Dog dies after backyard fight with porcupine. ‘I could hear him crying,’ family says
A dog succumbed to his injuries after a run-in with a porcupine in rural New Jersey.
Chester, a 9-year-old pit bull-mix, encountered the animal during the early morning hours of Sept. 2 in the backyard of his owner’s Sussex County home, according to NJ.com.
“We saw him running and barking, so we ran down the deck, but it was too late,” 22-year-old Miranda DeGennaro, the dog’s owner, told the outlet.
“I could hear him crying,” family member Brenda DeGennaro told WABC.
Miranda DeGennaro believed Chester attacked the porcupine, she told NJ.com, leaving him with dozens of quills piercing his face, chest and paws.
The family brought him to a local veterinarian who removed many of the quills, but had to take him to a specialist afterward to attempt to remove quills that had migrated further inside the dog’s chest, according to a Sept. 3 Facebook post from Miranda DeGennero.
“The quills are barbed, so they only travel in one direction so you cannot pull them out yourself, and once they get deep into the skin it’s more concerning with them migrating deeper inside of their body instead of their body rejecting them out,” she wrote.
“The vet said that she actually had his heart in his hand and she was pulling quills out of the lining of his heart,” Brenda DeGennaro told WABC.
“You can’t even do anything to see exactly where they are,” Miranda DeGennaro told NJ.com, “so they did the best they could. But being that he swallowed some, they just went everywhere.”
Chester appeared to be recovering after emergency surgery, but things took a turn for the worse, and he died on Sept. 10, according to WABC.
A spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Protection told NJ.com, “I’ve been here for 16 years and this is the first time I’ve heard of anything like this.”
Porcupine quills can “come out quite easily on contact,” according to Wildlifehelp.org, a site that contains information from the state’s wildlife management agencies.
“Dogs never seem to learn to avoid them, so keep dogs confined or on a leash when a porcupine is in the neighborhood,” the site cautions.
“Had I known there was any potential for my boys life to be risked, I would have taken more precautions to prevent anything like this from happening,” Miranda DeGennaro wrote in a Sept. 11 Facebook post, adding that she is “absolutely devastated.”
“I seriously couldn’t have asked for a more amazing and perfect dog,” she wrote. “I don’t know what I would have done without you loving and protecting me every chance you could. You’ve helped me so much without even realizing it. You definitely took a piece of me with you and I will miss you forever.”
“Rest In Peace baby boy. I love you and miss you so much already.”
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