So you might have seen this on FB already but I figured I'd post where everyone could see.
Venice had her second porcupine encounter yesterday.
Quick throwback to the first meeting - a harmless young baby back in June who had like 5 quills. I told her to leave him and she did, so I snapped a photo.
Thought hahaha, I am so good, my dog is so good, I can tell her to leave scary critters alone and she will. Yeah okay.
I was hiking the ridge above our family cottage with her yesterday around 11. Down below us through the woods she heard my dad arrive, and got all excited and ran down through the woods to meet him. I guess somewhere about midway between us she encountered the porcupine.
I gave her about one minute to say hi to my dad, then started calling and whistling. She usually has a very prompt recall but I didn't hear her coming (She wears bear bells in the woods). Kept calling. For about 3 minutes, probably longer. Then I got a little PO'd with her because I figured she was goofing off with my dad instead of recalling, so I started stomping off the trail taking a direct route straight down the hill to go find her and take her home. Saw her about 100 feet from where I'd been calling, chomping away at something and rubbing her face on the ground. I thought she'd found something dead. It wasn't till I got closer I saw all the quills.
Remember that online photo of the bull terrier whose face isn't even visible under the quills? Go google bull terrier porcupine if you like scaring yourself. It wasn't quite that bad but it was close. She wasn't yelping but was gouging at her face. I couldn't even see her muzzle for the quills, and the inside of her mouth was coated, which is what she was chomping at. She couldn't close her mouth. Her palate, tongue, gums, everything, was covered. The quills were in her eyes, but I couldn't see the extent of the damage. I hauled her out of the woods and we got her in the car.
Our cottage is over an hour's drive from the e-vet. I sat in the back with her and my dad drove. He was doing about 140 down the highway (no cops out that day, fortunately) but it still was a long, long ride. The first 15 minutes she was a bit panicky and frantic, and I had to wrestle with her to keep her from clawing at her mouth and eyes. He paws were full of quills, they were on her throat and cheeks and BACK leg somehow. After that, she just lay very still, couldn't shut her mouth, her eyes were shut and bloody drool was pooling under her face and her breathing became very shallow. I was thinking the quills had pierced her esophagus or trachea, or that the blood in her mouth was trickling back down her windpipe. She wasn't responding to voice or touch, even with me pinching her. That was a little scary.
The team at the e-vet said she was the worst case they had ever worked on. They pulled over 200 quills from inside her mouth alone, and estimated around 500 quills overall. Surgery was over 4 hours. I am truly amazed at the job they did - she is swollen and very sore, and has a few stitches from where quills were cut out, but unless you saw it, you wouldn't believe she looked like a monster from a horror flick yesterday. Amazingly, despite quills all around her eyes and IN her eyelids, her eyes themselves weren't damaged at all.
This was when she came home from the clinic around 9pm last night. Still working out the anesthetic, obviously. She looked like this when she was sleeping, and if she woke up it was cry cry cry, poor noodle.
She is on two painkillers and antibiotics and is probably a lot more comfortable now than yesterday, but she is still swollen, sore, and very sad. Both her right legs had a lot of quills around her lower joints, and those are puffy today and she can only walk very gingerly. But breakfast made her happy!
Obviously there were a lot of quills that could not be removed, almost exclusively from inside her mouth. Vibes that those will work their way out over the next few weeks as opposed to migrating inward.
Hopefully this was a very tough lesson learned and porcupines will be given a wide berth from now on, because this visit used up half of the TPLO cushion I was sitting on. I've told her she has to wait another year or two if she was planning on blowing her knee.
Here is my puffy dingo this morning.
Venice had her second porcupine encounter yesterday.
Quick throwback to the first meeting - a harmless young baby back in June who had like 5 quills. I told her to leave him and she did, so I snapped a photo.
Thought hahaha, I am so good, my dog is so good, I can tell her to leave scary critters alone and she will. Yeah okay.
I was hiking the ridge above our family cottage with her yesterday around 11. Down below us through the woods she heard my dad arrive, and got all excited and ran down through the woods to meet him. I guess somewhere about midway between us she encountered the porcupine.
I gave her about one minute to say hi to my dad, then started calling and whistling. She usually has a very prompt recall but I didn't hear her coming (She wears bear bells in the woods). Kept calling. For about 3 minutes, probably longer. Then I got a little PO'd with her because I figured she was goofing off with my dad instead of recalling, so I started stomping off the trail taking a direct route straight down the hill to go find her and take her home. Saw her about 100 feet from where I'd been calling, chomping away at something and rubbing her face on the ground. I thought she'd found something dead. It wasn't till I got closer I saw all the quills.
Remember that online photo of the bull terrier whose face isn't even visible under the quills? Go google bull terrier porcupine if you like scaring yourself. It wasn't quite that bad but it was close. She wasn't yelping but was gouging at her face. I couldn't even see her muzzle for the quills, and the inside of her mouth was coated, which is what she was chomping at. She couldn't close her mouth. Her palate, tongue, gums, everything, was covered. The quills were in her eyes, but I couldn't see the extent of the damage. I hauled her out of the woods and we got her in the car.
Our cottage is over an hour's drive from the e-vet. I sat in the back with her and my dad drove. He was doing about 140 down the highway (no cops out that day, fortunately) but it still was a long, long ride. The first 15 minutes she was a bit panicky and frantic, and I had to wrestle with her to keep her from clawing at her mouth and eyes. He paws were full of quills, they were on her throat and cheeks and BACK leg somehow. After that, she just lay very still, couldn't shut her mouth, her eyes were shut and bloody drool was pooling under her face and her breathing became very shallow. I was thinking the quills had pierced her esophagus or trachea, or that the blood in her mouth was trickling back down her windpipe. She wasn't responding to voice or touch, even with me pinching her. That was a little scary.
The team at the e-vet said she was the worst case they had ever worked on. They pulled over 200 quills from inside her mouth alone, and estimated around 500 quills overall. Surgery was over 4 hours. I am truly amazed at the job they did - she is swollen and very sore, and has a few stitches from where quills were cut out, but unless you saw it, you wouldn't believe she looked like a monster from a horror flick yesterday. Amazingly, despite quills all around her eyes and IN her eyelids, her eyes themselves weren't damaged at all.
This was when she came home from the clinic around 9pm last night. Still working out the anesthetic, obviously. She looked like this when she was sleeping, and if she woke up it was cry cry cry, poor noodle.
She is on two painkillers and antibiotics and is probably a lot more comfortable now than yesterday, but she is still swollen, sore, and very sad. Both her right legs had a lot of quills around her lower joints, and those are puffy today and she can only walk very gingerly. But breakfast made her happy!
Obviously there were a lot of quills that could not be removed, almost exclusively from inside her mouth. Vibes that those will work their way out over the next few weeks as opposed to migrating inward.
Hopefully this was a very tough lesson learned and porcupines will be given a wide berth from now on, because this visit used up half of the TPLO cushion I was sitting on. I've told her she has to wait another year or two if she was planning on blowing her knee.
Here is my puffy dingo this morning.
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