Dr. Brenda Culver, our primary care vet in Helena who is also our resident eye expert, performed surgery on blind Widget’s glaucoma eye this afternoon.  She removed the internal part of Widget’s left eye — the cornea, lens, iris, etc. — and implanted a prosthesis inside the globe of her eye.  This will give Widget…

This is our second employee, Kathryn S., who just started work at the sanctuary today.  She joins our first hire, Beth, who came on board last September.  Beth’s reaction to having a new colleague to help with the workload: "Awesome!" Before coming to the sanctuary, Kathryn was working as a biological researcher in a joint…

Here’s blind Callie, again pretending she can’t hear us calling her to go outside before bedtime.  This is actually one of her better "I’m dead" poses.  She was absolutely still.  Even the usual tell-tail (yep, that’s a pun) sign of life stirring in the otherwise motionless body … her little tail wagging back-and-forth … wasn’t…

Our Saturday started early with the arrival of Hanna, a blind Appaloosa mare from North Carolina.  We had agreed to take her a few weeks ago after getting a call from her owner, a riding instructor named Annette S.  Hanna had been one of Annette’s lesson mares for many years, and was a real favorite…

We had several incredible volunteers help out today, and we got tons done.  Literally.  On the trailer is our ace hay-moving crew … Nate, Amy, Juana and Chris.  We moved 11 tons of hay from our neighbor’s hay barn over to Scout’s Barn, then stacked it clear to the rafters.  I took the photo after…

Cody, the puppy from Wyoming who survived parvo, has a new Mom … our employee Beth!  After Cody came back from the hospital, it took only a few days for Beth to fall in love with this wonderful little boy.  We realized she was quietly developing a powerful bond with him, and when Beth asked…

Dr. Bostwick called today to say Widget’s bloodwork looked great, which ruled out other possible explanations for the odd episodes we’ve seen in her recently.  So this morning I talked with Dr. Brenda Culver, our primary care vet in Helena who’s also our go-to person for eye issues, about Dr. Bostwick’s evaluation of Widget.  I…

I took our blind Beagle/Dachshund mix, Widget, into Missoula today for an evaluation by our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Dave Bostwick.  Widget has had some odd episodes in the past several weeks … she’ll suddenly get very quiet, her usually upright tail will drop, and she’ll act zoned out for a few minutes.  A couple…

I didn’t have any animal-related items to post this evening, so I thought I’d show you a couple of photos I took late this afternoon as the sun was going down.  This first photo is the view facing northeast from the ranch.  The gate in the foreground leads to one 10-acre pasture and another 30-acre…

I drove over to Helena late this afternoon to pick up the animals we left at the vet hospital on Thursday:  Callie the blind Dachshund, Cody the puppy, Snowball the cat, and Luke the blind dog.  Because of the chronic and painful condition of Luke’s eyes, our vet Dr. Brenda Culver went ahead with the…