Last Wednesday was sort of a painful day for me, and in the early morning, very painful for our dog Duncan. I had two upper teeth extracted and the remainder cleaned and the dog had a rear leg and paw shot full of porcupine quills. I of course moaned a wee bit afterwards since the upper partial plate doesn't quite fit correctly, so eating is somewhat difficult when I can't chew properly. At first, I attributed the pain to the swelling around the injured area but since that is no longer the case, it looks as if I will have to make another appointment to get the plate readjusted or slightly reshaped. Hopefully, although I would like to make the appointment on a much earlier day, since it is a long way into Woodstock from our home and we go to town on Fridays to the Farm Market; that would be satisfactory (the price of fuel these days tends to make a person think twice about traveling any distance). My visit to the dentist was somewhat when I had to say goodbye to my teeth; we've been on a rather intimate basis for over 50 years and especially since I only have 5 remaining living upstairs, which still makes the partial plate a possibility. And I still have a problem with a couple of wobbly teeth in the front lower portion of my mouth; appears as if I will have to say good-bye to one of them or maybe both, come next visit in 3 months time. I'm a little concerned about them because I have 2 speaking engagements coming up regarding my Limited Edition book Arctic Odyssey and I'll have a rather large gap, unless I can get a snug-fitting partial plate that won't float around in my mouth. Hmm, I wonder if I'll have an accurate spitting range with the gap; just might come in handy should there be any hecklers in the audience. But enough about this old man and his old broken down falling out teeth; let me tell you about Duncan; it's a lot more interesting.
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| My Pal Duncan |
Lately, because of a lot of aches and pains and then having my teeth hauled out, I haven't been sleeping too well. So about 2am on Wednesday, I'm awakened after just falling into a sound sleep by loud yelping noises just outside our upstairs bedroom window and my wife saying, I think there's something wrong with Duncan. Since the weather is a lot warmer these days, I've been letting Duncan stay outside rather inside my studio and I'm hoping his yowling is more complaining because he's outside and wants inside the studio but I sense there is a much bigger problem with him and of course, since he didn't yelp when he got stunk up by a skunk; the only other time when I finally discovered him trapped in a trapper's snare, I knew it was serious. And rightfully so, I expected a confrontation with a porcupine or a hungry bear.
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| Approx. 40 Porcupine Quills Extracted from Duncan |
Since Duncan is a very playful, fun-loving and friendly dog, I expect he found the slow porcupine a great animal to play with. He was probably running circles around it, perhaps even leaping over it in merriment because instead of having a snout full of quills, they were imbedded in his hind leg. I pulled out 40 of the blasted things with a pair of pliers until the pain was so unbearable, he began snapping at me. Realizing, that I could still see a least a dozen more quills and there were probably others stuck within his long dark hair that weren't visible, I decided he would just have to suffer it out for the remainder of the night until we could get him to a vet.
Like extracting my teeth, extracting the last remaining quills from Duncan's back paw and knee was painless because he had been mercifully put into dog dreamland. The vet pulled about another 20 quills out of Duncan and several were completely embedded out of sight, deep in the flesh that I never would have been able to get out with a pair of pliers. As we were about to leave the vet's office with our still unconscious dog, after paying almost 300 bucks for services rendered, the vet mentioned that we shouldn't be surprised if a few more quills started working their way out. This morning Duncan is his happy, happy self once again and is running, albeit with a slight limp, but running just the same. Do I think that Duncan has learned his lesson after his painful frolic with the porcupine, the answer is no, Knowing Duncan, he most likely thinks that his unplayful companion was probably just cranky and the next one will be a whole lot more fun - cheers, eh!
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