A Scary Porcupine Incident!

One Friday afternoon after work I decided I had time to take my dogs Cooper and Rowan for a quick walk. I usually walk them every evening but on this particular night we were heading off to Pittsburgh for the Luke Bryan concert that Saturday. We decided to make a weekend of it and visit family and friends Friday night so I didn't have much time before we were supposed to head out. I like to be able to take my dogs out for regular exercise and I knew I wouldn't be home Saturday to take them. It was a beautiful day for a run as well so I figured I would squeeze my workout in at the same time and it would only take me about 30 minutes or so.

I take them regularly on an old logging road that runs through the hay fields behind my house. I turn at the end of the road and continue around the edge of the woods and the total distance is about a mile and a half. About halfway through our travels I hear a loud, painful yelp! I start calling for the dogs and I see Cooper run out of the woods and almost all the way home but I see no sign of Rowan. Naturally this concerns me so I look into the woods and I see him relentlessly attacking a huge porcupine!! He would not give up on this thing. It was absolutely one of the craziest things that I have ever seen. I was trying so hard to get Rowan off of and away from the porcupine and he just wouldn't give up. For some reason Cooper took the hint and ran the whole way home and Rowan just would not stop despite having a face full of quills. I was screaming, panicking and have never felt so helpless in my life.

After several intense minutes of struggling with Rowan, I finally pulled him off of the porcupine long enough for it to start climbing a nearby tree but needless to say Rowan broke free from me and grabbed it's tail and pulled him right back down out of the tree. I finally took every ounce of energy I had left and grabbed Rowan by the skin on his back, stepped on the Porcupine, pulled Rowan off and dragged him down through the field and back to the logging road. After all of that I guess he was ready to give up because he then followed me home where Cooper was waiting patiently for us.

Rowan got it the worst with several hundred quills.

Cooper took the hint right away but still had his share of quills

This is not something that I could take care of myself so I attempted to call several vets in the area. This brought up another problem. Where was I to quickly find a vet during later hours while with each passing minute, the quills were working their way into both dogs? heads. Thanks to Buck's good friend, Dr. Fred Metzger (owner of Metzger's Animal Hospital) I was able to provide them with the emergency care they needed since the hospital runs 24 hours a day. When they answered the phone the staff was super nice and patient with me because I was still pretty much freaked out and probably wasn't being very coherent. The veterinarians and their assistants who were working that night were so great and so understanding with me and my pups. The veterinarian carefully explained what the next steps were going to be and took wonderful care of both dogs. They were both sent home with outpatient instructions complete with a bag of meds and a "Certificate of Bravery? for both dogs!!! Thanks so much again to Metzger's Animal Hospitalfor your emergency services! Both dogs are back home and doing well! I hope both dogs have learned something from their terrifying experience as I do not want to do this again anytime soon.

"Jaime Daughenbaugh, LCS Management

Cooper and Rowan resting easy now a few weeks after the incident. =)