{"id":1102,"date":"2018-08-15T11:55:34","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T15:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.drphilzeltzman.com\/blog\/?p=1102"},"modified":"2022-07-11T08:58:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T12:58:00","slug":"beware-of-porcupines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drphilzeltzman.com\/blog\/beware-of-porcupines\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware of porcupines!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">One of my nurses who works at an emergency clinic told me a crazy story that is a great reminder this summer. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1103 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.drphilzeltzman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Quills-pic-1.jpg\" alt=\"A porcupine in the wild\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.drphilzeltzman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Quills-pic-1.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/www.drphilzeltzman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Quills-pic-1-1100x733.jpg 1100w, https:\/\/www.drphilzeltzman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Quills-pic-1-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">She had seen yet another curious dog who couldn\u2019t resist the urge to play with a porcupine\u2026 Of course, porcupines always win. The dog\u2019s head, lips and tongue were covered in quills.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Depending on where you live, porcupines may be coming out of the woodwork. Dogs often think of a porcupine as a playmate. This could be very painful mistake. I suspect the picture tells the whole story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1104 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.drphilzeltzman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Quills-pic-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"417\" height=\"347\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This is a fairly classic situation at emergency clinics in my area (Pennsylvania and New Jersey). The Poconos are a beautiful mountain range but there are full of porcupines. The treatment for this situation is to anesthetize the dog, and remove the quills, one by one. And when there are hundreds of quills, it\u2019s a lengthy procedure!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The bigger problem with porcupine quills is that they can occasionally migrate through the body. I remember participating in a surgery at the Colorado vet school, where a quill was literally inside the wall of the heart!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">So please be careful, please keep your dog on a leash and please never ever think that your dog will learn from one bad experience. Experience proves that there are many repeat offenders, summer after summer&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Porcupines may be fascinating creatures, but they have no intention of playing fetch with your dog.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Be safe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Phil Zeltzman, DVM, DACVS, CVJ, Fear Free <\/em>Certified<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my nurses who works at an emergency clinic told me a crazy story that is a great reminder this summer. She had seen yet another curious dog who couldn\u2019t resist the urge to play with a porcupine\u2026 Of course, porcupines always win. The dog\u2019s head, lips and tongue were covered in quills. Depending [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[157,172,173,156],"class_list":["post-1102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-phil-zeltzman","tag-porcupine","tag-quills","tag-veterinary-surgeon"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Beware of porcupines! | Dr Phil Zeltzman\u2019s Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of my nurses who works at an emergency clinic told me a crazy story that is a great reminder this summer.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.drphilzeltzman.com\/blog\/beware-of-porcupines\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beware of porcupines! 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