Dogs and Gopher Holes Don't Mix

This is a post I didn’t think I’d ever write, but dogs and gopher holes don’t mix. There are numerous things we need to avoid our dogs getting into: certain plants, certain foods, ingredients like Xylitol, foxtails, you name it. Remy and I learned the hard way last week that we need to add gopher holes to that list. I always knew gopher holes presented a danger to dogs, just as they do humans and children, but I took for granted that in all my years raising and training dogs, they’ve never actually presented a problem.

It’s common at parks heavily frequented by children to see maintenance workers addressing issues with gopher holes because kids playing sports or running can suffer injuries if their foot hits a gopher hole in just the wrong way. That’s what happened to Remy last week. My dogs were running around at the park and Remy’s foot hit a gopher hold in just the wrong way and Remy suffered a complex fracture of his toe.

Toe injuries in dogs and people are difficult to rehabilitate and, in dogs, often result in amputations. If the fracture doesn’t heal perfectly, dogs risk developing arthritis and suffering from chronic pain, so amputation is often the go to route. Since in our case we were at the emergency vet over the weekend, a non-emergent amputation was not an option. So we’re looking at 6-8 weeks of casting with very gentle use and we’ll see how the bone heals.

I’m thankful that we discovered PetREGEN, a revolutionary product for pets that encourages the generation of stem cells. Stem cells go to work where the body needs, and I’m optimistic that using that will support healthy and accelerated healing. Remy will be 10 years old in April and already had arthritis from his career in dog sports. But I have seen him seemingly reversing in age and showing significantly less discomfort from arthritis since we started using PetREGEN.

While I’m open to the possibility that an amputation of the toe may be in our future, we’re going to continue forward with the conservative approach, however limiting. And if the PetREGEN supports him the way I hope it will, we will have strong healing and regeneration around the bone without arthritis. I encourage all pet parents to look into PetREGEN and its uses. There are very few products that I promote, but this is one I am fully behind. Between their human grade rating and very clean ingredients, it’s a supplement I believe should be in every pet household. Check them out here: PetREGEN!

As the weather changes and we all start getting our dogs out again, be mindful of gopher holes and minimize risk for your dogs by not allowing them to run in fields where you see gopher holes present. It’s something I will pay a lot of attention to in the future and you’ll see us leaving parks where gopher holes are present. Even if dogs are mostly safe running near them, the risk is too great as none of us wants to see our dogs in pain and we certainly don’t want simple exercise visits turning into emergency vet visits! Happy training!