Rolling Dog Farm Blog

I took this photo of blind Luna this afternoon, right after we brought her in from pasture with her friend blind Hannah.  It was blistering hot here today — it’s still 95 degrees in the shade on the back porch as I post this at 7 p.m. — and although there’s a water tank in each pasture, the horses always like to get a drink from the water tank in their corrals when they first come in.

And Luna is a big drinker.  She will hover over that tank for a good 5 to 10 minutes, dipping her mouth into the water several times.   

See that salt block on the ground under her neck?  Well, yes, we do have big plastic salt block holders, but these two girls must use that salt block for a football, because we can never keep it in their holder.  We’ve never actually seen them kicking it around, but somehow it never stays in the holder for more than a few hours.

Luna is an incredibly bright, alert mare who can be a real character.  A few weeks ago Luna was following along behind as Alayne led Hannah in from pasture — with some of these blind horses they’ll follow their buddy all the way in, so we only have to lead one horse — and when Luna got to the corrals, she suddenly veered off to the left.  Alayne watched as Luna walked right up the short slope towards Beauty’s Barn, headed straight through the open barn doors, and down the center aisle.  She was looking for the trash can in the aisle, which had empty grain bags in it.  Luna found it, flipped the lid off, knocked the trash can over, and starting sorting through the trash, looking for left-over bits of grain.  This from a horse with no eyes in her head.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

   

I realized it had been a long time since I had posted an update on Claude, our blind Great Dane who developed Wobbler’s Syndrome at 10 months of age … and hip dysplasia as well.  I won’t rehash all the details of his complicated medical issues, because you can read his original story here.  But I am happy to report that this big youngster is doing fine so far.  We’ve been managing his Wobblers medically with prednisone, and that has made him very stable.  Unfortunately, whenever we try and reduce his current dose — with prednisone, you want the lowest possible effective dose — he begins falling and dragging his feet again.  But on the existing dose, which is 20 mg twice a day, you’d never know he has a serious neurological disease.  And his hips are holding up okay, too. 

So we’re quite happy that Claude has made it this far to enjoy a summer at the ranch.  I took the photo of Claude this evening in the front yard of Widget’s House.  It’s been a glorious if hot 4th of July — bright blue sky and sunshine — and the best part is coming up:  No fireworks to upset the dogs!  One of the many nice things about living in such a remote area is that there’s no one around to set off fireworks all night long.  Thus Claude and all the other dogs will sleep soundly, and so will we!

—

Update on Brynn:  One of Brynn’s surgeons at Washington State University’s veterinary teaching hospital, Dr. Kristin Gablehouse, called yesterday evening to say they did the surgery late in the afternoon and Brynn was doing great.  It will be a few days more before they know if the urethral extension is working properly, and at that point they’ll decide on when Brynn can be discharged.  But one of the vet students called tonight to say Brynn’s recovery was going well and that she had postured and peed like a normal mare a few times today.  That’s a very good sign.

—

(Click on photo for larger image.)

On Sunday morning we were loading the trash in the truck to take to the dump (no garbage service out here) when Alayne saw little Daisy staring over the board at us.  We had opened the 12′ gate to make it easier to carry the trash bags and other things out to the truck, and this board is what we leave at the bottom of the gate to keep the adventuresome dogs from getting out. 

Having opened the gate, we left the board in place … which was enough to keep Daisy in the yard.  I guess when you’re only six inches high at the shoulder, a stout 8-inch plank is a pretty hefty obstacle — or at least it is when your back legs don’t work very well!  Daisy decided she’d had enough of being confined and being photographed being confined, so she let out a howl of protest at the injustice of it all. 

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Woman’s World magazine has a three-page spread on the ranch in the current issue, dated July 10.  This is the cover of the weekly magazine, which you’ll find usually in the check-out stand at your grocery store.  The story is mostly a photo essay, using photos we provided and those taken by a Missoula photographer they hired. 

The text is based on material from our Web site, blog postings and other news articles; we never actually did an interview with the publication for this story.  But it’s a very nice, positive piece, and we’re getting a wonderful response to it.

I’m just not sure about the "Get slim eating cupcakes!" story, though. 

