Rolling Dog Farm Blog

One of our supporters, Steffanie G., had seen an appeal from an animal rescue group in Beirut, Lebanon.  The group, called Beirut for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or BETA, was planning to fly a dozen or so cats to the U.S. for placement in mid-October, and they were looking for homes for them.  (Best Friends in Utah had helped BETA bring 300 dogs and cats to the U.S. last year.)  One of the cats was blind, and Steffanie wanted to know if we’d be able to take it.  His name was Popeye.

Now, we’re of the view that there are enough disabled animals right here in North America that desperately need help.  Every week we have to turn down anywhere from four to ten animals — and sometimes, in a really bad week, far more — because we’re at our "manageable" limit of 80 disabled animals.  But Beirut was one of the (many) places overseas I spent my childhood, and I was impressed with the effort BETA was making to find homes for its animals … so we agreed to take Popeye.

Two weeks ago, a BETA member named Maggie flew to Boston with the cats in tow.  A wonderful lady in Providence, Rhode Island, Sue T., had arranged to give Maggie and feline crew a place to stay on arrival.  Sue held on to Popeye for us until we could fly him out to Montana on October 16.  Then the day before his flight out West, he became sick with an upper respiratory infection, and Sue rushed him to her vet.  With some medications and a lot of loving care from Sue, Popeye became much better quickly, and we rescheduled his trip for the following week.  On Tuesday the 23rd, Sue drove Popeye to the Providence airport to catch his flight, only to discover that the outbound flight had been canceled.  So then I made new reservations for this Saturday.  (Third time’s a charm.)

Yesterday morning Sue headed to the airport again with Popeye, and this time everything worked just fine.  Popeye flew from Providence to Atlanta and then to Salt Lake, and finally to Missoula on the last Delta flight of the night.  I picked him up at the Missoula airport about 11:30 p.m.  Popeye thought it was insanely cold when I carried him out of the terminal to the truck — yet it was a balmy 33 degrees.  I said, "Middle Eastern boy, this is nothing, just wait!"  When we arrived back at the ranch around 1 a.m., it was 17 degrees.

In anticipation of Popeye’s arrival, we moved Tibby and Fibby out of the isolation cottage and into the cat house yesterday.  We spread blankets on the floor, and the two youngsters are doing well … everyone’s getting along splendidly.  The wobbly brothers, Smokey and Charlie, also moved out yesterday, and are now happily dancing and prancing with the rest of the gang who stay at our house with Alayne and me.

Thus Popeye spent his first day at the ranch in the bright and sunny iso cottage.  He’s not yet sure where he is and what’s happened, but he was quite comfortable in my arms when we took the photo above.  He has keratitis, which is an inflammation of the cornea.  His eyes are an odd blue/gray, which you should be able to see in the photo.  I’m concerned he may have something else going on in addition to the keratitis, because his eyes look larger than normal.  So he will get a complete ophthalmology work-up by our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, at Montana Veterinary Specialists in Helena.

Thanks to several kind and compassionate people — Steffanie, Sue, and the BETA folks — Popeye is ready to start his new life in Montana!

(Click on photo for larger image.)

I hauled a trio of blind horses into Missoula today to see Dr. Erin Taylor at Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital.  Laddie, shown above, was one of the horses making the trip.  He needed to see Erin for a couple of reasons.  He has a lingering lameness problem in his front left leg from an arthritic knee; Erin had injected his joints with cortisone a few months ago, and that had really helped.  In the past few days, however, he had developed a pronounced limp in that leg.  Of course, by today when it was time to visit with his doctor, he wasn’t limping at all.  (Just like taking your car to the mechanic, you know?)  Because you want to use the steroid injections only when absolutely necessary, and keep the intervals between treatments as long as possible, Erin recommended we continue monitoring Laddie, use an anti-inflammatory (bute) to keep him comfortable, and see how he does.

The other issue with Laddie was a suspicious, abnormal growth on his left eyelid that we noticed yesterday.  Because of his coloring, he’s at greater risk for skin cancers, so we wanted to have Erin remove it and send it in for a biopsy. 

