Well, I got a call from Cathy around 1:00 this afternoon with the news that the dogs had a run in with a porcupine. We've had this happen a few times with Jake several years ago but thankfully porcupines are not really common around here, especially up on top of the canyon rim.
Cathy was able to get the dogs loaded up and took them to the vet to get the quills removed. Theoretically you can do it by yourself, but holding down a 100+ pound Rottweiler while you are torturing it by pulling quills out of it's face isn't my idea of fun. The vet puts them under anesthesia and pulls them out while they aren't feeling a thing. If it was a matter of 5 or 6 or even 10 quills I might try it, but our dogs didn't just run into the porcupine, they tried to EAT the porcupine.
Here's Baby at the vet.
And Pedro.
We are babysitting a dog for a friend and he must not have tried to eat the porcupine, but he got close enough to get some quills in his face.
Well, the last time our dog Jake got into a porcupine a few years ago we took him to the vet and got them removed and within a month he had another run in and ended up worse the second time than the first. Our current dogs appear to have less intelligence than Jake ever had so I started thinking that it was pretty important to find that porcupine and remove it so the dogs didn't have another run in with it once they got back from the vet so I decided to head home and see if I could find it.
I got home around 2:30 and rode around on my 4 wheeler looking for it, but after about an hour decided I wasn't going to be so lucky. Eli woke up from his nap around 4:15 and we decided to go riding around on the golf cart to see if we could find it. We don't have just a ton of trees around the property so of course we were looking in the trees for a porcupine. Eli kept telling me that he saw a porcupine around every corner, but he was pretty adamant at one tree that there was a porcupine in it. I told him there wasn't one in the tree and tried to get him to show me where it was. I ended up getting out of the cart and looking and low and behold there was a porcupine in the tree! (Of course it wasn't anywhere near where he was pointing).
I had brought my .22 pistol so I shot the porcupine out of the tree and brought it back to the house. Here it is in the golf cart once we got back to the house.
I guess this is the first animal that Eli was actually out there with me when I shot it. He seemed to think it was pretty cool.
I pulled the guard hairs off and am going to try to find someone who wants them. There is a market for the quills, but I didn't think I had the patience to mess with pulling them out. As many quills as the dogs had in their faces you would have thought the porcupine would have been bald, but really it still had the vast majority of it's quills, just a few small bald patches.
Well that's about it for now I guess. Hopefully we don't have to mess with another porcupine for several more years.
Cathy was able to get the dogs loaded up and took them to the vet to get the quills removed. Theoretically you can do it by yourself, but holding down a 100+ pound Rottweiler while you are torturing it by pulling quills out of it's face isn't my idea of fun. The vet puts them under anesthesia and pulls them out while they aren't feeling a thing. If it was a matter of 5 or 6 or even 10 quills I might try it, but our dogs didn't just run into the porcupine, they tried to EAT the porcupine.
Here's Baby at the vet.
And Pedro.
We are babysitting a dog for a friend and he must not have tried to eat the porcupine, but he got close enough to get some quills in his face.
Well, the last time our dog Jake got into a porcupine a few years ago we took him to the vet and got them removed and within a month he had another run in and ended up worse the second time than the first. Our current dogs appear to have less intelligence than Jake ever had so I started thinking that it was pretty important to find that porcupine and remove it so the dogs didn't have another run in with it once they got back from the vet so I decided to head home and see if I could find it.I got home around 2:30 and rode around on my 4 wheeler looking for it, but after about an hour decided I wasn't going to be so lucky. Eli woke up from his nap around 4:15 and we decided to go riding around on the golf cart to see if we could find it. We don't have just a ton of trees around the property so of course we were looking in the trees for a porcupine. Eli kept telling me that he saw a porcupine around every corner, but he was pretty adamant at one tree that there was a porcupine in it. I told him there wasn't one in the tree and tried to get him to show me where it was. I ended up getting out of the cart and looking and low and behold there was a porcupine in the tree! (Of course it wasn't anywhere near where he was pointing).
I had brought my .22 pistol so I shot the porcupine out of the tree and brought it back to the house. Here it is in the golf cart once we got back to the house.
I guess this is the first animal that Eli was actually out there with me when I shot it. He seemed to think it was pretty cool.
I pulled the guard hairs off and am going to try to find someone who wants them. There is a market for the quills, but I didn't think I had the patience to mess with pulling them out. As many quills as the dogs had in their faces you would have thought the porcupine would have been bald, but really it still had the vast majority of it's quills, just a few small bald patches.Well that's about it for now I guess. Hopefully we don't have to mess with another porcupine for several more years.
Nathan
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