Out Fox Field Gear Second Season

 This is now the second season using the

 "OUT FOX FIELD GEAR" head netting.

Went on a 12 mile mountain bike ride this morning with Mike and his setter.  Bailey and Chloe both had their medium-sized out fox head gear on the whole time.

 Mike is now going off to the website to purchase one for his dog "Robin" as in "Robin Hood".

Last year the dogs could not retrieve with the headgear on.

 This year Bailey found it was not a problem grabbing a floating stick to retrieve back to shore.

From Last June's first post on the headgear:

June 2011 - First test of Outfox headgear

Here is a fitting test done on one of the creator's dogs

Some of the recent comments from the June 2011 post.  The last posts were just last week.  Thought it was time for an update:

  onafixedincome said...

Interesting! As a retired vet tech, I'm starting to get excited about these...talk about a real gift to the dogs!

Anaesthesia is no joke, there are always risks, and everyone would far rather do without if we could.

I have always trained my dogs to allow me to do nose and ear scopes and exams, even removals of foxtails, without assistance or drugs, but oooh, life would be easier if I never had to..!

Thanks for the great videos!

April 12, 2012 12:24 AM

Anonymous said...

Rod, Ky is in the hospital right now with a possible foreign object in his lung which the vets think could be a foxtail. He went downhill fast the past two days because of, it turns out puss in his lungs. He is responding well to antibiotics and we are hoping we can get by without an operation, but we will see. I just ordered two of these for the dogs ... I caution anyone in California about taking your vizsla out in some of our areas. Unfortunately some of the areas we usually exercise the dogs seem to have a lot of this horrible plant. I wish we had followed up on this earlier when I saw your post and just hope my baby will be okay. - Jodi 
May 31, 2012 5:41 PM

Rod Michaelson said...

I hope Ky makes it through this. The outfox headgear goes on every walk now. The foxtails are dried out and your story reminds me not to play Russian Roulette with my beloved Vizslas. Rod

June 1, 2012 8:56 PM

Unknown said...

What a great post! The videos really help: your dogs are surprisingly blasé about the hoods in field, stream and hard-running. I'm not sure how my border collies would react to them, but it's worth a try.

Now I just wish someone would come up with an effective dog-body-armor against foxtails. The collies and their double-coats are a nightmare to clear of burrs after a hike. Something less enveloping than the K9 TopCoat would be fantastic. Maybe a larger version of the OutFox!


Jodi's scary foxtail story with his Vizsla Ky ( June 2, 2012):

Hi Everyone. An update on Ky, as I was one of the ones that posted a comment on Rod's blog. Ky was hospitalized on Wed with pythorax (pus in lung area) he very quickly had gone from his normal self to not eating and extremely lethargic in a day. We started at the VCA referral center in Sacramento. Having seen something that might be a foxtail on the xray, they wanted to go in immediately and operate. We did a little research after talking to them and hearing that they may go in take a piece of lung and never find the foxtail, wanted a second opinion (they said that in 2 out of 3 recent cases they had gone in to operate and found no foxtails). We talked to Ken (Ky's breeder) who recommended UC Davis vet hospital. So we took him there on Thursday. They did a cat scan and still thought they were seeing something, so we agreed to let them operate. The great thing is that the operation was done by lathroscope (e.g. they make a few smaller incisions so that they can insert a camera and operate and remove things that way, so minimally invasive). I'm not sure if other vets commonly use this yet, but it sure beats cracking the ribs to get to his lungs!

They could not get the foxtail in the smallest lung lobe that they saw on the ct scan, so they removed that lobe (the smallest out of seven lobes to a lung so hopefully that will not impact him much). But they found two other foxtails that they had not even seen on the ct! The second foxtail was embedded both into a lung as well as into the side of his chest in a big infected glob so they have him on a very high dose of iv antibiotics.

UCD assigns a student to work with the animals and be your contact point, and in our call this am, Ky was very perky on his walk this morning, so we will hopefully have him home by tonight or tomorrow morning.

Needless to say, I already ordered two of the outfoxed mesh headcovers on Wednesday and hope they get here soon. Unfortunately in the Sac valley where we live, it's hard to get out anywhere to run where there are not foxtails.

We are really lucky with our outcome and extremely grateful to have an interested and caring breeder that we consult with at times like this! (And also very grateful to Rod for spreading the word on the outfoxed gear). Crossing our fingers that there are none left inside Ky! Please learn from our experience and protect your pups from these things and also take advantage of an amazing resource at UC Davis Vet school if you ever get in a serious situation with your dog. They are amazing. We're looking forward to getting our baby back! - Jodi