Our two new arrivals saw their respective vets today. This morning I took Timmy the paralyzed black Lab to our specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, for an evaluation.  Dave concluded that Timmy’s problem is neurological in origin and that he didn’t have any form of muscular dystrophy.  He also doubted that Timmy had cerebellar…

On Saturday morning I left before dawn with the horse trailer. It was dark, 14 degrees above zero, and an impenetrable freezing fog kept visibility to 20 yards.  I was headed to Spokane, Washington, to get a blind horse that a rescue group had just saved from slaughter.  On the way I stopped in Missoula…

We had just gotten up this morning, and I was in the office checking e-mails while Alayne went to make coffee.  Suddenly she called to me from the living room.  "Come look at this!," she said.  "Quick!"  I got up and dashed out of the office, and she motioned to me to come over to…

Alayne brought blind Cedar home from the vet hospital in Helena this morning.  He’d been there for several days, after having a tumor on his chest removed.  In the photo Alayne is pulling his skin up so you can see where the surgery was, just below her hand.  I thought the surgery site would be…

As I post this, Alayne is in Helena tonight hosting a table at an event called ‘Great Conversations.’  It’s an annual fund-raising dinner for the Helena Education Foundation.  They invite 45 people who are considered to be doing "interesting things" and ask them to host a table and lead a conversation about a topic of…

When we were putting all the animals up last night around 9:30 p.m., the snow was coming down steadily.  Sometime overnight the wind came up and started hammering the snow in sideways.  This morning every west-facing wall is covered in snow.  I took the photo at dawn today. You can see two of our horses,…

Our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, came out this afternoon to give the horses their fall shots and do some procedures.  First we did the shots and gave them their wormer while we were at it.  Then we turned to the procedures. In the first photo, Bill is testing the intraocular pressure (or IOP) on…

I had just driven up to the house this evening from a vet run to Helena when Alayne came out the back door.  She was in tears.  "Sugar just died!  She’s dead!," she kept saying.  I couldn’t believe it.  We’d only had this blind Springer Spaniel for a few months, and she seemed to be…

This is blind Levi, who just arrived this week from a rescue group in Seattle.  He had been found abandoned by a highway in eastern Washington, was picked up by animal control, and then scheduled to be euthanized.  Just in time some volunteers pulled him from the shelter and transported him to the private group…

Winter arrived last night with about 6 to 8 inches of beautiful, wet snow.  We knew this storm was coming, so we spent a good part of yesterday pulling all the horses in from pasture, installing heaters in their water tanks, and getting stalls ready.  When we got done late yesterday evening, all the horses…