Good Quality Isolater rubber sleeve in Jamaica

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A dog who is allergic to grass has been given a new leash of life thanks to specially made boots.

The 11-year-old Hungarian Vizsla comes out in painful lumps on her paws if she comes into contact with grass because the pads on her feet are so worn down and sensitive.

Her owner, Vicki Painter, 39, from Warfield, Berks, has spent more than £10,000 over the years on medication and special allergy food to combat her allergies without success.

But Millie can now enjoy walkies pain free after being kitted out in a set of ‘doggy boots’ to protect her poor paws.

Vicki, an IT project manager, said: “The shoes have made a huge difference. She absolutely loves them.

“The allergies were all year round. As well as giving her serious eye and ear infections she’d get these horrible lumps between her toes that would open and bleed.

“The pads under her feet have virtually worn away from the years of pollen and grass allergies.

“We had to carry a 30kg dog out of the house because her feet were too tender to walk on the gravel driveway but now she can run around with our other dogs.

“Her quality of life has changed so much.”

Vicki and her husband Glyn, 40, bought Millie from a breeder when she was a nine-week-old puppy but it wasn’t until she was two that they noticed something was wrong.

They took her to their local vets, where tests revealed she suffered from a range of allergies, not just grass.

Her intolerances include, wheat, soya, rice, gluten and she also reacts badly when she comes into contact with cats, dust mites and pollen.

Vicki said: “She was our first dog together. We’d only been married a few years before. Our families had had dogs but they’d always been healthy.

“I’d never heard of a dog with a grass allergy. I didn’t think it was possible.

“Our cat Tinkerbell now lives with my parents so that Millie doesn’t have to come into contact with her fur every day.”

The vet tried a range of things and when he ran out of options, he referred Millie to a professor of dermatology at Queen Mother Animal Hospital in North Mymms, Hertfordshire.

She was put on a course of steroids, antihistamines and a variety of special allergy free diet.

Vicki said: “Over the years we’ve spent thousands of pounds.

“If you think there is something that can help and cure them you couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t do it. We would have tried anything.

“The steroid tablets made her incontinent and the antihistamines made her drowsy. She was miserable, lethargic and not herself.

“We couldn’t avoid grass. It was impossible. So we had to bath her with special medicated shampoo after every walk.

“She was constantly licking her paws where she was sore. She was miserable.

“After six months, although on medication and a new prescription diet, there was really no improvement.”

Then a friend told the couple, who also have a two-year old English Pointer called Humphrey and a wire haired Hungarian Vizsla, Bryn, 14, about the boots she’d bought for her dog to protect it’s paws while they were out working.

The boots, which had to be shipped over from a specialist company in Canada, have a soft rubber sole and are attached using velcro.

Millie has two sets – one for summer and another for the winter months.

Vicki said: “The first time she wore them, she just stared at them. She was kicking her back legs out when she walked but she soon got used to them.

“Now she won’t leave the house without them. When we get ready to go out, Humphrey brings them to her with their leads. It’s quite funny.

“Moat people we see when out walking assume I’ve dressed her up for fashion, like a silly handbag dog, which annoys me.

“The boots are for medical reasons. Some dog owners, however, are fascinated by them and many say they would like some to help their dogs with cut paws and weak bags legs, so I now carry cards around with me with the name of the boots to give out.

“Luckily, they’re stocked in the UK now so we don’t have to pay shipping.”

“I don’t know where we’d be without her boots.

“The other big change we’ve made is to feed her a completely raw and natural diet. This means no man-made products, such as dried or tinned food – just 100% raw meat and vegetables, just as dogs would have got in the wild hundreds of years ago.

“Her body handles it so much better than any of the prescription foods.

“It’s like she’s a different dog.”

Hardshell gourds have been used as food and beverage containers, and art pieces for centuries. They are often referred to as “nature’s pottery” due to their beautiful variety of shapes and hardy uses. The creative crafting possibilities of hardshell gourds are endless; from bowls and cups (mate gourds, used for drinking yerba mate), to purses, jewelry, Christmas ornaments, lampshades, jewelry boxes, bird houses, tribal penis shields, and even a wide variety of musical instruments. The list goes on forever, only limited by your imagination.

But I’m not here right now to tell you what to do with them (maybe later); I’m here to tell you how to clean them inside and out, using safety precautions.

The need to clean depends largely on what you plan to do with the gourd. You may decide to only work on the outside without a need to open the gourd, in which case you get to avoid the extra work involved. If you plan to make a bowl, for example, then clearly you’ll be working on both inside and outside, as well as cutting and/or carving.

The outsides of dried gourds are fairly simple to clean, if sometimes labor intensive. The extent to which you clean them depends upon how you want to use them, and what you might want to add to the surface (paints, dyes, etc.). If you want a naturey-looking gourd with its natural waxy coating you don’t have to do much beyond washing off dirt and dark mold with a hot water and bleach solution (maybe 10 parts water to 1 part bleach), which retards future mold growth. However, if you want to dye a gourd, leaving the waxy coating on it might prevent dye from soaking into the surface the way you want it to, which means you’ll have to scrub harder to remove nature’s irritating addition to your innocent craft project.

The insides of gourds are a different story, and a potentially dangerous one. You need to be careful not to inhale the contents. Not all hardshell gourds are terrible inside, but they are all dusty, and you can’t guess which ones will merely make you sneeze and which ones might contain mold/fungus, bacteria, and other pathogens that could cause serious allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock. I’ve personally been flattened with a gourd dust-related illness that gourd crafters refer to as “gourd flu”, which was basically illness that mimicked semi-severe flu symptoms (fever, aching joints, muscle soreness, mucus, fatigue) for about two to three days. If there’s a medical term for this, I don’t know what it is, but in hindsight… I probably should have seen a doctor. And you should, too, if it ever happens to you.

So… to prepare, make sure you use a dust mask. They’re easily found at hardware stores all over. Choose a good one designed for working with wood/sawdust; if possible, look into one that also protects against molds/fungus. Second, use protective goggles. Remember, these precautions aren’t just for gourds; any time you do craftwork involving dust, solvents, tools and so on.

What can you expect to find when you open a gourd (via Xacto knives/saws, mini electric jigsaws, or Dremels… be careful not to cut yourself)? Dust, seeds, a styrofoam-like substance, and hardened pulp, maybe even a few tiny beetles. You probably don’t want to keep that junk in there, right? So you have to clean it out, and often this is easy, but occasionally this can get ugly.

You should prepare yourself for cleaning the outside with:
~ A sink or tub, the size depending on the size(s) of gourds you’re cleaning.
~ Rags
~ Copper scrubbing pads. 100% copper means they won’t rust should you want to use them again later.
~ Bleach
~ Old towel(s)
~ Something to scrape with, perhaps a knife edge
~ Rubber dish gloves

You should prepare yourself for cleaning the inside with:
~ Gardening gloves, or thicker gloves
~ A melon baller
~ A taxidermy scraper
~ A sanding sponge
~ A shop vac
~ Dust masks, the best ones being for the finest particulate matter
~ Eye protection, especially if you plan on using power tools
~ Electric drill with wire brush bit for spots that are hard to reach

Please don’t ignore the safety precautions, especially regarding sawdust. If you use a high-powered cutting tool (Dremel, etc), you’ll be generating a lot… a LOT… of sawdust from the gourd, and it is very, very fine. The faster the tool, the more dust you’ll create. Many gourd artists opt for mini-jigsaws with variable speeds, to control the cutting and minimize dust. In addition to dust masks and goggles, you should work in a well-ventilated area.