Bump
In 1977 I took my lead strike dog, a leopard cur and my catch dog to Alaska. The cur bayed a porcupine and my catchdog looked worse than your dog but not by much. By the time we crawled through the alders to get to her, the big huge porcupine, nearly the size of the 60 pound pitt, was in two halves. She went clean through it like a chainsaw.
We spent hours pulling quills, some even pinned her jaws together and sewed her lips shut. Some were so far back in her throat we could not get to them. Some were really long quills, 4-5" as it was a large animal.
The local vet in Alaska said to me, " The will migrate around in her body for years. We cannot surgically remove them all, as they do not show up on X-rays as they are protein, keratin, etc.. so we cannot know where to find them. They may do her no harm. Or they could migrate to her spine, heart, brain, or other key organ and kill her. She may live two days, two months, or two years before they kill her."
The dog lived for another 7 years to die of natural causes.
These are the two dogs that stirred up all the trouble in photo link below. I was afraid they were on a brown bear! Later in the summer I was fishing near the same place and the cur bayed a huge brown bear that came for our fish. I was afraid the bear would kill the dog as those bears are faster than you think. But the cur, Cyrus, was a veteran hog dog and made that bear sit down and eventually run off. No contest. Bear was freaked out by the dog. Maybe it was the blue eyes? LOL!
http://www.goatcherwildlife.com/cyrus_n_dixie.jpg
