Popeye was a tiny kitten with deformed front legs who came to us from Spokane Animal Control this spring at the age of 3 weeks.  As time went by, his legs started to straighten out, and his fearless, playful personality blossomed.  In our summer newsletter — seeing what lay ahead — we titled his story,…

Widget, our blind Beagle/Dachshund mix, spends her days developing and then implementing new and innovative sleeping positions in our living room.  She spends her nights in one of our dog cottages, Kelly’s Cottage, but it’s not quite clear to us what she’s actually doing in there.  In the morning, when we let her and the…

We just posted several updates to the sanctuary Web site this evening, including our new arrivals on the Meet the Animals page.  We also posted the online PDF version of our fall newsletter, which will go out in the mail next week.  Look for the newsletter link at the top of the home page.  In…

Charlie, our big lovable Dane/Pointer mix, was adopted today by a nice young couple from Missoula.  Neely V. saw Charlie on our Web site a few days ago and called to see if he was available for adoption.  I hesitated.  At first I didn’t know what to say.  We had NOT adopted Charlie out in…

Well, look at this!  Our first snow of the season, on September 24th.  That’s not unusual for this part of Montana, where our first frosts are often in August.  There was a winter storm warning this weekend for the higher elevations (5000′ and up — we’re at 4,100′), and we woke up to rain at…

We had to put old, blind Frasier to sleep today.  This elderly fellow had come to us just about a year ago from a shelter in Illinois.  We knew he had heartworms when we had agreed to take him.  Only after he arrived did we learn he was also in right-sided heart failure.  And there…

This blind and deaf girl came to us on the same day that Kodiak did, and although we mentioned her briefly in a post that day, you haven’t seen her since.  Well, she’s doing just great.  We named her Spinner because she spins around rapidly in tight circles, head straight up in the air, her…

You may remember reading a few weeks ago that a wonderful friend of the animals, Mark C. from Missoula, had bought a special bed for Kodiak, our paralyzed Malamute.  The bed has a mesh lining so urine flows through and drops into a tray below.  This keeps paralyzed dogs from getting soaked in their own…

Alayne and I took two of our blind mares, Lena and Nikki, and their sidekick Lonesome George out to pasture this morning.  As we turned around to head back to Lena’s Barn, we noticed this beautiful sight — the cottonwoods in brilliant gold colors, framing the house.  Fall definitely arrives early here in the Northern…

After two days in the hospital being treated for aspiratory pneumonia, Pappy came home to the ranch this evening.  He seemed just a little put out with me for having left him at the hospital for a couple of days.  (Animals do know how to lay guilt trips, don’t they?)  But once Pappy got settled…