Dog needs £6k operation after grass stuck up nose

NationalWorld.com

A woman who spent £6k on an operation for her dog blames the council for not clearing grass properly - and wants her money back.  Michele Wingfield, 60, took pet pooch Masie, nine, to the vets when she couldn't stop sneezing.  A scan found grass seeds in the Westie's nose - which needed a £5k operation to remove.  More seeds were then found in Masie's paw two weeks later, which cost a further £800.  Michele, a carer from Hartley, Kent, now wants Kent County Council to pay her back - claiming workers didn't clear mounds of cut grass properly.  Video from SWNS

Transcript

00:00 So I'm Callie Wingfield and I'm Michelle Wingfield and we've got Maisie and Bella here.

00:07 So Bella and Maisie are both nine years old, they're sisters and in July Maisie got a grass seed called the foxtail barley up her nose.

00:17 She had to go to the Ralph in Marlow but before that she had to have an emergency vet appointment at Park Vets

00:26 who recommended that she has a CAT scan and a rhinoscopy.

00:31 So they booked the emergency appointment at the Ralph.

00:34 A couple of days later we went there and Maisie had the grass seed removed from her nose from the rhinoscopy

00:41 but two weeks later we actually found another foxtail barley grass seed in her paw

00:47 and the vet notes did actually say that there was actually signs of other entry wounds in her paws as well from other foxtail barleys.

00:57 So she basically had to have surgery at the Ralph which cost a significant amount of money

01:06 and then she went to Park Vets not that long after and they investigated her paw for the grass seed as well.

01:13 So all in all it's cost us just under £6,000 for the grass seeds.

01:19 I feel this is a really important issue that needs to be addressed with the councils

01:25 because they're cutting the foxtail barley and they're actually leaving the remnants on the floor and on the grass verges.

01:34 So what that actually does is it not only causes a health and safety risk to animals and wildlife and small children if there was a fall

01:42 but also they're multiplying the problem because the grass seeds are going back into the soil.

01:48 So it is quite a big hazard that really needs to be dealt with.

02:03 So I feel that the councils need to cut the grass more frequently so the foxtail barley doesn't grow those sort of dangerous spiky seeds

02:13 or they need to collect the grass cuttings and remove them because otherwise the issue just sort of multiplies.

02:21 What they currently do is they just use trimmers and then just leave the remnants in bulks.

02:28 A lot of the time it's on the pavement, on the grass verges and on the road.

02:34 So it makes it really hard to avoid the problem.

02:37 But it's just made us petrified to walk the dogs.

02:51 They don't like us at the moment because we constantly have to check their paws

02:56 and it's quite uncomfortable for them having to spread the paws open and check inside.

03:04 It's quite a distress for them.

03:06 And also it's the fear of if this was to happen again we just couldn't afford it.

03:11 This was something that there was no choice.

03:14 She had to have the rhinoscopy, she had to have the CAT scan because it would have, well more than likely, it would have travelled to the brain.

03:22 So when the rhinoscopy was done you could actually see from the images

03:27 that it was quite high up in the soft tissue of her nose.

03:30 And I think the problem with the grass seeds as well is where they're quite sort of spiky

03:36 it's quite hard for them to actually come out.

03:39 Once they're up there, they're up there.

03:41 But they can actually enter the paws and sort of travel through the body as well.

03:47 And they do have toxins, they can go under the armpits, through the chest cavity.

03:53 They're quite dangerous because they're very sharp.

03:56 And especially with the cost of living and the vet prices, it's, yeah, it was really difficult.

04:15 I got very upset when Maisie went down to have the procedure

04:19 because they told me that it was quite heavy on her, the dye was quite heavy on her kidneys.

04:24 Oh.

04:25 So it was a risk having that done as well.

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