Rolling Dog Farm Blog

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 a growth and in fact, it looked so much like part of his lip that we hadn’t even noticed. 

It was an excellent call, because it turned out to be melanoma.  Brenda successfully removed it and the pathologist’s report said she had good, clean margins all the way around the excised tumor, so the entire cancer should be gone.

After a week in the hospital, Dusty was glad to be home!

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In the background trying to get their photos taken are Patches, the Paint mare on the left, and Lilah the white mare on the right.  Patches came to us several years ago from an animal cruelty case in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana.  The court turned Patches over to us for safekeeping while the case went to trial, and when the owner was finally convicted and the case settled — nearly a year later — the judge awarded us custody.  (We weren’t involved in the case at all until the court asked us to pick up Patches.)  She can’t be ridden but is otherwise in good health.

Lilah is one of the non-blind "blind" horses we agreed to take, only to find out they’re not blind.  <sigh>  We learned she actually only has congenital stationary night blindness, so she has trouble seeing at night but during the day she’s the boss horse in the sighted herd.  (Well, she’s the boss of everybody except the Belgians!)  Neither one of these two girls is listed on our Web site because we don’t consider them disabled!