Rolling Dog Farm Blog

I was in the house this evening fixing dinner for the dogs when the phone in the kitchen rang.  It was Alayne, calling from Lena’s Barn.  She was doing barn chores and had seen something … well, something unusual.  "Come quick," she said, "I’ve got a blog item for you!"

I dashed to the office, grabbed the digital camera, and headed out to the barn.  As I rounded the corner, I saw what she was talking about:  Our blind foal Destiny and the pot-bellied pig Charlotte, happily eating hay together.  An odd scene indeed.

I quietly walked into the barn and came out one of the side stall doors, then tip-toed my way across the corral towards them … I was afraid that if Destiny heard me coming, she’d turn and start walking towards me to nicker a greeting.  (Destiny thinks she’s a person, not a horse … but that’s a story for another blog.)

Charlotte was placed with us a few years ago by the folks who work in the Northern Rockies Office of the Humane Society of the U.S.  She was ‘mechanically blind’ … meaning her eyes were fine, but her face was so fat she literally could not open her eyelids to see.  Functionally she was blind.  The people who had owned her were literally feeding her to death with the wrong food (commercial hog chow for ‘growing and finishing’ hogs) and too much of it, plus candy.  Although she may look fat in this photo, she is HALF the size she was. 

After years of strict dieting and proper feed, she can now see. Which explains how she found her way out of her new pen (moved there just this morning) and into the nearby horse corral to sample Destiny’s fresh hay.  We’re not sure what blind Destiny thought of her unexpected dinner guest, but she seemed rather gracious about it.