Foxtail season is right now, and they do not come back out on their own

If you're in California, or anywhere dry and grassy out west, this is the summer problem that turns into a surgery problem faster than people expect. Foxtails are the dried seed heads off certain grasses. The seed is barbed like an arrowhead and the barbs only let it travel one direction, forward. It doesn't work its way back out and it doesn't dissolve. Once it's in, it migrates, and it drags bacteria along with it. UC Davis has case after case of these ending up in a lung or buried in the body wall after going in through a paw or a nostril. Season here runs roughly late April into October and is worst June through September, once the grass has dried out and started dropping seed. Where they get in and what it looks like. Between the toes, and you get a red swollen bump the dog won't leave alone. Up the nose, and it's violent sudden repeated sneezing that starts out of nowhere mid walk, often with discharge from one nostril only. In an ear, and the dog is suddenly shaking its head, tilting it, pawing at that one side. Under an eyelid, squinting and discharge. Anywhere under the skin, a lump that drains and won't heal. None of these get better with time. The only treatment is getting it out, and the further in it's traveled the more that costs and the more invasive it gets. Prevention is mostly avoidance and checking. Stay out of tall dried grass, particularly the brown stuff along trail edges and sidewalks. Check the dog after every walk: feet and between every toe, ears, armpits, groin, face. Trim paw fur on long coated dogs in summer. There are mesh hunting hoods, the OutFox being the common one, if you live somewhere genuinely bad for it. And pull the foxtails out of your own yard while they're still green. If one's sitting on the surface and you can see all of it, tweezers are fine. If it's gone below the skin or into a nostril or an ear canal, stop, because poking at it drives it deeper. That's a vet visit.