Rolling Dog Farm Blog

I headed to Helena bright and early this morning to take blind Briggs in for a recheck on his eye surgery, drop off blind Evelyn for a skin problem, and pick up three ladies — Duchess, Lady and a new arrival named Sweetie.  (More on them tomorrow!)

As you may recall, our vet Brenda Culver did an intrasclera implant procedure on Briggs, in which the internal contents of the eye are removed and a prosthetic — a silicone ball that looks like a small black marble — is placed inside the globe.  The cornea holds the prosthetic in place.  This procedure allows the blind animal to maintain their natural look with eyeballs.

Well, sort of "natural."  At the moment Briggs’s eyes are kind of a mottled black and red, and they still bulge out from the lingering effects of the glaucoma. This gives him an odd appearance that, combined with the cone he’s been wearing, makes him look as if he recently stepped out of a Martian spacecraft.

Typically the eyes become a blueish gray over time and shrink back to a normal size, and that should happen with Briggs, too.

But despite their current appearance, Brenda said Briggs’s eyes looked really good … and the red and black pigmentation is actually a healthy sign.  His eyes have reduced in size a bit already, and he can now — for the first time in what may be years — close his eyelids entirely over his eyes.

Because of how bulged out they were, the shrinking is causing some creasing on the surface of his cornea, so it looks a little rough.  To rule out any ulcers or holes in the corneal surface, Brenda stained his eyes and then used the blue light on her slit lamp for a closer examination:

(Do you think we have enough hands on that Beagle face?)

Brenda didn’t find any breaks in the cornea, so that’s good news, too.

Briggs thought this was going to be "Cone Independence Day" but alas, the doctor ordered that the cone stay on for another two weeks.  Brenda said we could remove it while he was being supervised, but it was too early to leave it off.  The surgery was four weeks ago, and we have about another two weeks to go before he can go cone-free.  So far, though, it looks like this eye surgery was a success.

While in Helena today I also had the studded snow tires taken off the truck and horse trailer, which of course only guarantees the imminent arrival of a spring blizzard!

The AARP just published this week a wonderful "package" of stories about the ranch on their AARP Bulletin Web site.  There is a story by freelance writer Sharon Peters, and then a companion multimedia slideshow by Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Mark Osler, who spent 3 days with us back in February.  AARP has also made available as downloadable screensavers some of Mark’s photos that appear in the slideshow.

To go to the main page for the story package, click here.

To go directly to the multimedia slideshow, click here.

I walked into the kitchen the other evening and looked over to see blind Widget doing "the Loom," as we call it.  This is where she stands and stares at another dog who is occupying a chair or bed she wants.  In this case, she’s focused on deaf Stuart.  She will stand there for what seems like an eternity … and in dog time, it probably is a long time … staring intently at the hapless victim.  There are a few dogs who are either too brave or, usually, too oblivious to notice her looming presence, but typically they wilt under the pressure and quickly give up the coveted spot.

Unfortunately for Widget, Stuart fell into the ‘oblivious’ category, which drives her crazy.  She simply cannot understand why the overpowering energy-field of the Loom doesn’t work on all dogs.  And in that first photo above, you can tell she’s not quite sure how this is going to work with Stuart, because her tail is down, signaling a lower level of confidence.  (A confident Widget has an upright, bobbing tail.)  Widget is also making soft growling sounds, which of course has zero impact on a deaf dog like Stuart.

But, principle demands that others bend to her indomitable will, so after one more of her "I’m warning you, pal" growls, she climbs up on the chair:

The next weapon in the arsenal is the ‘elevated Loom,’ which she is demonstrating here:

You can see that Stuart hasn’t moved an inch and is completely unfazed by Widget’s presence.  She senses this, naturally, and therefore ratchets up the pressure with the ‘in-your-face elevated Loom’ … the message here is, "What part of ‘That’s My Chair’ don’t you understand?":

Now, by this point I was really intrigued at how this stand-off was going to end … Stuart had totally ignored Widget through the entire process.  But then Alayne came through the back door and into the kitchen.  Stuart saw her, leaped from the chair and bounded off to greet her.  Widget put this one in the "win" column anyway — blind Beagle captures chair from deaf Beagle!

