Widget is a little upset that I only show her on the blog sleeping … as if that’s the only thing she does. Although truth be told, she LOVED all the "princess and the pea" comments from Monday night’s post. I said, "Widget, these nice folks think you’re a princess!" But she’s concerned that her fans see her only as a sleeping beauty type. So here’s what she does when she’s not sleeping — I captured this yesterday afternoon on video in a 45-second clip:
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Yesterday our neighbor who grows our hay for us, Bob R., brought over the first load to store in our new hay barn. If that building doesn’t look finished, it’s not! The metal roof started going on today and is now half done, and should be complete by the end of tomorrow. Then the metal sides will go up on the walls. We wanted to use wood siding to match the other barns, but for a building this size — 100′ x 32′ — it was just prohibitively expensive. The roof will be green and the walls white, so it will actually match our house. (Hey, at least it matches something.)
This is how Bob brings the load over … one big 6-ton stack at a time on his hay wagon. That piece of equipment actually scoops up the bales from the ground in the hayfield first and then arranges them in a stack on the wagon bed. By the time Bob is done driving around the hayfield, he has six tons of square bales — 160 bales total — neatly picked up and stacked on the bed. In this photo Bob is backing up to the rear wall of the barn. He will power the bed hydraulically so it rises up vertically, tilts back, and then gently sets the stack on the ground.It’s the same idea as a dump truck, in effect. Once the stack is in place on the ground, Bob drives forward and the row of tongs slide out from underneath the stack.
We have needed a hay barn of our own for a long time, and this one will easily store our entire hay purchase, which is 125 tons this year. This barn will be almost completely filled when the last load is brought in. You can see why this hay wagon sure beats stacking all that hay by hand!(Click on photos for larger image.)
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It seems it’s been a while since I posted one of those "blind Widget sleeping" photos, and then this scene presented itself in the living room the other morning. We’re always doing loads of laundry — about six loads a day on average, and that’s just in our house, not counting the laundry at Widget’s House (well, the other Widget’s House). But for some reason we can get the laundry through the washer and dryer faster than we can fold it and stack it and take it out to the animal cottages, so we pile up the clean bedding on the chairs in the living room (and dining room and … oh never mind).
As you can imagine, these mounds of freshly laundered bedding are the perfect opportunity to make your bed just the way you want it. So the enterprising dogs (and we have many) climb up into the chairs, stir the bedding around until they create the sweet spot, and then they settle in. And in. And in.
For instance, in this photo there are at least three West Paw Nature Nap beds visible under Widget, along with a fleece blanket on top. But there’s another 12 inches of bedding underneath her, because she’s perched about halfway up the height of the back of the chair. I hope this was, in fact, soft enough for her.
Now if only they’d help us fold the laundry.
(Click on photo for larger image.)
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I took these photos of Bailey at mid-day today in his favorite shady spot. The thermometer on the back porch in the shade said it was 102; our LaCrosse Technology wireless weather station was reading 106 in the sun. No matter how you slice it, it was blazing hot out there. Yet Bailey can’t get enough of it! He would rather be sitting under the leafy cottonwood right outside our house than inside the air conditioned house.
And he is a bit nutty about this. He will finally come in, only to turn around 5 minutes later and scurry outside again as soon as I open the door to let another dog out to go pee. On days like this, I actually have to use my feet to block Bailey at the doorway to keep him inside when I think he’s been out too much. His shady spot is right by the front steps, so we keep a careful eye on him whenever he’s out there. After a while we’ll go and scoop him up and bring him into the house, whether he wants to come or not (and he doesn’t, which is why we do it!).He doesn’t like to be in direct sun on hot days, but he clearly loves the heat, and as long as he’s got some shade, that’s where he wants to be!
(Click on photos for larger image.)
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Alayne left for Kansas today to visit her parents for a week. This might be the end of the world as far as old, deaf Oscar is concerned. He is Alayne’s ultimate minion — a minion’s minion, I might even say — who worships the ground she walks on and literally follows her everywhere. He can’t bear to be separated from her for a minute. And he has absolutely no use for me at all when she’s around.
(I just looked up the definition of minion: "An obsequious follower or dependent; a sycophant." It fits him perfectly.)
So if she’s not here, he’s glum. He’s down. He’s depressed. And there’s nothing stoic about his malaise, believe me. No, sir. He wants you to know just how pathetic he’s feeling. So he sits on the cushion in her office, staring out the window forlornly, waiting for Alayne to show up. He makes furtive glances in my direction, sighs, then turns back to the window. "Oh, it’s just you," he seems to be saying. I’m chopped liver.
This goes on for three days. (I’ve seen this movie before.) I rarely see him. He’s either in her office or under the covers on the bed, feeling sorry for himself.
Then, sometime during day three, he begins to realize that maybe … just maybe … Alayne might not be coming back. He starts thinking through the implications. That I might be the only meal ticket he’s got, his only defender and protector. That I’m only one who can be relied on to feed him twice a day. That I’m the only one in the house with thumbs and who can turn door handles to let him out. Maybe the guy with the beard isn’t that bad … he is dependable, after all, he’s here every day.
By the end of day three he’s beginning to look at me as if I might matter. Or at least be good for something.
On day four he begins hanging out with me. He wants to strike up a friendship. He checks out where I am. Shows actual interest in me. "Why, Oscar, it’s the new you!," I say to him, not fooled for a second.
By day five he’s my best buddy. I have a minion of my own now. Who knew?