In case you’re wondering, Erin is not choking dear old Laddie in that photo at the top.  She’s tying off his jugular vein as she injects a sedative into him.  Laddie needed to be thoroughly sedated before Erin could cut the growth out of his eyelid.

In this photo Erin is scrubbing his eye while Julia, one of the vet techs at the clinic, holds Laddie still.

Laddie is truly one of the sweetest, gentlest horses we have.  He’s also the smartest horse at the ranch.  He can a) open doors, b) turn gate handles, and … we learned to our chagrin … c) even unhook the safety latches we installed once we learned about his ability to do ‘a’ and ‘b’.  These are all the things we tell people that blind horses don’t do.  But he is the only one we’ve known who can do them, so I think this is a case of the exception proving the rule.  (Maybe.)  Meanwhile, Laddie has repeatedly earned the nickname we gave him early on, Laddie the Lock-picker.

The other two horses making the trip were Darby, also in for a recheck on a lameness issue, and her sidekick little Brynn, who was along only to keep Darby company.  (Translation:  Keeping Darby mellow.)  Brynn enjoys Darby’s friendship but wasn’t sure why she had to tag along for the ride to the clinic, since she’s spent more time in veterinary hospitals in her first year of life than the average horse spends in an entire lifetime.

This is three-legged Kasha, our Shepherd pup who arrived a few months ago from Spokane Animal Control after having surgery to remove what was left of her rear leg.  Someone had chopped her foot off.  She recovered well from her surgery and has really blossomed into a beautiful girl.  (Although the ears can be a bit ridiculous!)

She’s also blossomed into a wannabe pack leader.  She’s trying to become the alpha at Widget’s House, and her bossy new attitude isn’t going over well with the other dogs.  There’s only one alpha or pack leader here, and that’s us — and the other dogs know it.  Thus they’re confused about why Kasha is trying to assert herself.  So we’re working with Kasha on this.  We won’t let her get away with bossy behavior towards the other dogs.  We also reinforce her position as a regular member of the pack … for instance, by having her sit and stay along with everyone else before coming through the door, and then making her wait until the others have come in first.

Kasha’s young, she does have a dominant personality (but not aggressive by any means), and she’s trying to figure out where she fits in.  So this is all part of her testing the other dogs, and us, to find out.  She’s learning that this leadership thing is more complicated than she first thought!

Her best friend has turned out to be Travis, our dog with a fused jaw.  Travis is also, like Kasha, a very sweet dog with a dominant personality.  We joke that the fused jaw was nature’s way of protecting him from himself.  He really thinks he’s a tough guy, despite the fact that he can’t open his mouth and looks like a clown much of the time!  So when I see Travis and Kasha roughhousing in the yard together, I like to think they’re practicing their leadership skills on each other.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

After little Brynn came to us as a blind 5-day old foal in the summer of 2006, we tried to buddy her up with blind Lena, our Queen Bee mare who raises the blind foals that arrive at the ranch each year.  Even though Lena would seek her out and stand next to her, trying to kindle a relationship, Brynn showed no interest.  Nor was she interested in our other blind youngsters, Nikki and Destiny.  She’d park herself in the corner of the corral by herself, or wander around aimlessly, never looking for company.  For a horse, that’s odd behavior.

We weren’t dealing with ‘orphan foal syndrome’ here, in which a foal is taken away from its mare very early and then bonds with its human caregivers, only to forget it’s a horse.  Brynn’s mom came with her and nursed her until Brynn was four months old.  Even so, Brynn and her mom weren’t particularly close.  When it came time to wean Brynn, her mom never even looked back as we led her away.  Amazingly, Brynn never whinnied a "where are you?" call as her mom’s hoofsteps retreated towards the waiting trailer.

But Brynn did bond with people and loved all the attention she got from the two-legged herd at the ranch.  She just didn’t connect with other horses. 

When blind baby Cash arrived at four weeks of age this past winter, we thought he would be a perfect companion for Brynn.  Smaller and younger, maybe he would make her feel more comfortable.  No dice.  She fled from him. 