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Update on Duchess:  Little Granny came through her spleen surgery just fine today.  However, our vets discovered during the operation a growth on her liver that was not apparent on the ultrasound, so they removed it and are sending it in for a biopsy.

Blind Mitch, who came to us recently from a rescue group in Indiana, is back at the ranch from the vet hospital, still not neutered and with doctor’s orders for very restricted activity.  That’s because the routine testing we do on new arrivals found that he has a bad case of heartworms.  Our internal medicine specialist in Helena, Dr. Britt Culver, then did an echocardiogram to assess heart function, and learned that Mitch has a mild enlargement of his right atrium.  He is not in right-sided heart failure, but we definitely needed to treat him for the heartworms. 

Our primary care vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, put a sample of Mitch’s blood on a slide and popped it under a microscope to show me what we were dealing with.  There amongst the various cells was a tiny, thread-like, wriggling thing called a microfilariae, or baby heartworm.  And it was indeed moving around, just like a worm.  Ick.  Brenda said, "Wherever Mitch has blood circulating in his body, he has those things, because they are swimming in his bloodstream."

We also found out that Mitch has a thyroid problem, so he will need to be on thyroid medication for the rest of his life.

But the first order of business was to start tackling the heartworm infestation, so Britt began the course of treatment at the clinic — two doses, 24 hours apart, of a drug called melarsomine (brand name: Immiticide).  Because it’s possible to kill off too many adult heart worms all at once and have them clog up the pulmonary artery, where they live, dogs undergoing treatment need close monitoring immediately after the first couple of doses and then need to be on cage rest with very little activity for several weeks afterwards.

The heartworms put Mitch at risk for anesthesia, so his neutering will have to wait until he is heartworm-free.

(Speaking of which, we live in a heartworm-free area in our part of Montana.)

Needless to say, Mitch wasn’t too happy about being confined, but he was very happy when I let him out this afternoon so I could get some photos!

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In Other Medical News … The News Is Not Good

Our other vet at the clinic, Dr. Jennifer Rockwell, called Thursday night with alarming medical reports on our two old ladies who recently arrived, Duchess from California and Lady from Montana. Duchess had a complete blood panel last week before doing a dental, and the results were terrific.  Still, I worried that given her age, something might be amiss, so earlier in the week I asked Jennifer to have Britt do a general abdominal ultrasound scan of Duchess, despite the blood work.  (What happened to Dolly is haunting us.)  Well, it turns out the ultrasound showed a mass on her spleen, which has a 50/50 chance of being malignant.  But even if it were benign, it can still cause the spleen to rupture or bleed out, which would be fatal.

So Britt recommended we remove Duchess’s spleen right away, and her operation is scheduled for tomorrow, Monday the 14th.  Britt and Jennifer think that given her otherwise good health and sparkling blood work that she should come through the surgery just fine. 

The news on Lady was much worse.  She has a serious heart problem called mitral valve regurgitation, and is now on two different heart medications.  But her liver enzymes were elevated, and Britt’s ultrasound examination revealed nodules all over her liver, too — just like Dolly’s.  Oh, no.  Britt did a liver biopsy, and the results should be back early next week.  But the prognosis is not good.

Please keep both of these girls in your thoughts.

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On A Happier Note …

Etsy for Animals, a Web site where talented artists and craftspeople donate their work so the proceeds can go to animal welfare nonprofits, has picked the sanctuary as their Charity of the Month.  Please check out the beautiful works of art on the site!

Here are Molly and Priscilla, two blind Poodle sisters who arrived today from Fort Worth, Texas.  These two girls are so incredibly sweet.  They came to us in a round-about way from the same folks who sent us Creighton the blind Lab puppy.

While we were working out Creighton’s trip to Montana, Debbie L., who runs Southern Paws Standard Poodle and Small Breed Rescue in Vicksburg, Mississippi, mentioned that she had also taken in two blind Poodles and wasn’t sure she would be able to adopt them out because of their disability.  Debbie had one of the Poodles, Priscilla, and the other, Molly, was in foster care with Jennifer H. in Tallulah, Louisiana, across the state line from Vicksburg.  We offered to take the girls if they didn’t think they could place them. 

