Poison what?

Even though our property is a lot larger then our old  0.2 acre town lot we for some reason have not yet invested in a riding lawn mower.  This means that my husband spent the summer getting his exercise cutting the grass with a push mower.   It would not have been entirely horrible except that in the beginning we were still new to the lands and were not very good at distinguishing plants and trees.  Let me tell you it is not always a good idea to learn by trial and error or should I say poison or not poison.  About a month ago Max decided to cut through a bunch of "shrubs" to make a clearing to throw brush from the trees we had been trimming along the roadway.  A few days later the rashes started to appear.   That is when we started to learn about poison ivy.  Before this all I knew was the expression "leaves of three leave it be" but a lot of plants have three leaves.  So we called in the expert: my mother-in-law.  After she fell of her bike about 15-20 years ago into a patch of poison ivy she learned the hard way to recognize poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac and poison anything really.  She walked down the property with us and found the culprits.   
Once we found the large patch of poisonous plants along the road we began the annihilation.

Here are some tips:

Poison Ivy

1. Wear Rubber boots and a pair of gloves. The poisonous oil (urushiol) apparently stays on your clothes so that you can keep spreading the rash back to yourself or others. 
2. Wash your dog.  Who would have thought the oils would stick to her to little paws and then spread the rashes to weird places when she rolled the oils around on our bed?  She is getting used to being hosed down and she smells so nice after being washed with a little bit of baby shampoo.
3. Don't cut, burn, rub, poke or eat poisonous plants.  Bad all bad.  Cutting the plant spreads the oils into the area and on the lawn mower...very bad.  We never burned the plants but were warned over and over again that inhaling the smoke will kill you, extremely bad.
4. If you do touch the plant. Go inside and wash yourself and wash all of your clothes with a lot of soap.  This is why rubber boots are so good, they wash well.
5. Round-up is your friend.  We spent hours spraying plants with round up.  They will after a few years of spraying completely kill the plant and in the short term remove the threat of rashes.

Poison Ivy a few weeks after being sprayed