My poor poochie...

So yesterday I noticed that my malamute Dakota had licked off fur from his paw, so I got down to his level and Dr. T was in the house. I saw something poking out of his paw, so I got the flashlight and some tweezers....and my husband.

"M, hold Dakota please. He has something in his paw."
****stop reading now if you have a sensitive stomach*****

With flashlight in hand, I saw a small hole (about 2 millimeters round) with something green sticking out. Tweezers at the ready I grabbed the object and pulled - HARD. I couldn't believe how hard it was to pull out. I got something grass-like out of the hole and when I did, more "things" came to the front of the hole. Again, the tweezers went and grabbed the green stuff poking out. I really had to pull this time... It was a cluster of pine needles. There were still some in the hole, but I couldn't grab them. I figured that I'd just see if he'd lick them out during the day. By 3pm, he was holding his paw up and limping, so I called the vet.

"Soak in warm water with Epsome Salts and bring him in tomorrow morning at 7:30am." was the advice given to me from the vet. They were hoping that the warm water would work out the "stuff".

So this morning I brought Dakota to the vet - for an all day visit. Turns out that they had to sedate him and cut open the hole. There was more debris in there. They flushed it out and left the wound open so it could drain, just in case there was more stuff in the wound. GROSS!! My poor fur-baby. He's limping around and his foot is very swollen. We have antibiotics to give him for the next several days.

OH!! The vet couldn't determine what the "stuff" was. She thought it may have been grass, but with the cluster I got out last night, I'm thinking it was a cluster of baby pine needles. Stupid dog park, stupid tree's, and stupid dog for getting hurt with pine needles!!!