Chico, Dakota and I went for a ride this morning. As usual, Chico did his own thing; running about off in the woods, but not far away. At the end of the ride I saw something sticking up out of the fur on his haunches. I thought to myself, “those are funny looking leaves stuck in his coat.” On closer examination, I realized they were porcupine quills. Visions of a Sunday morning trip to the emergency vet danced through my head for a moment.

Buuut, and this is the “lucky dog” part, his haunches are where Chico’s undercoat is the thickest and the quills didn’t, as far as I could tell, get into his skin. Instead, they lodged in his fur.

To me the interesting observation is that he got these quills in him while he was running away. He wasn’t trying to get his mouth around the critter, the quills aren’t even at that end of him. I imagine that he was curious about this funny looking, very slow, squirrel and when Mr or Ms Porky-pine went into defense mode, Chico fled and got swatted on the rump. Today, I’m so grateful that he is a wuss. And I wonder what will happen next time Chico meets a porcupine.