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
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
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NewsTranscript
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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