NORTON SHORES, Mich. –When Remington, a 2-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever, enthusiastically greeted a delivery driver earlier this month, it nearly cost him his life.

Hidden in the dog’s broad-chested, athletic body was a time bomb – 8½-inches of an aluminum arrow shaft complete with a field tip.

No one knows when, where or why the dog was shot, only that the arrow was lodged in his body for a long time – certainly before his owner Scott Cornelisse, 34, his wife, Kelly, 31, and their children, Olivia, 7, and Kamden, 9, brought him home last year.

Dr. Steven Harden, a Norton Shores veterinarian, successfully removed the arrow from the 100-pound dog.

“This was a unique case because of how long the arrow had been in there,” Harden said, adding: “Animals are amazing, and this dog is proof of that. For me, this is a celebration of the dog, not the doctor.”

For months, the dog seemed oblivious to the life-threatening projectile lodged in its chest.

But when a delivery driver came to the door on Jan. 7, Remington couldn’t wait to see who was there. Kelly Cornelisse reached for the exuberant dog.

She corraled the dog in the kitchen, and after that, he apparently went somewhere to lie down. “Neither of us knew he was hurt,” her husband said.

Somehow, the back of the arrow had been pushed upward, changing its position inside Remington’s body.

As the evening wore on, Remington was not himself. He didn’t want to play. In fact, he didn’t even want to move.

When Scott Cornelisse tried to pick him up around the chest, “something stuck between my fingers,” he said.

Remington didn’t so much as whimper, but his owner instantly let go. Something was protruding in an approximately 3-inch lump from the chest area. “I thought it was a broken rib,” he said.

When he called the veterinarian’s office, he was told to watch the dog overnight and bring him in the next morning.

When the dog got out of the family vehicle at the animal hospital the next morning, the arrow shifted again. Pictures taken at the time show a distinct lump on the dog’s back.

The first X-ray revealed the arrow’s presence, and the results did not look encouraging. But a second X-ray showed the arrow had missed the dog’s heart. It originally entered the dog’s body under the left armpit. “It went through the left side of the lung field and exited alongside the thoracic vertebrae,” Harden said.

The Cornelisses say Remington has been an energetic and playful dog since they adopted him from an acquaintance last June.

“Last summer, I threw the tennis ball into the lake until my arm was more tired than he was,” Scott Cornelisse said.