Penny's sore paws

The day after our big walk at Marysville, Penny refused to go for a walk along the Yarra at Warburton, one of  her favorite places, so I popped her back into the car and went home to investigate.

To my dismay I realised that both her front paws were raw and weeping on the pads. What could have happened? I'm still mystified. I wonder if she might have rubbed them raw on the new gravel path to Steavenson Falls? Or perhaps she skinned them on the grid she walked over.

But if that were the case, surely the other dogs would also have sore paws, and I haven't heard that they do.

Perhaps her feet were hurting and Penny licked them raw. We have noticed her licking her feet recently (before that walk).

I bandaged the paws

and settled down near Penny with a good novel - a great read, actually. It was The Devil You Know, by Mike Carey. In that way I could sit watching her and constantly check she was not licking the bandages and making them wet. What a great excuse to do nothing but read!

Of course it was raining. It always seems to be raining when Penny has problems with her paws. Hmm...is this a clue? So she had to put up with plastic bags taped over her bandaged paws when she went out for a wee before sleep that night.

Two  days later she seems to be recovering. I've bathed the paws in Epsom salts twice daily for about five minutes. I'd take a photo now to show how the skin in healing over, but I don't want to draw her attention to her feet, because she would then start licking once agin.

I looked at many sites before using the Epsom salts, and thought this one had a good overview:

Epsom salt baths can help in several ways. Not only has salt and salt water been used as an extremely effective anti-bacterial agent for thousands of years, as evidenced by salted foods, many breeds, such as Labrador retrievers were bred to spend their days standing in salt water, helping to bring in fishing nets. Epsom salts contain not only sodium chloride, but potassium and nitrates that can aid in restoring the natural balance of bacteria on a dog’s skin. Salt can also raise the pH level of your dog’s skin, which may help regulate normal bacterial ratios. Regardless of the reason, a warm saltwater bath soothes the itch, helps disinfect the area and is a fun experience for dog and owner alike. Don’t rinse your dog’s feet after her bath. Let her lick the salt off or gently pat dry her paws. And don’t get any in her eyes.

So, no big walks for a while. Penny seems to be happy to lie around at the moment. She even takes some convincing to go down the back steps to have a wee.

Walking from Marysville to Steavenson Falls

Penny and her doggie friends had a long walk from Marysville on Sunday. After the awful destruction of the Black Saturday fires, the community is slowly recovering, and the tracks around the town have been remade.



It's good to see that dogs are allowed to walk on the new paths, all the way to Steavenson Falls.

The new growth is green and lovely, and we saw a baby kangaroo apple plant, with its leaves that look like a kangaroo footprint,

Penny appeared to be having lots of fun and walked jauntily along with her 'pack', although she wasn't too happy to walk across this grid. But she bravely made it across.

In the township we saw some lovely autumn foliage, presumably on the few trees that weren't incinerated in the fires in 2009. (But maybe this tree is only four years old and was planted after the fire.)

On the drive across the mountains to the Upper Yarra Valley, it was disturbing to drive for kilometre after kilometre through burnt-out forests. I knew the fires were extensive, but to travel for an hour through blackened, dead trees is a strange and disturbing experience, even if the new, green growth points to a brighter future.

dogs and the renewal of Marysville

Today Penny and I set off early to Marysville to meet Cindy's dog-walking group. "Where is?' on my computer showed me the way to navigate there, but was way off the mark in saying it would take one hour and twenty-two minutes, given that through the Black Spur, with its hairpin bends, the average speed was about 30 - 40 kilometres an hour.

I haven't previously visited any of the areas of the state so tragically burnt in the 2009 bushfires, so I found it very moving to approach this devastated town through the blackened, mist-shrouded forests of the Black Spur.





(I made sure to charge the battery for my camera last night. It's a pity I didn't put it back into the camera! I apologise for the low quality pictures - I took them with my mobile phone.)

The town of Marysville looked like a new housing estate, with lots of open ground waiting to be built on, and the frameworks of new buildings scattered around. As we headed up the track from town, we passed gardens and fences with no houses - and no inhabitants. A very sad start to our walk.

The walk itself was fascinating, with the blackened trunks of the towering trees clothed in soft green foliage.





The ground was a mass of young growth, the forest of the future. Mostly it seemed to be coming from seeds scattered by the trees after they burned, but in some cases it seemed the rootstock was regenerating.



There's a kind of beauty in the layers of charcoal bark on the trunks of the trees. It feels soft and crumbles in the hand, as if it's already returning to the soil to aid in the regeneration of the bush.



Signs along the way warned us to be careful.



The dogs were off-lead most of the way, as it's State Forest, so they had a wonderful time.