Alayne and I were eating lunch when we looked over and saw blind Widget bobbing and weaving, trying to find a way off the chair she’d been sleeping on.  Now, we were somewhat incredulous, since she had just climbed onto that chair less than an hour before.  And this is a chair she has climbed…

Dear little Puff died suddenly this evening in our vet clinic in Helena.  Puff had come to us two years ago as a tiny, sickly 4-week old kitten.  She had been dumped by the I-90 frontage road near Drummond, Montana.  The woman who called us about her said that if we couldn’t take her, one…

I brought Copper Kid home from WSU today, and needless to say, he was glad to be back.  Even though he turned out not to be a candidate for surgery because the areas of spinal cord compression weren’t visible on the myelogram, I thought you’d like to see some photos from the procedure.  Kate F.,…

Ever since we lost our beloved old mule Lonesome George last year, Alayne and I have felt like something was missing around the ranch.  We felt, well, mule-less.  We didn’t realize it until he died, but George had turned us into ‘mule people.’  Amidst the hundreds of calls and emails to take animals over the…

On a Saturday evening a couple of weeks ago, our barn cat Ash came limping out of one the pastures, her right rear leg suspended in the air.  She was meowing in distress.  I picked her up and felt a large lump in her abdomen … something soft and very swollen.  Egads.  I called our…

We’ve spent the summer asking visitors to watch where they’re walking when we get up to the Widget’s House porch because of the whopping holes the dogs dig in the gravel.  Now, these aren’t "I’m-digging-because-I’m-bored" holes or "I’m-digging-because-I’ve-always-wanted-to-visit-China" holes. No, these are something entirely different.  These are "I’m-digging-because-I-want-a-firm-bed-in-a-hole" holes. Please note the very comfortable but…

Okay, so after a bad week, I figured it was time for something on the light side.  Fortunately, we had a candidate in blind Callie (although some might say she’s actually on the heavy side).  Alayne got this photo of Callie, she of the Plumpettes fame, enjoying one of her special upside-down deep sleeps.  Please…

Well, at least we tried. Our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, called last night at 11:30 p.m. to say Tonto had just died. Erin said she was surprised because he had come through the surgery so well and then recovered so quickly and easily from the anesthesia.  But in the end, it had all been…

Our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor at Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital in Missoula, called early this afternoon to say Tonto had taken a serious turn for the worse.  Given his symptoms and following further examinations, she concluded that he might have a nephrosplenic entrapment.  She explained that in the horse there is a ligament that…

It was shortly after 5 p.m. today when I noticed blind Tonto wasn’t eating his evening grain.  Uh oh.  In the several years we’ve had Tonto, I have never seen him not eat.  Then, before I could even say "colic," he sank to his knees in the corral.  And with that, my heart sank too. …