Today I took our three-legged boy, Cody, back to Dr. Bostwick in Missoula for his fifth round of chemo.  I also took Buzz and Birdie, our recent "I-can’t-believe-I-ate-that!" cases, in to have the staples removed from their intestinal surgeries.  In addition, I brought along our deaf, old and mostly toothless miniature Dachshund, Oscar, so Dr.…

Our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, came out to the ranch this afternoon to do procedures on four of our blind  horses.  On the roster was Guadalupe, an old blind mare who arrived several weeks ago from Washington state.  We already knew her mouth was a mess and had scheduled a dental for her today.…

Here’s our new employee, Sarah Gibson, on her first day at work.  Sarah replaced Kathryn, who left to go back to school for a pre-vet program.  Before joining us, Sarah had her own dog training business in Missoula and also worked for the Humane Society of Western Montana as their volunteer coordinator.  From 2001-2005 she…

Our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, called this afternoon with the results of his exam of Spirit, the Yorkie who arrived yesterday with paralyzed front legs.  (See post below.) Her paralysis is from neurological disease, not from fractures or other trauma.  The disc spaces between the vertebrae in Spirit’s neck have collapsed,…

This is a true story.  I wish it weren’t.  A couple of days ago in Butte, Montana, a lady named Denise S. saw a little Yorkshire Terrier in the street.  As cars whizzed by, she dashed out to rescue the dog.  Suddenly she saw a man by the Yorkie, kicking it.  Denise ran up, grabbed…

This is three-legged Cody, our new arrival we were keeping ‘under wraps’ until the fall newsletter came out, getting his weekly chemotherapy treatment today.  (Because of an emergency with Cody last week — see our post Medical Disaster Day — he’s now out of the closet, so to speak, although we won’t reveal his entire…

Mariah’s been working on enrichment activities for some of the dogs here who need more outlets for their energy.  One of them is blind Luke.  As Mariah says, 15 minutes of mental exercise can be worth as much as an hour of physical exercise, and it doesn’t take much to give those doggie brains a…

When we had Claude the blind Great Dane puppy neutered a week ago, our internal medicine specialist in Helena, Dr. Britt Culver, also did an innovative surgery called ‘laparosopic gastropexy.’ Our only hesitation in agreeing to take Claude was because Great Danes are at high risk for bloat, which is often life-threatening.  Bloat occurs when…

Travis, our dog with a fused jaw, eats a special blended liquid diet that he slurps up.  Now, as you can imagine, Travis leaves one heck of a mess behind.  The food is everywhere — in his crate, on his bedding, on the crate door, even on the floor outside the crate.  We have the…

Our blind two-year Nikki has now graduated from the round pen to riding in the pasture, and today was her second day at it.  Our horse trainer, Nichole Zupan, thought it would be beneficial for Nikki to follow another horse during these first few open riding sessions, so I rode blind Domino the Appaloosa while…