Before I left to take Brynn to WSU’s veterinary teaching hospital last week, we received an email from an employee at the Josephine County animal control shelter in Grants Pass, Oregon.  The shelter had taken in a blind and deaf stray dog they thought was a Dachshund/Beagle mix.  No one had come to claim him, and no one was interested in adopting him.  The employee, Kelly G., asked "if you guys could help out, because of limited space we cannot keep him here."

Our first thought on hearing "Dachshund/Beagle mix" was … Widget!  Could there be another one out there?

It was Thursday morning, when I was bathing Brynn before loading her in the horse trailer, that we connected with Kelly on the phone to find out more about the dog and to discuss logistics.  Since I was heading to Pullman, I would be already 5 or 6 hours closer to Oregon.  Could the shelter find someone to meet me in Portland or even Bend on Friday?  Kelly set off to try and find a volunteer who could transport the little dog. 

A few hours later, while I was en route to Pullman, I noticed on my BlackBerry that Kelly had emailed us photos of the dog.  I can’t open attachments on my BlackBerry, so I called Alayne to have her check the email on my office computer.  She opened the photos and said, "Well … that’s NO Widget!  But he’s cute, I just have no idea what he is!"

By Thursday evening Kelly hadn’t found anyone yet who could pick up the dog and meet us somewhere.  On Friday morning, I still hadn’t heard anything.  So I checked out of the hotel in Pullman and drove back to the veterinary teaching hospital to get the horse trailer and hit the road for Montana.  It was just before 9 a.m. as I was reaching the university when my cell phone rang.  It was a volunteer for the animal control shelter, Barbara D., who had just learned a few minutes before about the need to transport the dog.  Yes, she could meet me in Bend.  "Today?," I asked.  "You bet," she said. 

We worked out our coordinates, determined the relative driving times for each of us to Bend, and I turned the truck around and headed for Oregon.

Several hours later, about 5:30 p.m., I met Barbara and her husband Ron at the PetsMart in Bend.  Incredibly, we had arrived within 5 minutes of each other.  They are a wonderful, delightful couple who had dropped what they were doing that day to make this trip.

And there he was in the back of their car, the little dog the shelter had named Mr. Bumps because he was always walking into things.

I took one look at him and realized that I couldn’t figure out what he was either… yes on the Dachshund part (maybe … or Corgi?) but what else?  No Beagle, I thought.  But while his breed mix may be a guess, I did know one thing for sure about him:  Here was another member of the short-leg club!

With another 8-hour drive still ahead for Shorty and me, we climbed back in the truck and drove north to Pullman.  I finally pulled into the hotel parking lot at 1:30 a.m., dead tired and grateful I had my Jimmy Buffett CD for the last hour of the trip!  (Okay, so that would have been a terrific line if only I could have said instead, "dead tired and grateful I had had my Grateful Dead CD for the last hour….")

I digress.

On Saturday morning I piled Shorty back in the truck and went to the teaching hospital to get the horse trailer.  After another long day on the road, we arrived at the ranch about 6 p.m. yesterday evening.

I took the photo of Alayne holding this lovable youngster late this afternoon, along with the other photos of him in our isolation yard.  He is brimming with self-confidence, adores attention, and likes nothing more than to be picked up and held in our arms.  He is totally blind and deaf, just like Spinner.  He seems very puppy-ish still, and has a soft, Lab-like mouth.  (Dachsund/Brittany spaniel?)

And no, we are not going to name him Shorty, but I wasn’t going to call him Mr. Bumps, either.  So let’s have a "name this dog" contest!  Please post your suggestions for a new name in the comment section.  If we select your proposed name, we’ll send you a custom Rolling Dog Ranch hat or a set of our greeting cards (your choice).  But along with the name, you also need to tell us what you think his breed mix is, okay?

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Today I drove blind Brynn back to Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine for yet another hospital visit.  We needed to bring her back for a repeat echocardiogram on her heart, to see if there are any other changes since we treated her for a heart infection in mid-May, when she was last here.  But the bigger and more immediate reason for her return visit is Brynn’s ongoing urinary tract problems. 

