Cool Case Friday: An encounter with a prickly critter in the woods

Hello! It’s Friday and today’s case is pretty cool. When I lived in the upper Midwest, the practice I owned was located in a very rural location. If you wanted to shop at any store other than Walmart, you were driving a good couple hours. Yes, we had woods, woods, and more woods.

In those wood were LOTS of critters. We had wolves, bears, cougars, coyotes, foxes, etc, etc, etc, and we also had the subject of today’s post: PORCUPINES. While in the winter we would not get many cases of dog vs porcupine, in the spring/summer/fall, we would get at least a couple cases every week. These would vary from a dog with few only a couple quills, to dogs with HUNDREDS of quills that needed to be removed.

So, without further ado, let’s meet Bucky (name changed for privacy). This was an interesting emergency call in many ways.

This time it was not a pet owner who called me, rather it was my technician. On weekends she worked up at the animal shelter. This dog was found by a good Samaritan on the side of the road. Thankfully he did not have any musculoskeletal injuries, but he did meet a porcupine. So, on this early Saturday morning, I met my tech at the Animal Hospital with this lost dog.

Let’s step back for a moment and discuss what happens when a dog chases a porcupine.

Courtesy: Medicine River Wildlife Centre

The thrill of the chase is great, isn’t it? Especially when it’s a new critter that you haven’t ever chased before. But, get too close to these porcupines and they release hundreds of fast flying quills in your direction. The trouble with dogs, is that when they are this close, their mouth is also open in anticipation of catching what they are chasing. So, as the porcupine releases its quills, they not only fly into the dog’s skin, but also into their MOUTH. Yes, these dogs come in with a face full and mouth full of quills.

As I mentioned, some of these porcupine cases are a bit more simple, with only a few quills to pull out.

Often, owners will first try to remove them at home before calling us at the Animal Hospital. This can at times make our job easier or harder. Sometimes there are only a few quills inside the mouth that the owner was unable to remove. Sometimes, owners make it more difficult for us, by breaking the quills in half in their attempts to remove them. This in turn drives the quills deeper into the dog’s skin, sometimes completely burying the quills in the process.

Back to Bucky. No one was going to try to remove these quills on their own. Bucky was covered with hundreds of quills. He got up close and personal with that porcupine before the quills were released. So, what do we do? After a brief, but thorough physical exam to ensure there were no other problems with Bucky, and to ensure that he was a good candidate for anesthesia, we started with some injectable sedation. To remove porcupine quills correctly, we needed to protect not only the dog, but also ourselves. This was going to be a long and unpleasant procedure. Wouldn’t you rather be asleep for it if it had happened to you?

Bucky then received an IV catheter after he was sedated, and was anesthetized for the duration of his procedure. Once peacefully sleeping, and with constant monitoring, I got to work. To remove porcupine quills we use a surgical instrument that can be clamped down on the quill. We then use constant pressure to gently pull it out of the skin. As I mentioned above, we DO NOT want these quills to break as we are removing them. It is a crazy sight to see the skin “swallow” a quill that has fractured. We usually are not able to retrieve some of the quills fully hiding under the skin, and have to wait for the body to kick them out over the next couple of weeks.

When I am removing quills, I always start in the mouth. I’ll find them stuck next to the teeth, on and under the tongue, in the soft palate at the roof of the mouth, and sometimes way at the back of the mouth. We check and double check the mouth prior to moving on to the rest of the face. In Bucky’s case, he had quills stuck in his chin, and on both sides of his muzzle. The toughest to remove, though, were the ones stuck around his eyes. He was a very lucky dog that he did not lose an eye that day.

After confirming that all of the quills had been removed from inside the mouth and around his face, we then move on to the rest of the body. What is the dog’s natural response when the porcupine releases its quills? Yes, turn around and RUN! So, we often find quills in the tail. Next, with all of the quills stuck in the dog’s face, what do you suppose they do? Yes, they constantly scratch at their face. So, we find lots of quills in paws as well. You can see the importance of checking every inch of the dog for quills.

Bucky’s procedure took us well over an hour that Saturday morning. Most dogs do not go home with any medication after the procedure. The sedation drugs have pain control in them, and most dogs feel much much better once the quills are removed. The exception to the rule is if there are a number of quills stuck under the skin. For those dogs I will often send a course of antibiotics, as these lost quills with often abscess under the skin.

He went back to the animal shelter a much happier dog that afternoon. Unfortunately for him, once his owner was located, we found out that this was not the first time that the dog had run away (dad doesn’t believe in collars or leashes), and not the first time he’d found a porcupine, and the owner refused to pay the shelter any portion of the cost for his treatment that day. Boo to bad dog owners.