Do animals have a sixth sense?

One year, many years ago, my family and I were returning from a short and typical UK beach holiday.

Our dog, Candy had been left in the trust of my Grandma who lived around a mile from our house. Candy had never been to my Grandma's before but she owned some other dogs so loneliness should not have been a problem.

However...

When we stopped by to pick her up my Grandma was frantically telling us that she was gone. She had jumped out of a small window just that afternoon. Of course we were very worried and my parents showed obvious signs of anger.

We drove on home and as we got out of the car Candy was sitting outside the house wagging her tail and panting, just like nothing was wrong.

How did she know we were coming home?

I have no idea either! Do you have any stories like this?

2 dogs and a porcupine

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Somehow I ended up back in Vermont, USA last week instead of in Montreal, Canada, like I planned. I have finally made it back to Montreal to start my new life, so regular posting is part of that life.

Three nights ago me and my partner drove from her Mum's house back to her foster parents house. It was about 11.30pm and as we drove into the drive way I saw that the garage was wide open and lights were on and somebody was sitting on the ground with a dog.

At first I thought somone was just playing with the dog but when we actually got out of the car my partners foster sister and foster Dad were sitting on the ground with the dog surrounded by porcupine quills. On first inspection it looked like the dog, her name is Shady, (unsurprisingly a Pitbull) was hit pretty bad in the side of the face but looking again the dog had aquired an entire beard of quills. My eyes rolled up and I nearly blacked out a few times from looking at it, it was truly one of the most horrific things I've ever seen happen to an animal.

Shady sat there letting these quills be pulled from her face with barely a cringe or a whimper but it was clear that she was in immense pain. I was surprised to see a dog let it's owners put it through that pain with no retaliation. About 100 quills were pulled before it was decided that the blood was getting too much and that the damage was too much. She must have had over 700 quills inside her and they were inside her mouth right up to the back of her throat.

She was rushed to the emergency vet and put to sleep for two hours to be operated on. The vet said it was the worst porcupine attack on a dog they had ever seen. Her body had started to shut down too from heat exhaustion and she had black urine. The poor dog is still at home recovering and even yesterday before I left I pulled another 3 quills that had obviously been inside her body and were working their way out. I pulled them tip first which means that they entered the body somewhere else and were coming right through.

Now Shady got hit horrendously bad but she always runs off with the other dog Jada who is a mut with lab in her. After Jada was rushed to the emergency room my partner and I took the charge of searching for Jada. When we found her she had also been hit by the porcupine. Luckily she had only had about 30 or 40 quills in her so we took the decision to remove them ourselves.

I tried to pull a few but she acted in a entirely different way to Shady. She cried and whimpered and pulled away. I simply could not do it by myself so we decided to try and find Jada's owner (my partner's foster brother). After trying to call him with no success we loaded Jada into the back of the Licoln wagon hoped that we could find him at his partner's house.

Luckily he was there! He managed to pull about 10 himself but the crying, whimpering and running away got worse so we took the sad decision to hold her down. It took all my weight on her front another person holding her back and one person on her head to hold her down for an excruciating 45mins or so while someone pulled the quills one by one with pliers and tweezers.

She cried, kicked, screamed and pee'd all over the floor but eventually we were finished and we knew it was all ok when she took her time to come round and lick us all.

It really was a crazy evening that I do not want to repeat.