Speaking of Beagles, here are a couple of lunchtime photos I took of deaf Stuart on the left and blind Widget on the right, snoozing together next to the dining table.  Oddly — especially for Beagles — neither one got up to demand our lunch. At some point their noses must have alerted them to…

Alayne and I spent the weekend trying to recharge our emotional batteries after losing Pepper on Thursday, and here’s one thing that really helped — wobbly blind Briggs arrived at the ranch this afternoon.  He has a true Widget-certified Beagle personality, and Widget’s same bossy, insistent, pay-attention-to-me-now attitude.  Stuart the deaf Beagle is not nearly…

Hope did not prevail in the end.  Our little blind Shepherd, the girl with the "perpetual puppy" look, died this afternoon.  We made the decision to let her go gently and with dignity.  The MRI images showed that a tumor at the base of her brain had obstructed the flow of the fluid that normally…

I met with Pepper’s neurologist, Dr. Fred Wininger, at WSU’s veterinary teaching hospital a short while ago to review his initial assessment of Pepper. She is, he said, “a very sick girl.” Dr. Wininger spoke this morning with our primary care vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, about the sequence of events leading up to the seizures,…

I arrived at Washington State University’s veterinary teaching hospital at 2:30 a.m. last night. When I had picked Pepper up at our vet clinic in Helena about 8 p.m., she was completely out of it … from a combination of the drugs to control her seizures and, I’m afraid, from what the seizures have done…

I’m leaving right now for Helena this evening to pick up blind Pepper at our vet clinic and rush her to Washington State University’s veterinary teaching hospital tonight.  Pepper began having seizures yesterday about 6:30 p.m. — this after healing up from her abscess and being ready to come home.  Pepper seemed to respond to…

That’s blind Babe on her favorite spot in winter, atop the snowbank that forms from the snow sliding off the Widget’s House roof.  We turn the dogs out for exercise in small groups in several different yards adjacent to Widget’s House; in Babe’s yard you see blind Allie the black Lab, Shiloh in the center…

Trooper, the adorable Lab/Hound mix who arrived from Louisiana back in December, is finally ready for surgery.  Judging from the number of emails I’ve received from people asking how he’s doing, I realize I have been remiss in not posting any updates on him since he came.  But he is doing just great, and that…

On the way back from taking Trooper and Popeye to the vet in Helena today (see post above), I decided to take some photos of the road home — during the last 10 or so miles, from just north of Helmville on Montana Highway 141 all the way to the ranch.  So here’s a quick…

It was a happy ending that wasn’t.  In fact, it ended tragically. That’s Luke in the photo, a blind hound in a rural Virginia animal control shelter.  The day he started his journey to a new life here in Montana turned out to be his last day.  It really doesn’t get worse than this. A…