France in Focus

The curse of late spring/summer : those horrible voyageurs that can get stuck in a dog or cat's ear, mouth, nose, eye and goodness knows where else. One of the reasons this nuisance is spreading is verges ad open spaces not being cut so the "ears" have plenty of chance to grow and eventually spread their seed elsewhere. I've been cutting the patches chez nous with a self-drive hand mower that has a catcher. Whilst it's not a huge amount, there's enough to cause us concern because they can cause terrible problems with pets.
Our "lawn" is mostly weeds which I can live with, but not the voyageurs .... horrible things.

In a previous life I kept Old English Sheepdogs and it was a constant routine to check them everywhere for the darts. A friend of ours (also with Bobtails) failed to check his dogs sufficiently and a seed entered one dogs foot between the toes. Eventually, the vet had to cut it out quite some inches up the leg.

If you get them in your socks and try to pull them back out you end up with holes and new socks!

My first Old English loved being brushed and combed so I kept her fur long but the following 2 (both males) hated it. I had a good groomer in the UK for Dooley so he was kept « puppy length », but Freddy was put off by the first French groomer here who was frightened by his size, fortunately I found an English groomer, but I still kept his fur short.
I’m now trying to convince Raffi, my Springer that he needn’t be afraid of the brush, so a little each day to remove all the seeds and burrs.

Our Border collies loved being brushed but Bimbo and Sweep, our Aussies, weren't very keen. Fortunately Rafal is pretty good which is just as well as he has a really thick mane especially under his neck.

All the Old English Sheepdogs I've seen here are kept shorn - I think it really suits them and apparently they are less likely to have eye problems.
A friend also shaved her Newfie in the summer and left a pom pom on the end of its tail. It looked really cute !

Utterly awful things. Even being careful I still missed one on my boy last weekend.

That's awful, pour "little" Skye. I hope he's okay now.
We seem to have so much more of that in the "garden" this year - perhaps because we decided not to mow so much ? Being next to fields, we get all sorts of strange things. We'll definitely mow earlier next year ....