A true story on following my Intuition

There are some dates I want to remember.

The 29th of April 2026 is a date I’ll always bring with me.

The day before we brought Mita, my dear dog companion, to a vet our neighbour recommended. 

His studio was quite far from here but, since our usual vet was fully booked for that day, I absolutely wanted to find out why Mita was in so much pain. Or should I say: I knew why but I needed an external opinion AND HELP. 

Mita was getting worse by the day, she wouldn’t walk around much, was limping and tired all the time. 

23 days prior, when I was away visiting my family in the North of Italy and Micke was here taking care of the animals, in the evening of Easter (the 5th of April 2026) she had a spikey encounter.

Micke was out on an evening walk with the dogs and on his way back to the house he sees Mita limping towards him and collapsing at his feet. 

Her front - chest and front paws - was full of porcupine spikes, or quills. Some were deep inside the skin, others were more shallow.

Micke is a very calm and peaceful person, he rarely panics or gets stressed. At that moment I believe he did panic. Without hesitation, he pulled out the quills. He then proceeded to carry Mita home in his arms.

He panicked because he didn't tell me anything about this event until I came back home and, most importantly, he did not contact the vet.

After four days, in the evening, I came back and got to know what had happened.

The next day I got to speak with the vet who prescribed her antibiotics and antiinflammatory pills.  

With the medicines we gave her she got better and started walking and running around again. But a few days after we quit the antibiotics, she started to limp again and was in pain.

♦

And there we went to this new vet who my neighbour highly recommended.

The new vet was polite and seemed to care. My intuition and entire being screamed “this man is not listening to the story about what happened, he’s just believing in what he sees”. I do understand his approach. But it did not work for me. He proceeded to perform different tests on my dog and kept on saying “she is fine, just needs some rest”. Her blood tests were perfect. 

“But she doesn’t move all day and when she does, she limps and shows she’s in pain”. I said as he shared the results.

 She was not limping there in front of him though and I know why. She wanted to get out of there. Her nervous system was in flight response so she would either lay still or walk toward the door.

We left. 

Micke told me he trusted that vet and was feeling relieved. I was not and did not like the seemingly kind and caring approach of that vet when he clearly would not listen to me. Classic: a woman who cares too much about her dog and wants to find problems where there are not. 

My intuition was screaming: “go to another vet!” 

The next day, the 29th of April, at 4 PM, I drove Mita to our vet and proceeded to explain how my dog was and that I believed that a fragment of a quill was inside her and was migrating to her vital organs. I had read online that if porcupine quills break inside while removing them, because they have microscopic hooks at the end of them, they can migrate inward and never outward.

In our vet studio there are two professionals: Sandro, a vet and a surgeon and Emma, the other vet. She is caring, firm and straightforward.

Emma listened to me. Her wise eyes locked on Mita, her body facing me.

Mita fell asleep, under anaesthesia, after 30 minutes.

Emma did multiple scans and ultrasounds and then began to focus over the area I told her I thought the dog was having pain.

Nothing.

Yes, there was some inflamed tissue in that area but no quill, no remnants. 

Emma did not give up: “I believe we need some luck, I know there is something here.” 

I was there, holding Mita. Feeling deeply rooted, grateful and terrified. I was present and vulnerable in my clear intention to be with my dog and Emma did not give up. 

An hour and 40 minutes passed. Nothing. People were coming in and out the main room, the studio was very busy and her colleague was impatient and stressed out. Emma was multitasking, very focused on Mita AND constantly communicating with her colleague who visited three more animals, one after the other. 

Strangely enough I was not losing hope. I felt a deep sense of trust in Emma and me and Mita, even though nothing was coming up.

I decided to make a promise. I don’t exactly know how to explain it, but I asked who knows what, maybe a God, the universe, the angels, my higher self, that IF we’d find something, I will follow my intuition from that moment on.

As I was making that promise, my heartbeat increased knowing what that promise would entail. 

“I found it! Press that button near the monitor to screenshot it so we know that we found it!” She shouted.

There it was. A long pointy spike.

Sandro, the one who would do the surgery and remove it, had a doctor appointment at 6.30 PM and no, he did not want to skip it.

“I’ll pay you more, please we need to remove it!” I begged him.

He went out of the scan room where me, Mita and Emma were, shaking his head into NOs.

I took a deep breath, felt my legs supported by gravity, felt a shiver of loss and hopelessness, while looking at Emma who was looking at the monitor.

I left the room knowing that my presence was weighing on the surgeon who was the only one who could help Mita at that moment.

“Come back tomorrow, I cannot now” he said to me, giving me his shoulders.

There were 2 other clients in that room and a big German shepherd lying on the floor.

After about 20 minutes Sandro said to Emma: “Let’s do the surgery!”

I burst into tears, with a broken voice a whispered “Thank you” and hugged him.

He chose to do the surgery to remove the quill instead of going to his appointment. 

We moved Mita to the surgery room. Sandro and Emma were ready to perform the surgery using a method called intraoperative sonography. For some reasons, probably because they saw how invested I was and how deeply I cared for Mita, they invited me into the room. 

I could not see the open wound they were working on because Sandro was covering it with his body but I could see Emma’s face. She was laser focused.

The operation lasted 45 minutes. It took them a while to find the remnant of that quill which has been inside Mita’s body for over 25 days.

When Emma took it out, she walked out of the room with the surgery tool that held the spiky and bloody remnant. I followed her.

With watery eyes and a powerful but broken (by tears) voice, she looked at me and said “This was one step away from the lungs”.

If she had not persisted, it would have traveled to the lungs, puncturing it and causing the death of my dog.