I took this photo late this afternoon, as Alayne and I were finishing up barn chores on a beautiful if brisk Thanksgiving Day.  The view is to the northeast, and the peaks you see are in the Scapegoat Wilderness, part of the enormous Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.  As the sun was dropping, so too was…

Cassie B. of Hamilton, Montana, who adopted our little blind dog Nevada a couple of months ago, emailed us the above photo of her yesterday, enjoying the same snow we got.  Cassie and her husband Brent renamed Nevada as Bindi, which I sometimes roll together now as "Nevindi."  Here’s how Cassie described the scene yesterday…

Yesterday evening, just as we were winding up barn chores, the rain of the past two days turned to snow.  And it snowed.  And snowed.  We woke up today to about 8 inches, and it continued throughout the day.  By tonight we probably had about 12 inches of snow.  I took the photo above of…

Our fabulous longtime volunteer, Laura B. of Helena, came out on Friday to adopt three-legged Kasha.  Now, Laura is not exactly new to adopting from the ranch — she’s adopted four animals already from us over the years.  That includes the little scamp she’s holding in her arms in this photo, Rudy.  He was only…

I took this photo late yesterday afternoon just outside my office.  That’s our old boy, Dillon, resting his chin on blind-and-deaf Blanca.  This still-growing Great Dane puppy is content to lay her big frame right next to another dog, even if it means half the bed space for each of them.  Dillon had been lying…

Alayne caught Daisy the rascally Dachshund about to chew up Mr. Caterpillar … again.  You may recall that back in July, Alayne caught Daisy chewing holes in Mr. Caterpillar’s head and pulling the stuffing all out.  But here she was once more, having hoisted Mr. Caterpillar up onto the cot to begin a new fluffy…

At feeding time this morning we found Lilah, one of our sighted horses, had cut her face open.  She had a deep wound right down the center, all the way to the bone.  A thick flap of skin hung loose.  Blood was everywhere.  In fact, even Patches, our other sighted mare who is Lilah’s buddy,…

After more than two weeks in our isolation cottage, Popeye the blind cat from Lebanon finally moved into the cat house this past weekend.  All of his tests came back negative — we ran titers on four different viruses — giving him a clean bill of health.  His CBC (complete blood count) profile and chemistry…

Friday started off with a trip to the small animal clinic in the morning, and ended with an emergency trip to the equine clinic that night. On Friday morning I drove the 70 miles east to Helena to drop off three animals at Montana Veterinary Specialists.  With me were blind Stoney the Lab, Belvie the…

I made a passing reference in a recent post about dragging the pastures, and one blog reader commented she didn’t know what that meant.  So this is what it looks like.  Alayne took the photo this afternoon while I was dragging our second-to-last pasture.  (Almost finished!)  The contraption on the back of the tractor is…