Blind Stoney is not the only adopted resident of ours who has a thing for water.  Our fabulous volunteer Laura W. from Helena, who adopted blind Levi a few months ago, yesterday emailed me photos and some video of Levi enjoying his walks with her in the countryside outside town. Laura wrote, "Levi is a…

After posting the video of the amazing automated hay wagon and the 14-foot high wall of hay it stacks, some of our blog readers asked:  Well, how do you get bales out of that thing? The answer:  Carefully! Vanna White was busy this evening, so I asked Alayne to come out and demonstrate how we…

With 160 acres here, a significant part of what we do is taking care of the land.  Most of it — about 140 acres — is kept in pasture for the horses, while the rest has the barns, animal cottages and other buildings on it.  But with that much land, there is a lot of…

Because of our climate here in the Northern Rockies, we have to feed hay to our horses from November until June … and given the number of horses we have (about 30), that means we buy a lot of hay — 125 tons this year.  Like everyone else with large animals, our hay costs have…

This is blind Herbie, who I photographed this morning climbing in the cat house’s outdoor enclosure.  Herbie is the original lovebug, but he is also one intrepid little guy.  There is much in the American Kennel Club’s description of the breed standard for Dachshunds (of all things!) which would apply to Herbie the cat, including…

Alayne took this photo of me removing the sutures from Carmel’s eyes this morning.  Carmel had gone blind from a corneal dystrophy that destroyed the corneas in both eyes.  The condition was extremely painful.  After consulting with a number of veterinary ophthalmologists, our vet Dr. Brenda Culver learned there was nothing we could do to…

Our two blind Poodle sisters, Molly and Priscilla, were due for a trip to the groomers, and I took them to Missoula today for an appointment I had scheduled a while back.  (Do you know it’s easier to get in to see a doctor or dentist or mechanic these days than it is a pet…

A wonderful friend of the animals at the ranch, Anne G. from Seattle, emailed me this morning to ask about Dusty.  Her note reminded me that I was overdue on an update on how blind Dusty was doing after his spinal stroke a few weeks ago.  Well, recovered he has — completely!  We were nothing…

Last Saturday night about 9:30 p.m., Alayne and I were putting the dogs up in the various cottages. This is quite the process, since there are 44 dogs, multiple buildings, and each dog needs to "do their business" before bedtime.  Typically we empty out our house first, then the smaller cottages next to the house,…

In our recent blog post about Wendy M. adopting Stoney and Baron, I had mentioned how Wendy said blind Stoney loved to jump in a nearby creek on their evening walks.  Well, Wendy emailed me these photos today, and I figured you’d enjoy seeing them.  Wendy wrote: "Here are a couple of pictures I took…