Molly and Priscilla had originally been rescued by a lady in Dallas/Forth Worth named Mary S., who had rescued several Poodles in the past.  Mary received an email back in January from another woman who told her about two matted, filthy female Poodles who had been turned in to the Fort Worth Animal Control shelter.  They were about to be euthanized, and this woman was trying to get them out before that happened.

Mary told me in an email, "I picked them up the next day and even though she had bathed them once, their smell of urine was so strong — I could barely have them in my car.  They were so horribly matted and nasty — ears infected, kennel cough, about 15 lbs underweight.  But they were so docile and happy to get out.  I don’t think they had ever been on grass — I think the puppy mill where they must have come from had just kept them in cages and let urine and feces sit in their cages and pile up till it just saturated their bodies.  When I got them to my vet, he discovered that they were both blind due to them bumping into every wall and door."

This is what they looked like at the Fort Worth shelter.  Can you imagine what these poor things had gone through to look like this?

Well, Mary got them groomed and fixed up, and after a month of caring for them at her house, she found Debbie who agreed to take them into her Poodle rescue.  So Mary had them transported from Dallas/Forth Worth to Debbie in Vicksburg.

Because of their size, the girls needed giant crates to fly to Montana, so Jennifer ordered the crates and we sent a check to her to pay for them.  But there was no way we could fly them out of the nearest airport in Jackson, Mississippi, because the airlines were only flying smaller regional jets there and these crates were too big.  That meant the Dallas/Fort Worth airport.

After hearing that the Poodle sisters were going to Montana, Mary offered to bring them back to her house and keep them until we could get flights arranged, and then she would get them to the airport.  On Monday this week, Mary met Debbie and Jennifer in Marshall, Texas, for the "Poodle hand-off," and she drove them back to Dallas/Fort Worth.  The girls had made a round-trip via Mississippi and Louisiana!

This morning at 6:15 a.m., Mary dropped Molly and Priscilla at the Northwest Airlines cargo facility at DFW and called to let us know they were on their way.  Now, the original plan was that they would fly to Minneapolis today, stay overnight at a boarding facility, and then fly out to Bozeman, Montana, tomorrow.  Northwest said they couldn’t get them here today because there wasn’t enough time to make the connecting flight. 

I was in Missoula shortly after 11 a.m. with three of our blind horses at the equine vet clinic when Alayne called me on my cellphone.  The Northwest folks in Bozeman had just called, alarmed, to say they had just found out that Northwest in Minneapolis had somehow put the girls on a flight today to Bozeman, and they were en route and scheduled to arrive at 1 p.m.!  And they knew we weren’t expecting them until tomorrow!

Egads. Bozeman is more than three hours from Missoula.  What’s worse, this being Montana, these small airports have so little traffic that the airline stations basically shut down between flights.  Northwest doesn’t have another flight arriving in Bozeman until 9:30 p.m., so they close at 2 p.m. and go home.  They don’t come back until that last flight comes in. 

The Northwest people in Bozeman realized the airline had screwed up, and they agreed to wait at the airport until I could get there.  So I hurriedly unhitched the horse trailer at the vet clinic, left the horses with our vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, and headed out on I-90 towards Bozeman.  I got there by 3 p.m.  The Northwest staff had already taken the girls out for a walk and … hopefully … to potty, but no such luck.

They helped me take them and their crates out to the truck, and then I tried to get the girls to go potty too … equally without luck.  They were very shy and timid, and not at all sure they wanted to get out of their crates in the first place.  Molly would walk with me on the leash but not Priscilla, so I had to pick her up and carry her out to the grassy area.  Molly would bury her face in my lap, her tail down but wagging ever so slightly.  Priscilla finally decided she wanted to follow her sister, so she’d press her face against Molly’s rear and walk along behind.

I loaded the crates in the truck bed, tied them down, and put the girls in the back seat.  They rode the rest of the way back to the ranch, curled up with each other, quiet as can be.  Only after we got here and turned them off leash did they finally pee!