Then, at the end of the week, Alayne will drive up, walk into the house, and Oscar rushes from my side. He goes nuts. He jumps up and down at her feet, barking, tail wagging, it’s the happiest day of his life (again). "See, she came back, I just KNEW it!!!"
And I’m chopped liver again. I go over to kiss my wife hello and Oscar gets between us, looks up at me and growls. "Grrrr!"
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it goes.
(Click on photo for larger image.)
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The Great Falls Tribune had a terrific story on the ranch in the paper yesterday. They carried a "teaser" photo and lead on the front page that said "The Rolling Dog Ranch: Ovando ranch provides rehab and love for disabled animals."The story ran on the cover of the life section, and this is what it looked like. We got the paper in the mail today and I scanned in the page.
You can read the online version of the Tribune story here.
I especially liked the opening line: "Love is blind. It can also be deaf, incontinent and might not walk quite right."
In the photo of Alayne hugging the three dogs, that’s blind Bud on the left, blind Penny in the foreground, and deaf Tyler the English Pointer on the right. In the online edition they use the same photo, but in a larger form.
In the photo of the horses — which was used as the teaser on the front page — that’s blind Destiny on the left and blind Nikki on the right.
The article continued on page 2 and featured a photo of blind Willie, our Beagle who hadn’t been adopted yet when the reporter visited the ranch.
(Click on photo for larger image.)
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Alayne took this photo of Brynn and me right after we arrived back at the ranch this evening. I didn’t have my camera with me this morning when Brynn was discharged from the veterinary teaching hospital at WSU, but we had both surgeons, the senior vet tech, and the 4th-year vet student on hand to send her off. The surgeons are cautiously optimistic that this surgery will work and finally clear up her urinary leaking problem, but only time will tell. (I did ask whether Brynn came with a 100,000 mile warranty for this operation.)
Part of the problem is that even in her vaginal vault, where the surgeons constructed the urethral extension, her body structures aren’t quite normal. That presents challenges in building the urethral extension, which is made from her own body tissue.
Her echocardiogram showed no further changes in her heart, which indicates she probably did not have a heart infection after all. Instead, it means her heart valves are, like much of the rest of her, malformed, too. But on the positive side, even though she had grown considerably since her last echocardiogram, those valves had not changed in shape or condition, so her heart is not actually getting worse. (Hey, I’ll take good news wherever I can find it!)
Brynn turned one year-old last month, proving that this little filly continues to defy the odds.
And, like me, she was glad to be home!
(Click on photo for larger image.)
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I got this shot yesterday of old, blind Scout having a great roll in the pasture behind Beauty’s Barn. Scout has Cushing’s disease (for which he gets his apple-flavored pergolide medication every day), has more gums than teeth, and needs lots of equine senior grain to maintain his weight. Going out to pasture is more for exercise than nutrition, because his old-man’s teeth don’t allow him to actually chew and swallow grass (or hay) any longer. But he still tries, and most of it ends up as big, green wads of wet grass, strewn across the ground. His buddy blind Tonto is exactly the same way. You can always tell which pasture these two elderly gents have been in because there are wads of semi-chewed grass all over the ground. (No amount of dental work has made a difference for them!)
There’s one thing they can still do well, though, and that’s roll around on their backs in the grass. As old and rickety as Scout is, it’s just wonderful to see him still feeling good enough to be rolling on his back. I took this second photo at the end of the roll, when he was contemplating whether to get up … or lie back down and go for another roll. He rolled again!—-
Update on Brynn: I’m back in Pullman, Washington, tonight, and will pick up Brynn Tuesday morning at WSU’s veterinary teaching hospital and take her back to the ranch. The last report we had on Friday night was that everything looked good, and she was posturing and peeing like a normal mare.
Apparently I’ve been making a lot of trips to Pullman recently, because when I went into the local Mexican restaurant this evening and sat down at the table, the waiter came up, looked at me, and said knowingly, "Vegetarian fajitas, right?" The only thing he couldn’t remember was whether those were with flour or corn tortillas (flour, thanks), and whether the margarita was on the rocks or blended (on the rocks, please). Or maybe I just need to get out a bit more and try different restaurants?
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(Click on photos for larger image.)
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Alayne went out the back door the other day and heard blind Nevada and wobbly Noodle barking at each other, but she couldn’t see Noodle anywhere. Then she realized the sound was coming from underneath the dog cot. Sure enough, there was Noodle underneath it, just as happy as she could be in her little hide-out. Alayne came back in to get the camera, but by the time she returned, Noodle had crawled out. We realized there’s a nice hole dug in the ground under there, so she has more room than it appears.
Proving it was no fluke and that Noodle really did want to be underneath the cot, not on top, on Friday I found her there again … and this time I got the photo! The thing that amazes us is Noodle is very compromised in her ability to get around, and how she had enough dexterity to crawl under the cot and into that hole — without knocking the cot up in the air — I don’t know. We’ll have to capture that on video next time!
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We had a fantastic number of suggestions for a name for our little blind-and-deaf boy who arrived a week ago — thank you to everybody who participated! There were many great ideas, and some were very clever, too. Of all the possible names folks submitted … and this was harder than I thought it would be! … we finally selected Baron. This name was suggested independently by both Mary Aaftink and Shelli Smith as a way to honor Barbara and Ron, the couple who drove the dog out to Bend, Oregon, for us. But he also seems to be a noble little character, too, so we think the name really fits him well!
