The porcupine will not bite at thee

[cantdog]

Kate brought her Clumber spaniel over here at suppertime yesterday evening. We spent a bit of time pulling quills out of the poor thing. Nostrils, muzzle, lips, tongue-- shot right full of them. The dog was amazingly stoic and trustful. She whined more piteously about the ones in her foot coming out than the lips and gums.

Kate's behavior was also interesting. She's a PA-- a clinician-- and this was a procedure which was pretty certain to be painful. I now now that there's a code these docs use when they mean "this is gonna really hurt." They say, "We're almost done, now."

 

[cloudy]

We hunted porcupines on the reserve.

It's really funny to watch a bunch of guys hunting a porcupine after drinking a lot of beer. A ballcap and a stick were the weapons of choice.



(did you save the quills? We make baskets from them)

 

[cantdog]

Save them/ No, we snipped them first, anyway, to release the barbs' stiffness. All there would have been to save was snipped segments. Good quillwork is beautiful, though.

 

[cloudy]

Save them/ No, we snipped them first, anyway, to release the barbs' stiffness. All there would have been to save was snipped segments. Good quillwork is beautiful, though.

Its very time-consuming too. Gorgeous, though.

The lady that's teaching me made these:

http://store.thewolfden.ca/html/images/items/quilllbmapleleaf.jpg

http://store.thewolfden.ca/html/images/items/quillhummingbird.jpg

http://store.thewolfden.ca/html/images/items/quillgeo1.jpg

 

[Straight-8]

I've had a lab and a springer spaniel hit by a porky. The lab just ended up with a little 'hitler mustache' full of them. Fairly easy to pull out - just plucked em like a chicken. The spaniel was a much tougher dog and after the porky hit him the first time he attacked the porky with a vengance and was terribly quilled up. I had to have him dealt with by the vet. Sounds like the Clumber is a true spaniel! Glad to hear you got him 'plucked'.

 

[cantdog]

The tongue was the most difficult, technically speaking, but all three of us are well known to the dog and she let us work. We did have to hurt her at length, even though we snipped each one. Wears you out.

 

[Stegral]

Its very time-consuming too. Gorgeous, though.

The lady that's teaching me made these:

http://store.thewolfden.ca/html/images/items/quilllbmapleleaf.jpg

http://store.thewolfden.ca/html/images/items/quillhummingbird.jpg

http://store.thewolfden.ca/html/images/items/quillgeo1.jpg

OMG yes... those are awesome...
I have also seen them used in native jewelery...
beautiful.

 

[shereads]

Aw...I adore Clumber spaniels. I've never actually met one, but admired them in a breed book. ("It drools, snores and wheezes.")

Poor pup! I haven't witnessed any porcupine mishaps, but I vividly remember my first dog, a black cocker spaniel named Snooks, getting a mouthful of cactus when he tried to remove one from my shoe.

I was seven or eight, and my dad would take us kids and the dog hiking in the Arizona desert. There are these vicous little cacti, about the size and shape of ping-pong balls, that lie so loosely on the ground, the merest touch can cause them to attach themselves to you. One was on my shoe, and I must have yelped when I felt it sticking me through the canvas. Poor old Snooks leapt to the rescue, and grabbed the offending fuzzy-looking thing with his mouth.

The vet compared the spines of that cactus to porcupine quills. They're so long, the poor dog couldn't close his mouth without pushing them further in. They have an evil little hook on the end, so it's impossible to pull them straight out without tearing the flesh.

Poor Snooks...Several years later, he tried to bite my cousin Bobby, and my dad took Snooks to the mythical "farm in the country," a preserve inhabited by the pets of grieving children all over America. I still think we should have got rid of Bobby, and not Snooks. Snooks was my hero. Bobby was just a silly boy.



````

Regarding the things we say to comfort our dogs when terrible things are about to happen to them:

"It's okay."

That must be the most dreaded two-word phrase in the world of domestic animals. When a dog hears "It's okay," he knows it's about to be anything but.

 

[cantdog]

There was a deal of it's okay, but also quite a bit of we're almost done.

Still, a porcupine could kill a dog in the wild, that way. Being imaginative can be a curse.