To The Point

The other night, my wife stumbled upon a sad little picture of a bull terrier who got the worst of an encounter with a porcupine. I am still unclear as to exactly what drew her Internet browser to such an image, but it immediately sent me into a nostalgic reverie.
We had a dachshund. For nine months out of the year, he was a suburban out-in-the-back-yard-occasional-walk dog. But every summer, we would pack him up with all our essential items and spend the summer living our lives in a cabin in the woods. Rupert had the run of acres of pine and aspen trees, along with all the wildlife that filled them. Bred for hunting badgers, it was Rupert's destiny to run afoul of many of the more low-slung creatures of the forest. He caught the business end of a porcupine on a number of occasions.
It became a familiar scenario: We would hear Rupert's "hunting bark", letting us know that he had something cornered, or that Timmy had fallen down a well. After several minutes of this persistent alert, we would inevitably hear his bark go up several octaves to a yelp, and he would come racing out from under some stump or pile of rock with a new white swatch sprayed across his muzzle or flank. We became very familiar with the cruel construction of the porcupine quill as we gently pulled them from Rupert's trembling hide. We always counted them, as if each attack would somehow bring the realization in him that these were sharp and pointy beasts who ought to be left alone. We kept most of them in Dixie cups as souvenirs. My father stuck a few of them in the band of his battered straw cowboy hat as a reminder, for us.
Rupert finally bought a clue when he finally tangled with a porcupine that left him with one quill lodged underneath his skin. This required a trip to the vet, something that we had avoided in all previous dog/porcupine mishaps. My younger brother, whose baptism of porcupine quills had him running inside our cabin and locking the door in fear of a rodent that could hurl razor sharp projectiles at him from vast distances, was chosen to go along for that visit. Rupert came through with a neat little incision. My brother got the worst of it, while standing over the operating table watching the procedure, he felt his head begin to swim and he passed out. My younger brother has toured the country in a van as a roadie for a rock band. He has lived in a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles. He worked as a dry cleaner. I can only surmise that it was his brush with a porcupine that made him the pillar of strength that we see today. Rupert retired from chasing burrowing animals, and he lived out the remainder of his years with a scar to remind him of his youth. But I suspect if there is a Doggie Heaven, he's hunkered down under a rock somewhere, barking ferociously at what he hopes is a fluffy toy, and not a pincushion.