I took this photo at lunch today while I was being pestered by you-know-who, blind Widget.  She is usually not the first to the dining table — she generally saunters over about midway through our meal.  The first-responders, as we call them, are the Dachshunds, who are already waiting for Alayne and me even before…

This weekend we rolled out a redesign of our main sanctuary Web site.  Among other things, it’s wider, has a simpler interface, improved navigation, and a "fresher" look.  As usual, the credit goes to our fabulous graphic and Web designer, Terrel Armstrong, who does  all this work for us pro bono.  Terrel also designed our…

Alayne brought blind Dusty home from the vet clinic in Helena today after surgery for melanoma.  During her recent visit to the ranch for our annual health day, our small animal vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, had noticed a growth on Dusty’s lip during the exam.  This took a sharp eye, because it wasn’t much of…

It was just last week that I posted a photo of Blanca, our blind and deaf Great Dane puppy, strewn across her favorite chair in the living room.  She’s always curled up in it or sitting so her long legs are dangling off the side of the chair, her head tucked down while she sleeps.…

I realize that the headline sounds like the ingredients for some kind of odd fusion cuisine, but those are the names of the horses I took into the vet hospital in Missoula today.  Each had something totally different. In the photo above, our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, is examining Cactus Jack’s eye.  We have…

We had a big rainstorm roll in this past weekend, and as is often the case, the wind arrived before the rain.  I was walking back from closing the windows in the cat house when I saw Bailey, our Doxie with the bad back, looking like he was about to go airborne.  I went to…

On Monday we’re rolling out a new Web site, BlindAppaloosas.org, devoted to the problem of blindness in the Appaloosa horse breed.  Appaloosas are much more likely to get uveitis, the leading cause of blindness in horses, and are more likely to go blind as a result. What’s the increased risk?  One study showed that Appaloosas…

One of the things Alayne and I have been wrestling with this past week is a cancer diagnosis in one of our own personal dogs, Shiloh.  He was one of the original "Seattle six-pack" that moved out to Montana with us.  He is also, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit, the only "normal" dog we…

Long-time friends and supporters of the sanctuary, John and Judy S. of Wichita, Kansas, just sent us this photo, along with some others, from their last visit to the ranch.  That’s blind Patti giving John a kiss … or maybe telling him a secret … or both?  The dogs love it when visitors come —…

Alayne captured these shots of Birdie rolling around on her back on the landscaping rocks outside our back door.  Now, our dogs roll around on their backs in the grass all the time, but these rocks don’t seem like they’d be all that comfortable, do they?  I mean, what do they have that grass doesn’t?…