Alayne took the photo of me with Molly and Priscilla after we got back to the ranch.  We were, I admit, really looking forward to them coming … we thought having a couple of Poodles would add a little class to the joint, you know?

Beagles can be very intense about two major things in life:  sleeping and eating.  (Fortunately our Beagles are spayed and neutered, so we don’t have to worry about the third major thing in life.)  I got this photo above of deaf Stuart sacked out in a chair in our living room.  There’s something truly debauched — or at the very least, self-indulgent — about the sheer sprawling nature of that sleeping position.

I thought, where have I seen this before?  And then I remembered I had posted a similar photo of blind Widget in late December, sleeping off too much Christmas cheer:

Different dog, different chair covering, same decadence.

We have another happy adoption to report!  Our wonderful, long-time volunteer Laura W. from Helena has adopted blind Levi.  This sweet boy is a cross between a black Lab and something large with a big fluffy, curly tail (Akita?  Husky?).  You can read his original story here.

Because he was beaten blind — his eyes had blood in them when he first arrived — dear Levi was quick to submissively urinate, usually with men.  He has become much better about this in recent years.  His biggest problem was actually his desire to jump on people, something we have worked with him on for a long time.  With that training he now knows he’s not supposed to jump, but sometimes the urge can just be too tempting to ignore!  But a firm "Off!" usually does the trick.  He so eagerly wants to please that he will try to do anything you ask.  And oh, how he adores people … despite what someone did to him.

Levi was one of our dogs who we always thought would definitely do better in a single-family home.  That’s because he could get over-stimulated in our environment, with lots of other dogs and activity.  He’d feed off the other energy, and get excited and barky and wound-up.  He was never aggressive — not for a moment, he’s absolutely the gentlest thing you can imagine — but when he got excited he’d become a bit too much.  Yet whenever we’d let him hang out by himself in Widget’s House, while one of us was in there cleaning or doing laundry, he’d settle down right away.  After a minute of exuberantly greeting his person, he’d go quietly lie on a dog bed and happily chew on a toy.  Thus we knew in a quieter environment he’d be a calmer, different dog.

We had him listed for adoption for over a year, in fact, but we only had a couple of calls on him.  One of those potential adopters asked us to see how he does with cats.  So we took him over to our welcome center and introduced him to our barn cat Spark … who promptly hissed and whacked him on the nose.  Levi had a very hurt look on his face — "Wait, I didn’t do anything!" — but then proceeded to ignore Spark.  No worries there.

Laura saw the "inner Levi" in this big handsome boy and decided to take him home for a test drive.  He became what we predicted — a much more mellow, quiet guy.  Levi got along really well with Laura’s small dog, April, and he even tries to get her cats to roughhouse with him by doing play-bows.  These are a couple of photos Laura sent us of Levi at her house.

The test drive went so well — as you can see! — that Laura emailed and said, "He definitely is a keeper!"  This past Saturday Laura dropped off Levi for daycare and overnight boarding at Camp Rolling Dog (as we call it for our adoptees who come back for a visit) while she was out of town, and then she came back Sunday afternoon to pick him up.  That’s when we made it "official" and I took the photo at the top of Levi with his new Mom.

Thank you, Laura!

We have tried to figure this out, but we’re just not sure why Bailey the Dachshund with the bad back loves to bury his head — and only his head — under something.  Whether it’s Mr. Orangutan the stuffed toy as above, or a comfy fleece blanket as below, Bailey likes to keep his head undercover.  Now, as a Dachshund he does like to sleep under blankets, but only for warmth, not to satisfy his Dachshund burrowing DNA.  It’s as if his DNA mutated just a tad so that the burrowing requirement is fully met by hiding his head, rather than his whole body.

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Thank you for all the wonderful, heartfelt comments everyone has posted on the blog about losing Dolly this past weekend and Snowball last week. Yes, we’ve had more than our fair share it seems.  We’ve lost almost as many animals in the past two months as we did in all of 2007.  We’d like to be done for a while!  But Alayne and I hope you know just how much we appreciate the condolences and kind thoughts everyone has shared with us.  Thank you. It means a lot.

