, presented with sneezing, neck pain, pneumonia and finally peritonitis (which, unfortunately, he did not survive). On necropsy, we were able to trace the tract of a migrating grass awn from the nose through the neck to the chest and then to the abdomen.”

This is one hitchhiker you really don’t want your pet to pick up and bring home.

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