Rolling Dog Farm Blog

One of our fabulous volunteers, Laura B. from Helena, brought out a new cat tree last Saturday for the gang in the cat house, and it immediately became a big hit.  On Sunday morning we found little Tibby, the cat with the deformed back legs, upside down in the swing playing with cat toys.  I think that would make me a little light-headed but she was thoroughly enjoying herself.  That’s wobbly Claire next to her.

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On a more serious note, here are some medical updates:

— Dusty was able to get up and walk last night on his own, and was mobile this morning, so we are thrilled with that progress!

— Blind Helen, who was in the hospital a couple of weeks ago to have a fatty tumor removed, is back for more surgery.  It turns out the pathologists found a fibrosarcoma inside that fatty tumor, and it has spread through her leg.  After consulting with a cancer specialist at Colorado State University’s veterinary teaching hospital, our vet Brenda Culver learned that the only thing we could do to keep the fibrosarcoma from spreading further is to remove the leg.  This is not the first time we have found benign fatty tumors harboring real cancers inside them, which is why we routinely have biopsies sent in for evaluation.  Just in case.

— Blind Carmel the Beagle is also back in the hospital this week for eye surgery.  After further consultations with our veterinary ophthalmologist in Spokane and with ophthalmology specialists at Colorado State, Brenda found that our only real option to eliminate Carmel’s chronic and terrible ocular pain was to remove her eyes.  Because it was a corneal dystrophy, we couldn’t do the intrasclera implants — like we did with blind Briggs — since the cornea needs to be healthy for that procedure.  It’s what holds the implant in place. 

I had dropped both Helen and Carmel off yesterday morning when I took Dusty in.  For right now, Dusty’s the bright spot in the picture!