Sunday, October 10, 2010
Allergies
My puppy seems allergic to something in the garden. After roaming around in it, he scratches and rubs his face with his forepaws. I've pulled out what I thought the most probable culprits, such as Wandering Jew, but something out there still makes him itch. Can anyone suggest what else might cause it? Together with several plants I can't identify, the garden contains: thyme, dill, basil, cumin, aniseed, liquorice, borage, rosemary, chervil, chamomile, wormwood, wormseed, marjoram, evening primrose, caraway, sage, pineapple sage, bog sage, catnip, tansy, woad, motherwort, mugwort, soapwort, pearlwort, garlic, laurel, mint, Corsican mint, apple mint, Korean mint, spearmint, peppermint, lavender, hyssop, creeping fig, smyrnium, violets, parsley, brahmi, fenugreek, strawberries, coriander, pennyroyal, laksa leaf, pegagan, elm trees, sorrel, daisies, mustard, alyssum, oregano, feverfew, perilla, tarragon, carrots, tulsi, meadowsweet, chives, fennel, valerian, jojoba, rue, bee balm, verbena, lovage, poppies, onions, raspberries, savoury, skullcap, yarrow, jasmine, salad burnet, a maidenhair fern and an expiring cardamom plant.
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What a litany! It sounds like an utterly magical place, and my chef/city-dweller heart is swoony with envy.
ReplyDeleteOnions can be toxic to doggies if ingested, but I don't know if the chemical culprit, a sulphate, is soluble via contact only. Several of the Artemisiae (--worts and --woods) can cause dermatitis and allergic rhinitis in both the two and four-legged species of happily hedonistic garden-rompers.
Aha! Thanks! I'll remove the onions, mugwort and motherwort as soon as it get light and see if it helps!
ReplyDeleteDo you have a dog yourself, Jouissens?
ReplyDeleteI hope it helps. Poor itchy puppy. (I'm almost loathe to suggest it as it feels a bit of cruelty to intentionally irritate a furry companion, but if it continues, you could take the scientific approach and clip a little piece of everything out there and test them on him all at once in turn until you provoke the allergic reaction -- more or less the same way we identify allergens in humans.)
ReplyDeleteI happen to be doggieless at the moment, which is odd because I do love them dearly. My cat, however, is very un-cat-like, having an almost canine temperament. I hope some day you might post a few photos of your garden, it sounds truly divine :)
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Thanks again for your interest, jouissens.
ReplyDeleteI'll put some photos up when the elms get their leaves back.
Maybe you could transplant one plant in turn to a location where your dog doesn't go, and wait a day to see if his condition improves? At that rate, it'll take a little over two months to perform a systematic test.
ReplyDeleteA concern I have is that it may not be one plant in isolation, but two or more in combination. I'm a little rusty with combinatorics (something to do with permutations and factorials, right?), but the odds don't look so good. Consider a case where five plants from your list act in concert. At a rate of testing one combination per day, a conservative estimate sees that experiment run more than 50,000 years. It's commendable that at no point have you proposed going for a "quick fix" by jailing your puppy indoors.