On Saturday our wonderful volunteer Laura B. from Helena picked up Brody and Nevada at the vet clinic and brought them out to us.  Joining Laura at the ranch to volunteer was her daughter Kate, who lives in Missoula.  Together they make volunteering a regular mother/daughter event … one drives east, one drives west, and…

One of the things we do here, in addition to directly taking care of 80 animals, is communicating our basic message that disabled animals can have a wonderful quality of life.  (Regular blog readers don’t need to be convinced of that, of course!) The biggest challenge we have is helping people in the horse world…

Many months ago I posted an item and a still photo about blind Widget "looming" over the other dogs until they give up their bed or chair to her.  Widget will quietly walk up to them, stand there motionless (except for her little tail bobbing), and stare intently at them.  (Hey, she’s blind, but a…

Alayne drove new arrivals Nevada the blind puppy and Brody the blind Lab to our vet clinic in Helena today.  We took these photos shortly before Alayne hit the road. Nevada is going in for an eye exam, general medical check-up, blood work and a spay.  We are a bit concerned about the chronic discharge…

We discovered several weeks ago that our blind foal, Cash, had a real thing for zippers.  Whenever I would finish feeding him his mare milk replacer in the bucket, he would lift his head up, wipe his dripping white mouth on me (we’re just "human napkins" for this two-month old foal), then keep moving his…

We had a little blind puppy arrive at the end of last week from the animal control shelter in Elko, Nevada.  She was born with no eyes in her head.  A young man found her by the side of the road and, thinking someone had injured her, took her to a vet clinic.  After the…

Alayne and I were doing some random videotaping yesterday afternoon, and I thought you’d enjoy this one-minute clip I shot when we walked into the front yard of Widget’s House.  There’s nothing in particular going on and it ends a bit abruptly, but it will give you a good idea of what some of our…

The daily medical treatments vary week by week here, but I thought I’d show you what we’re doing every day at the moment.  Usually our kitchen counter isn’t this neatly arranged, but for the purposes of the photo I figured I should organize everything.  What you see are most of the medications we dispense every…

My mistake, of course, was to add that last line in yesterday’s post … the one where I pointed out the very last patch of snow at the ranch.  I should have known better.  We woke up this morning to three inches of snow, the wind howling, and visibility less than 1/4 mile.  That meant…

I mentioned in last Thursday’s blog that I take Brynn’s temperature every morning, just before I give her rear end and back legs a warm, soapy sponge bath to deal with the residual urine drips.  Taking her temperature gives us an early indicator of any infection, and ever since coming back from surgery at Washington…