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When Jayme J., a vet tech at our clinic in Helena who also comes out to groom our dogs, mentioned a week ago that her Mom was interested in adopting Tyler, my first reaction was, "Awesome!"  Her Mom, Karen M., had been coming out to volunteer her time helping Jayme groom, so we had gotten to know Karen and she had, over the months, gotten to know our deaf Pointer.

And getting to know Tyler means, inevitably, falling in love with Tyler.

Every time Karen was in Widget’s House, Tyler would spend as much time as he could pressing his body against her and getting as much loving as possible.  The last time she was here, a few weeks ago, Karen told me, "I just love that dog."  So when Jayme mentioned a possible adoption, I wasn’t all that surprised.

But my second reaction was, "Oh no!  There goes my blog material!"  Tyler is such a goofball, full of silly Tyler-esque antics, and he has given me many priceless "Tyler moments" for the blog over the years.  So I called Widget into my office and said, "Widge, if Tyler goes, you’re going to really have to step up to the plate, kid.  I’m going to need more material."  With typical Beagle bluster and bravado, Widget said "No worries.  I can out-produce that pointy-headed Pointer with one paw tied behind my back."

When Jayme, our other vet tech Heather, and Karen came out to groom yesterday, we knew Tyler would be leaving with Karen at the end of the day.  I took the photo of Tyler and Karen just before they left yesterday afternoon.  He is such a sweet, lovable dog, and we know Karen will be giving him a wonderful new home … but we also know that he will be coming back to visit on grooming days!

She was my girl, my first dog, my special one.  Dolly died in the early hours on Saturday morning.  She was 13 years old.  You can read her story that I posted on the blog last summer here.

Over the past couple of weeks Dolly started getting finicky about eating … some meals she would skip, others she would wolf down.  Sometimes she would eat just a little, and the next meal she’d clean her bowl.  Every now and then she’d throw up a little something … not a lot.  And then she’d seem fine for days.  She had diarrhea a few times, so we’d treat her for that and it would clear up.  But last Tuesday, when Alayne and I took her out for an evening walk, we watched Dolly pee in the snow and realized her urine was bright orange.  Uh oh.  Then, as we headed down the drive, she seemed tired and didn’t want to continue.  This was very unlike her.  In the setting sun, the light suddenly made her look like she’d lost weight.  Alayne and I looked at each other with a sinking feeling.  What was going on?

On Wednesday morning I called our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, and scheduled an appointment for Thursday morning.  On Wednesday, though, Dolly seemed her usual self again, bounding out the door, tail wagging.  She barked for her dinner, and ate everything in sight.  Still, we knew she had to be sick.

On Thursday I nervously watched the ultrasound screen as Dave ran the probe over her abdomen, checking her organs.  When the probe reached Dolly’s liver, I could immediately tell something was terribly wrong.  There were huge growths or nodules all over the liver.  It was hard to actually discern the outline of the liver for all the growths.

I said to Dave, "That doesn’t look good."  He said, "It’s not."  Dave explained that we were seeing one of two possible things.  The first was that those were tumors.  The second was that the growths were actually "nodules of regeneration," in which the liver was trying to grow new parts of itself in order to deal with chronic inflammation.  This would mean cirrhosis of the liver.

If those were tumors, there wasn’t anything we could do because they had essentially consumed the liver already.  If she had cirrhosis of the liver, we could treat her with steroids to reduce the inflammation, but she would only have months to live at the most. 

I held Dolly still as Dave used the ultrasound to guide a needle into her liver to get a biopsy sample.  The biopsy would tell us whether it was cancer or cirrhosis.  It would take 24 hours to get the results.  Dave also sent in her blood work.

I asked Dave how much time we had with Dolly.  He said we might have three days … or three months.  There was no way to know.  He explained that by the time you start seeing the symptoms of liver failure, it’s often too late.  And usually the symptoms are as vague and fleeting as what we’d seen … some inappetance, vomiting, and diarrhea … which can be and often are attributed to other causes. 

The liver — just like the kidneys — can do an incredible job of compensating for various "insults."  It uses up all of its reserves to deal with cancer or chronic inflammation … and when it finally reaches the tipping point, there are no reserves left, and the liver is spent.  From there it goes downhill rapidly.

