This morning I drove a full trailer-load — three blind horses and one mule — to our equine vet clinic in Missoula, Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital.  Two of the horses, Rocky and Shasta, needed surgery to remove painful eyes.  The third blind horse, recent arrival Bo, needed dental work.  And the mule, our lovable old…

Ironically, long before we had agreed to take Trooper from the Shreveport shelter, we had earlier agreed to take a three-legged Rottie named Boudreaux.  He had been turned into the same shelter.  Because Boudreaux was also too big to fly out of Shreveport, we were going to fly him out of Dallas as well, on…

This is Trooper, a very sweet Lab/Hound mix who just arrived last night from a shelter in Shreveport, Louisiana.  One look at his front legs and you can see this is a boy who needs medical attention.  Rebecca Y., who’s with a rescue group called Animal Rescue, Inc., in Shreveport, emailed us on Thanksgiving Day…

Now here’s a trio you don’t hear much about, but they are real fixtures at Widget’s House, our main dog building.  That’s blind Patti on the left and her two boyfriends, blind Levi in the center and blind Cedar on the right.  Both Patti and Levi were blinded by abuse, while Cedar went blind from…

The Love of Dog Bakery in Laurel, Maryland, has graciously named the sanctuary as their ‘Charity of the Month’ for December, and will donate 5% of their sales this month to the ranch.  Check out their delicious dog treats here.  Many thanks to owners Julie and Rob Newman for this generous gift!  They first learned…

On Thursday morning, as I was still absorbing the news about Wobbles, we had yet more medical issues to cope with.  The evening before, as I was heading back to Missoula from Orlando, Alayne had called our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, to tell her that our old mule Roy needed some attention.  He’s had…

Our adorable cat Wobbles died suddenly yesterday, while I was flying back from Orlando.  Alayne told me the news after I got home.  He was found dead in the cat house, lying in a litterbox.  We have no idea what happened.  We are, as you can imagine, devastated by the sudden loss of our little…

Although it seems Alayne and I spend much of our day being nothing more than glorified doormen (doorpeople?), constantly letting dogs in and out, we do have one dog who hardly ever needs or wants to use our service.  That’s blind-and-deaf Spinner, seen here snoozing away at 1:45 p.m.  Yes, that’s right, it’s nearly 2…

I took these photos last week, after I noticed blind-and-deaf Baron and our old boy, Dillon, taking turns resting their heads on each other while sleeping off and on over the course of a couple of days.  So there’s Dillon above, using Baron as a head-rest. Not to be outdone, here’s Baron using his uncle…

We’re in Orlando at the annual convention of the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP), which is all the horse vets in the country.  (I don’t know why they call themselves ‘practitioners’ instead of ‘veterinarians.’)  The AAEP also has members from around the world, including about 400 from Canada and about 800 from other countries. …