the wrong coast for dogs.

Leela is the first dog to actually be my responsibility, and being from the Northeast, we had a remarkable lesson to learn:

There are plants out here which will physically (i.e. not by poisoning) kill your dog.

These are called "foxtails," or "spikelets" if you're going to get all semi-educated about it. They work on the same principle as a barbed hook or arrowhead, only they're also like cluster-bombs, in that they will just keep breaking into smaller pieces which are still barbed and can only move in one direction. Spikelet fragments just keep working their way into the body, to the extent that, though it sounds like science fiction, a bit of spikelet stuck in the paw can eventually work its way through the bloodstream to the heart.

Or direct to the lungs, if they get one up the nose. Lethal plants! You'd think we were in Australia.

It's more a concern with bigger dogs and their bigger noses, but Leela's number finally came up, as one spikelet was randomly loose, and at the right angle, and had some fascinating scent that made her snort it up. Luckily, she started convulsively sneezing uncomfortably, and scrunching her face up, and I could see the tips of the spikelet in her nostril. I carried her home (because she continued sneezing when on the ground) and got her to the vet, and they sedated her and got the pieces out.

I'm pretty sure this was more expensive per ounce than marijuana.

She's a pretty unhappy camper under sedation: she lies there immobile, but the arrangement of her legs is all wrong. And then she'll suddenly have a burst of determination and get up, and then she'll stand still and then start wobbling like an AT-AT falling.

So, yeah. Plants that can physically kill your dog. Way to go, West Coast!