How rapidly we were about to find out.

So as I headed over to Missoula Animal Control to pick up the little old blind Cocker mix, Lady, I was still trying to come to grips with Dolly’s diagnosis.  I had already called Alayne to let her know.

I had stopped at the Good Food Store in Missoula to pick up some groceries, and on the way back to the ranch Dolly happily ate the freshly baked oatmeal cookies I had just bought for her. 

But she wouldn’t eat her dinner Thursday night.  On Friday morning, she wasn’t interested in eating but she did drink water, and when we let her out in the morning she walked around the yard exploring like she always did.  But she threw up a little on her bed later that morning.  At noon she came out of my office to the kitchen to drink some more, and her tail was up.  We were encouraged.  But early that afternoon as I petted her, she felt warm, so I took her temperature … and it was 103.5.  Oh, no.

I called Dave, and he had me give her an injection of Baytril.  By late afternoon she didn’t look good … she was lethargic, and she started drooling … clear slimy stuff.  I was wiping her mouth with tissue when I looked over and realized she had just pooped out some orange, icky stuff.  Not poop at all.  I couldn’t even tell what it was.  She looked at me with sorrowful brown eyes, and I just started crying.  I knew what was happening.  Alayne came in and joined me on the floor next to Dolly. 

I called Dave at home, and it was about 6:20 p.m.  I said, "I don’t think she’s going to make it through the weekend.  What else can we do?"  He had just received the biopsy results … and it was a liver carcinoma.  Dave told me to go ahead and give Dolly an injection of dexamethasone, a steroid, because some cancers can be temporarily responsive to steroid therapy, but he didn’t hold out much hope that this would really help.

We couldn’t get Dolly to eat or drink Friday night.  I cooked up some spaghetti, her favorite food in the world, but she turned her head away when I brought it in to her.  She lay on the bed in my office, aware of what was going on but looking very tired.  Alayne and I sat there with her, and whenever I would get up to leave, she would lift her head and watch and wait for me to return.  Once I did, she would put her head back down on the bed.  I took the photo at the top of this post that night.

Alayne and I stayed with her until midnight.  We tucked her in and kissed her goodnight, and then went to bed.

I woke up at 4 a.m. to check on her.  I opened the office door and she didn’t move.  I bent down, put my hand on her, and I realized she was gone.  Oh, my sweet beautiful Dolly.  I walked back to the bedroom, woke Alayne up, and said, "She died."  Alayne started to cry.  She got out of bed and we both went back to my office to be with Dolly.  We cried and cried as we petted her and held her ears and stroked her legs.  We just couldn’t believe we could lose her this fast.  We were as much in shock as we were in grief.  But we were just relieved that she had died at home, peacefully, in her bed.

As Saturday morning dawned, Alayne and I held ourselves together as best we could.  We had a full day ahead with volunteers and groomers coming.  If there was ever a day we wanted to hide under the covers, this was it.  But we went about with brave faces on, trying not to let our emotions show.

We knew we had one final goodbye ahead.  Jayme J., a vet tech from our Helena vet clinic, was coming out to groom, and she was going to be able to take Dolly’s body back with her to the clinic for cremation.  At about 4:30 p.m., Alayne and I spent a few more minutes alone with Dolly in my office, and then we wrapped her in a thick fleece blanket.  I carried her out to Jayme’s Tahoe and laid her in the back.  Alayne and I kissed Dolly goodbye one more time, and then we held onto each other and cried as Jayme drove off.

Jayme was also taking back to the clinic the two old blind girls who had recently arrived, Duchess and Lady, who needed dentals, blood work, eye exams and other medical care.  And inside the vehicle was our deaf boy, Tyler, off to a new home with Jayme’s Mom (see next post.)

I wasn’t thinking of this at the time … all we could think about was Dolly.  But today I realized what an interesting collection of lives were in that vehicle yesterday … one beloved dog whose life just ended, and three dogs starting new lives.

Here’s what my beautiful girl looked like back in 1998 when we lived in Seattle, a few years after we adopted her:

Goodbye, honey.  We will always love you.