Life on the Ranch can be full of surprises both good & bad!

Daily life on the ranch does not always go as planned. Today is Saturday and my husband will usually do the morning chores alone as I needed to head to town to open our store named the

I saw Gary heading back to our house with both of our two Maremma guard dogs trailing behind him.  He came into the house and yelled "I'm going to need your help, Pan has quills in his mouth."  I said "No, not again!"  Our dogs protect the Alpacas from those critters also. A couple of years ago, there was one that had gotten into the Alpaca girl's pen.  All 3 dogs had so many quills, that we ended up having to take them into the vet. The vet tranquillized them in order to get them out of the back of their mouths.  Again, this spring we had another very large porcupine hanging around the outside of the pastures which Pan & Meadow decided that they needed to take care of.  We were able to pull those quills out ourselves. Here is a picture of Pan this morning with some quills sticking out. Most of the quills are inside of his mouth stuck in his gums and the roof of his mouth.

Needless to say it was not an easy chore, as he does not like us pulling them out of him. He is a large dog (over 120 lbs) and he is hard for us to hold him still. We thought for sure that we would have to take him into the vet again, but after an hour of work, we were finally able to get them all out. Of course I was late getting into town to open the store, but it was worth it, knowing that our fearless Pan was okay. It is just another day on the ranch!