So we gave up trying to be the Match.com of the horse world, and resigned ourselves to having a blind foal who liked to be by herself.

Meanwhile, we had a big, brawny blind mare named Darby arrive.  She’s the one whose painful glaucoma eyes we had to remove recently.  We had paired Darby up with another blind mare named Honey.  She’s the one with some, um, personality issues who we just had spayed to help with an "attitude readjustment."  Darby came to love Honey and was obsessive about being near her, frequently hovering right next to her.  She would become almost uncontrollable if we separated them.

Honey, for her part, bonded with Darby, but she did not like being crowded.  And she had a bit of a mean streak, so she frequently would turn on Darby and let loose with her hooves.  This behavior got worse over the past few months, and Darby became increasingly neurotic.  She had this overwhelming, almost fatalistic, need to be as close as she possibly could to Honey, but she feared getting kicked at any moment.  Darby would edge ever closer to Honey, and then tremble and flinch at the blow she knew was eventually coming.  But separate her from Honey, and she would become agitated and start thrashing around, banging her head.  It had become a completely dysfunctional relationship.

We knew we had to do something. 

So the day I took Honey in to be spayed, Jeanne H. — our part-time employee who helps us care for the horses — had a flash of pure inspiration.  She put Darby in with Brynn and then watched what would happen.

It was, as they say, love at first sight.  (Not with two blind horses, but you get the idea.)  They sniffed each other, then quietly stood side by side.  No squealing or other "getting to know you" antics.  A few minutes later they put their heads down and began munching hay together in the feeder.  (Honey would never let Darby anywhere near food or she’d kick her, so we always had to tie up Honey at mealtime.)  Darby visibly relaxed, and by mid-day these two were actually taking hay out of each other’s mouths.  Why, I don’t know, but it’s a sure sign of absolute bonding.  Darby is probably 20 years old, Brynn just over a year old, yet the age difference didn’t matter at all.  Physically they couldn’t be more different either, with Darby towering over Brynn.

It’s been just a few weeks, and Darby is a new horse.  Although she’s completely dependent on Brynn for companionship, she’s no longer neurotic about it.  She doesn’t have to worry about getting kicked.  She finally found the gentle soul she so desperately wanted in a friend, and someone who treats her with kindness and respect.  (Hey, isn’t this what we all want?)  And Brynn finally found the buddy she needed but didn’t, until now, know she needed.

So there they are, big Darby and little Brynn.  We call them the "odd couple," and for them, this relationship sure seems to work.

As for Honey, we’d like to take out a singles ad on an equine dating site that says, "Attractive foundation Quarter Horse mare, seeks friendship in strong male or female companion who won’t take no for an answer.  Learning to share the good things in life.  Not perfect but becoming better.  Love to go for strolls in pasture together."

Here are Tibby and Fibby, the two kittens with deformed back legs who first came to us back in August — and as you can see, they have been growing a lot!  Tibby, the little girl on the left, is still by far the smallest of the pair, but proportionately she is keeping up with her brother as they grow.  We still have them in our isolation cottage, which is now turned into a nursery of sorts for these two.  We haven’t moved them to our cat house yet for two reasons.  One, we want them to be bigger before they meet the rest of the feline gang; we’re a bit concerned that blind Bobby might pick on them when they’re this small.  (Hey, just because you’re blind doesn’t mean you can’t be a brat.)  Two, the cat house floor is linoleum, and we don’t know how they’ll do because of their legs.  So we’re going to ease them into it.

For now, they are very happy where they are, and they get all sorts of interesting company coming through.  For instance, the wobbly brothers, Smokey and Charlie, are the newest overnight guests in the cottage, dancing around in their crates.  Tibby and Fibby look at those crates rocking back and forth in wide-eyed amazement.  During the day, Tibby and Fibby sit just inside the open door — the door sill is about 8 inches above the cottage floor, and about a foot higher than the ground outside, keeping the kittens in and the puppies out — and watch with similar amazement as Smokey and Charlie do the cha-cha-cha across the isolation yard.  "Wow, those guys can really rock!," they seem to be saying to each other.

