Venice's Porcupine Adventure (looong)

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#1
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.
 
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joce

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#2
Wow! Doesn't look nearly as bad as I would have expected! I hope she is feeling better soon!

And I have to ask if you have a pick with them in. I bet the vet took a pic.
 
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Oh man! That sounds horrific. Poor thing! Both of you!

I'm glad she's doing ok. She must be so sore. :(
 
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#5
I took a shot in the car but it's very blurry. I showed it to my dad and uncle (who saw her quillface in person) and they were like "it really doesn't look bad there."

I'll email the vet to see if they took photos. Today she is very sore, just barely toe touching with one front leg, and also favouring the back leg on the same side. I've already pulled one quill from her forehead today.
 

*blackrose

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So glad she's doing alright! That would have scared the bejesus out of me.
 
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#7
I hope they work out of her face. Did they xray her torso?

I know someone lose a dog to a porcupine quill that worked it's way inside. Happened a few months after getting into porcupines and being full of them.

How scary.
 
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#8
No, they didn't do x-rays - I don't imagine the quills would really show up clearly? I don't know for sure and am too lazy to google it right now. We were warned to be vigilant over the next several months for any changes at all. The quills can really migrate anywhere within the body so while they will hopefully all work their way out harmlessly over the next 6 months or so, I'm aware they could affect her vital organs/joints/circulatory system too, so I'll be watching her closely.

She is loving the tramadol right now.

As an aside: a friend was telling me a story about her cousin's JRT who kamikaze-attacked a porcupine, turned into a pincushion, then bolted into the woods. They found him 3 days later, he'd been hiding out in a muddy burrow somewhere ripping out (mostly just breaking off) the quills and was in awful shape, but made it. That would be scary.
 
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#9
I would be pulling them out of my dogs like crazy.

I just remember my friend saying that they didnt xray her dogs, but these had quills in their shoulder/torso area. But now that you mention it, I would not think that they show up. (I just looked it up, they are made from the same thing as hair and they do not show up in xray) I guess you can tell that I do not have native porcupines and zero experience.

I am no help at all today. So I hope your dog gets to feeling better.
 
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#11
Yay, she woke up this morning with barely any visible limp! :) So we did a lap around the block and she was pulling and frisky.
 

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