Pine took a little work to make it into our care as he did need to be flown into Saskatoon from the northern reaches of our province where he was a stray in the community who enjoyed hanging around the nurses residence for some attention and food. Unfortunately in his travels around the community he had come across a porcupine and was unsuccessful in becoming friends. This poor boy also didn’t want to make it easy and missed his first scheduled flight. A week later he arrived, still full of quills and now they were further aggravated by infection. The evening of August 17th, when he was safely off the plane and in the care of his foster family he was taken directly to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine for immediate assessment. The team in the ER determined that he had a lot going on and it would be best for the surgical team to look him over as well as a CT scan to see just how many more quills were hidden and if they were in a dangerous area as we know that quills can migrate and if they are close to major organs it is bad. Meanwhile they removed more than 70 quills from his face and chest. He also had something going on with both of his eyes.

On August 18th the surgical team looked over his CT and confirmed that there was a fair amount of quill debris in his face and particularly around his right eye. But there was something more sinister lurking that no one was aware of, he had 3 pellets, one behind his right eye which could explain it’s condition, one on the left side of his head, and another in his belly close to his organs but not interfering. There is a considerable amount of scar tissue around these so they have been in him for some time. The ophthalmologist also looked at his eyes. His right eye could not be saved so it was carefully removed along with many more quills from the eye area and his mouth on August 19th. His left eye is thought to be viable given time to heal, but he will have a follow up with ophthalmology later this week.

Update: The evening on August 20th saw Pine move into his foster home for the first time where he will be given time to decompress and adjust to life as a pet.

Update: Pine has come a long way and is starting to show his goofy side he is adjusting well to having only one eye. He had a follow up appointment at the WCVM where another 5 quills were removed and it was confirmed that his remaining eye is good and that the scar from the removal on the other side is doing well. He continues to heal up but is progressing.

Update: Pine is settling into his foster home but still finds some of the situations to be difficult. He is working with Sunrise Canine Behavioural Consulting and receiving continued medical support to help him refind his equilibrium. Meanwhile quills continue to make their way to the surface. We are hoping that Pine will be more comfortable in all the ways soon.

Please consider making a donation to our Guardians of Hope program where your donations continue to help dogs like Pine. 100 percent of all donations towards this fund goes directly to the animal’s medical expenses for major medical care.