Although I try hard to maintain a ‘professional environment’ in my office, the fact is it’s widely viewed by the dogs as simply another playroom.  Or bedroom.  Or … wrestling ring.  Not too long ago I posted a video clip of blind Widget roughhousing with blind-and-deaf Baron in my office.  Well, they went at it again.  (It’s amazing I get any work done in here.)

The advantage to having these contests occur in my office is that I keep the cameras parked on my desk, so my ringside seat makes it easier to whirl around and capture these on film.  You’ll notice Baron displaying some new and impressive moves in this bout, while Bailey makes yet another guest appearance at the very end.  (Bailey’s beginning to remind me of those guys who get so worked up at sporting events that they have to climb down from the stands and run onto the field.)

So here’s the second round of Widget vs. Baron in 90 seconds of video:

Our small animal vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, called this morning just before going into surgery on Ellie May to let me know that she was about to begin, and would call me once Ellie May was through the operation and recovered from anesthesia.  About 11:30 a.m., the phone rang again and it was Brenda, saying Ellie May had come through the surgery just fine.  She did so well under anesthesia that Brenda was able to do a full dental as well. 

We’re planning on picking up Ellie May tomorrow and bringing her home!

Alayne took a truck full of dogs over to our vets in Helena at Montana Veterinary Specialists today.  On board were Shiloh, for his repeat chemotherapy (it went well); blind Dusty, to have sutures removed from the surgery to resect a tumor on his lip (healed up fine); blind and deaf Blanca for a recheck on a skin condition (getting better but needs another lime sulfur shampoo, which leaves her and us smelling like rotten eggs); and little Ellie May, the blind and deaf Cocker I wrote about yesterday.

In the photo above, Dr. Brenda Culver is using a slit lamp biomicroscope to examine Ellie May’s eyes.  The slit lamp is a specialized microscope that allows the doctor to have a three-dimensional, magnified view of the structures inside the eye.  There are very few regular vets who would have this kind of ophthalmic instrument; typically it’s only veterinary ophthalmologists who have it.  Although Brenda is our primary care vet, she has a special interest in ophthalmology … which is why she is so good at it!

As we expected, Ellie May’s eyes are indeed painful.  Brenda used a Tono-Pen to check the intraocular pressure, or IOP, in each eye.  That’s what she’s doing in this photo.  Normal eye pressure in a dog is between 12 and 25 mm Hg (units of mercury), and Brenda found Ellie May’s readings were in the 40s.  (This is what I got when I used our own Tono-Pen on Tuesday to check her eye pressure.)  That is painful.  Brenda compared it to living with a throbbing, permanent headache that just keeps pounding away.

Although I suspected Ellie May had glaucoma — and she does — what surprised me was Brenda’s diagnosis of why she has glaucoma.  It turns out that Ellie May’s longstanding (or "hypermature") cataracts are starting to break down.  Ordinarily you’d think this might be a good thing, but it’s not.  As Brenda described it to me tonight, "When this process takes place, it causes a severe inflammatory response (lens induced uveitis). The inflammatory cells circulating in the anterior chamber start to clog up the filtration angle and cause a secondary glaucoma."  Because the fluid in the eye can no longer drain out through the filtration angle, pressure builds and builds inside the eye … and that’s when you get glaucoma.  So now you have three problems in the eye … cataracts, uveitis, and glaucoma.

Because Ellie May is blind and because those eyes are painful, the best course of treatment is to surgically remove them.  We ran blood work today and everything looks good, including her kidney values.  Her heart sounded fine.  Her urinalysis also came back normal.  Ellie May’s teeth were in bad shape, so she’ll get a dental, too.  The best news is that Brenda thinks Ellie May is younger than we thought … perhaps only 10, rather than 14.  All in all, Brenda believes Ellie May is a good candidate for surgery, and so we have her eye operation scheduled for tomorrow, Friday. 

Of course, we’re going to be total nervous wrecks until we get the phone call saying Ellie May is out of surgery and awake … so please keep your fingers crossed for this adorable little Cocker.

