We had some mixed news about Brynn from the surgeons at WSU this weekend.  After 24 hours on IV’s, by Friday night Brynn’s kidney values had improved … her BUN was normal and her creatinine had dropped a lot, but was still higher than normal.  Her temperature was lower although she still had a fever. …

Last Thursday night, as I was closing up the barns around 10 p.m. and checking on all the horses, I noticed our blind horse Scout squinting with his left eye.  It was also tearing.  The sclera — the white part of the eye — was reddish, too.  Hmm.  Classic signs of a painful eye.  I…

My heart sank when I got a call last night from Dr. Kristin Gablehouse, the resident equine surgeon at WSU.  Yesterday they noticed Brynn seemed depressed and a bit listless, not her usual self.  They ran a blood panel and found her critical kidney values — BUN and creatinine — had suddenly shot up.  Despite…

I was taking some photos for a different blog post when this scene presented itself.  That’s blind Willie, a recent arrival, on the cot.  Blind Callie the Dachshund, who has no sense of ‘personal space boundaries,’ loves to share other dogs’ beds, cots, and … why yes, their food, too.  So here she was contemplating…

Dr. Claude Ragle, the senior equine surgeon at Washington State University’s veterinary teaching hospital who is working on Brynn’s case, called me this evening with a report on the diagnostic procedures they performed today. After making a small incision in Brynn’s flank this morning, they inserted a laparoscope — a lighted scope that allows doctors…

Every morning when we let the "cottage dogs" out of Kelly’s Cottage, the first thing old Dillon and blind Kenai do (well, okay, it’s really the second thing they do after a good pee) is take a good roll in the snow.  They especially love doing this when there’s fresh snow on the ground, as…

The Daily News, the local paper in Pullman, Washington — where Washington State University is located — published a front page story today on our visit to the veterinary teaching hospital earlier in the week.  The photos were taken by the paper’s photographer, Geoff Crimmins, while we were there Tuesday morning.  The reporter interviewed me…

I had a call this evening from Dr. Kristin Gablehouse, one of the equine surgeons working on Brynn, with an update on our little foal.  The doctors did another round of endoscopy today.  They were hoping to find that Brynn’s two ectopic ureters — the tubes that normally take urine from the kidneys to the…

Nichole and I got back to Montana about 10 p.m. tonight; I dropped Nichole at her house and then headed to the ranch.  I took the photo shortly after I let Claude out of the truck to walk around the yard for a while before coming inside.  He immediately found the cot.  (He loves those…

This was a distressing day.  What we learned about Claude the blind Great Dane puppy was heartbreaking.  I took this photo just before he was put inside the MRI machine at around 12:30 p.m.  About two hours later, we met with the neurologist to learn the results.  It turns out that Claude has a severe…