On Tuesday one of our vets from the Whitefield Animal Hospital, Dr. Nancy Lefavour, came out to do the annual exams and vaccinations on all the dogs and cats. In the large animal world, when a vet comes out to your place it's called a "farm call," but everyone seems to use this term whether you've got a ranch or a farm or are doing a bunch of small animals or a herd of horses. Our small animal vet in Montana, Dr. Brenda Culver, made these annual visits as well, and our clinic in Whitefield is carrying on the practice. We were set up in the dog wing for it, and Alayne would bring in each dog while I would hold them for Nancy.
When she wasn't shuttling dogs, Alayne was taking some photos during a few of the exams. In the one above, Nancy is checking out blind Samantha.
Here is blind and deaf Spencer getting a vaccination:
In this next shot I'm showing Nancy blind and deaf Spinner's eyes … she has an extremely rare condition called restrictive strabismus, something most vets have never seen before:
It's an eye muscle disease, and at the time we got Spinner, there was only one study in the veterinary literature on it — of a potential surgical fix for the condition. This was several years ago, and we tracked down one of the specialists who had participated in the study — a board-certified ophthalmologist and board-certified surgeon in San Diego, one of only two in the world then with the dual certifications. He agreed to try the experimental surgery on Spinner, and I flew her down to San Diego. Unfortunately, it didn't work, and she remains blind and deaf to this day, but she is still one happy girl.
Finally, here are Dexter and Widget outside the doctor's "office":
For a while it looked like they were comparing notes on what the doctor said about their respective conditions … "Say, what did the doctor say about you?" As we've reported before, Dexter has a serious case of CSH, a progressive ailment otherwise known as Canine Selective Hearingitis, while Widget has something as rare as Spinner's — BTIDB Syndrome, or Beagle-Trapped-In-Dachshund-Body Syndrome. Sadly, there is no known cure for either problem.
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Still 2nd place as of Thursday — but just barely!
Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge — the votes are adding up! And remember, you can vote every day, so consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.
You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.
Please note: Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.
It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000. So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals! Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too. Thank you!
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