Just when you think you’ve got an animal figured out, they start doing something new.  Take Blanca, our blind-and-deaf Great Dane puppy, for example.  Just in the past week I noticed she was beginning to sleep in ways that left her neck and head at peculiar — I would say uncomfortable — angles.  She likes dropping her head over the edge, which makes her neck almost look like it’s made of rubber.

What’s truly odd about the photo above is that she had the entire sofa to stretch out on if she wanted to do so.  But instead, she curled up at one end and dropped her head over.  Folks, don’t you think that would eventually reduce — if not cut off? — the circulation to your head?  I don’t know, maybe that induces a deeper sleep.

Here’s another shot of her, this time on a too-small bed with head parked on the floor.  Notice the strategically placed duckie-toy wrapped around her nose.  I don’t know if Blanca had been playing with this before she fell asleep, or whether it was already on the floor by the bed and she pushed it out when she put her head down.  Maybe this position is to allow increased blood flow to her head, to compensate for Position A above.

And finally, there was this shot.  Again, notice the cot is too small — there is a pattern here — with the head dropped off the edge.  The other pattern you’ll notice from these photos is that it always seems she does this on the left side of her neck.

The mysteries of life with dogs.

Here’s our little old gal who arrived over the weekend … Ellie May the blind-and-deaf Cocker Spaniel.  Ellie May’s owner just died in a small town here in Montana, and Robin M., the personal representative or executor of the estate, called to ask if we could take in this sweet girl.  Given her age and disabilities, Ellie May was not a candidate for a local shelter.  The dog’s vet had told Robin that she should simply euthanize Ellie May, which she did not want to do.  Robin told me over the phone, "This little dog is still full of life, how could I do such a thing?"

So Robin drove Ellie May out to the ranch.  After they got out of the car, I kneeled down to pet Ellie May … and that’s when I noticed her eyes.  Oh, my.  They looked awful.  Both were red and inflamed.  Her right eye bulged.  Her left one didn’t look much better.  I realized this old girl had been living with painful eyes for years.  I asked Robin if the vet had given her any medications or said anything about the condition of Ellie May’s eyes.  No, she said, the vet hadn’t mentioned anything at all.  I was astounded.

I explained what I was seeing — the vascularization, the bulging — and what I thought it indicated.  Here’s what the right eye looks like.  I told Robin that if the eyes are as painful as I think they are, our vets might end up having to do surgery and remove them … but this poor dog needed treatment, one way or the other.  Robin, bless her heart, wrote out a check right then and there to pay for Ellie May’s medical care.

We worried how Ellie May would do.  She’s probably 14, her owner had just passed away, she was uprooted from the only life she knew, and suddenly she was at the ranch.  Oh yes, and she can’t see or hear a thing.  She was very anxious her first day, and we cuddled her a lot.  She trembled in our arms, and Alayne and I would take turns holding her, but after a couple of hours she started gaining confidence.  By that first evening she was eager to have treats and she wolfed down her dinner.  We were relieved, because there’s no better sign of coping than that! 

She was quick to find her way around the house, and then the yard.  Ellie May would follow either me or Alayne wherever we went, and she never wanted to be separated from us … but by today she was already snoozing on her own in the living room.  She wags her little stump of a tail whenever she realizes we’re close by, and this afternoon she was even rolling around on the living room sofa.

I called our small animal vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, today to discuss Ellie May and get her scheduled for an eye exam, blood panels, and the complete geriatric work-up.  We’re taking her in on Thursday to see Brenda, and we will make further medical decisions based on what Brenda finds. 

Meanwhile, we’re trying to keep Ellie May as comfortable as we can, and she seems to be settled into her routine.  Today she let me know when she needed to go outside to potty, which just amazed me.  Here she is, completely blind and deaf and old, and yet she’s figured out already — in just two days — how to find the front door and communicate she has to go pee.  A short while later, I found her on the front step, waiting to come back inside.  She’s one smart little girl.

(Click on photos for larger image.)