Our blog service went down last night and is still not fully functioning.  They brought up posts from last weekend while they’re trying to restore the service but more recent posts are only now, this evening, gradually coming back up.  They expect to have everything restored this weekend.  I tried to re-publish this week’s posts…

I drove into Missoula this morning to meet the old, blind Cocker Spaniel and be there for her medical exam with our specialist, Dr. Dave Bostwick.  When I arrived at the clinic, I found a small, plump, almost oval-shaped little girl.  She had a long, thick black coat that is raggedy and clearly in need…

Our go-everywhere volunteer, Jerry Black, drove down to Hamilton today to pick up an old, blind Cocker Spaniel that the Bitterroot Humane Association had called us about yesterday.  A motorist had seen this old girl stuck and floundering in a snowbank by the side of the road last week, in sub-zero weather.  This good Samaritan…

At least once a day, as I pass by Widget sleeping (yet again) on a bed in the living room, I tell her:  "Widget, get a job!"  Frequent blog readers will know we often wonder exactly what blind Widget does at night in her cottage, because all she does during the day in the house…

This is our volunteer Kathy G. from Missoula.  She’s a regular who comes out about every other Sunday to groom the horses, feed them treats, clean their stalls and fill their water tanks.  Kathy came out at noon today for her usual routine.  As you can imagine, the horses love it when she dotes on…

Alayne and I had a quiet Sunday, at least compared to yesterday.  On Saturday we moved and stacked 2.5 tons of hay with the help of friends and volunteers, adopted out little blind Ashley, troubleshooted and fixed a frozen 100-gallon water tank, and had eye surgery done on our blind mare Madison.  Today we did…

Liz S., our wonderful volunteer who went with me to Seattle for the equine vet convention earlier this week, came out to the ranch today to adopt little blind Ashley.  In the photo are Liz and her roommate Matt C.  Liz had been thinking about adopting Ashley for quite a while … in fact almost…

We ended up having to remove Madison’s eye today.  It turned out this blind mare had a ‘melting corneal ulcer,’ which is as painful as it sounds.  I told our vet, Dr. Bill Brown, it looked like someone had taken a small chisel and gouged out part of her cornea.  You could see the cornea…

Our blind mare Madison had a sudden flare-up in her left eye, as you can see from this photo.  I called our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown in Missoula, this afternoon to discuss initial treatment options.  The eye was too painful to try and treat in her regular stall, so Alayne and I put Madison…

When Liz and I left Seattle this morning, the truck thermometer read 40 degrees.  When I arrived at the ranch in Montana tonight, it was 32 degrees BELOW zero.  It was rather brisk unloading the truck! On the way back today, we stopped in Ellensburg, Washington to pick up a young cat with cerebellar hypoplasia. …