Regular blog readers will recall that earlier this year we did surgery on Brynn to create a ‘urethral extension,’ which was designed to stop the constant leaking and dribbling that was causing severe urine scalding.  Well, the surgery worked … for a while.  But somewhere along the way in the past couple of months the extension broke down and her leaking resumed.  We had continued to bathe her every day, but once the extension failed, it became more and more difficult to keep the urine scalds from developing. 

And the more raw her skin became, the more difficult it was to bathe Brynn because it was increasingly painful for her.  So in the past few weeks I had to resort to tying up one of her rear legs (a trick our farrier showed us) to keep her standing still and manageable while I cleaned her legs and rear end.  Brynn had also developed open sores on opposing sides of her inner thighs, which meant these sores were constantly rubbing against each other.  In short, we were back to a quality of life issue for this little girl.

Brynn has grown quite a bit since her previous surgery and gained 100 pounds, so her increased size should help the surgeons on this next round.  Because they know what they’re dealing with and thus won’t have to do all the extensive diagnostics they did the first time, we’re hoping the cost will be less than the initial surgery.

I took the first photo above late this afternoon when we arrived at WSU.  With Brynn is fourth-year vet student Milo A., who will be her ‘case manager’ for this visit.  I was surprised to have a male vet student attending to us because every other time we’ve been here, we were always working with female vet students.  Now, I have known for quite some time that vet schools in recent years were graduating more women vets than men, but I hadn’t realized until today just how big a change has occurred.  Ready for this?  Out of a 4th-year class at WSU of 95 vet students, only 15 are men.  So Milo is kind of a rarity!

It took Milo about, oh, 30 seconds to find Brynn’s sweet spot, as you can see in this photo.  I swear I thought she was going to fall over while I was taking this shot.  She just couldn’t get enough of that back scratching, and kept leaning first one way and then the other. 

Dr. Kristin Gablehouse, one of Brynn’s surgeons, and Teri O., the senior equine vet tech, were also on hand to meet us, and they quickly got Brynn settled in her new stall.  Brynn felt right at home, and started munching hay as soon as they hung the hay net for her.  I took this photo while Milo and Teri were taking her vital signs.  You can see Brynn is happily eating, with not a care in the world!

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Here’s little Bailey, who is always one of the last dogs to stir in the morning, and usually not before 10 a.m.  You can see the look I was getting when I took this photo mid-morning.  Not only does he like to sleep in, but because he’s incontinent — he dribbles and leaks when he’s asleep — Bailey doesn’t exactly feel the, um, pressure to get up and go outside that other dogs do.  So he’s perfectly content to lie there in the morning while we’re off doing chores and the rest of the dogs are milling around.   Eventually he’ll shake the blankets off and saunter to the front door … but only because, well, it’s always nice to get a little fresh air, you know?

(Click on photo for larger image.)

I was out taking photos this afternoon of our blind foal Cash for his new Web page (not up yet) and was struck by what a big boy he looks like now.  The photo above shows the little tyke when he arrived back in early March at the age of 4 weeks.  He was impossibly cute, not to mention tiny and cuddly.  And today…

As you can see, he’s actually looking like, well, a real horse!  He’s now 5-months old, drop-dead handsome, easy-going, and smart.  (Look at that powerful Quarter Horse butt!)  Although he’s in the same pasture with Lena and Destiny, two of our blind mares, he spends most of the time cruising around by himself.  He’s full of self-confidence and apparently doesn’t think he needs a couple of nanny-mares looking after him!

(Click on photos for larger image.)

I went into the cat house yesterday evening to feed the cats when this scene presented itself.  Those are two of our wobbly kitties, Claire and Wobbles, squashed together inside that kitty condo.  Now, that is definitely a condo unit built for one, and it sure can’t be comfortable in there.  Claire (on the left) is usually oblivious to the fact she is encroaching on another cat’s space, and I’m sure Wobs was saying to her, "You’re crowding me, girl!"  Fortunately they stayed like this long enough for me to get their photo.

Just three weeks after one of our volunteers from Missoula, Kate W., adopted blind Luke, we have another wonderful adoption to report.  One of our volunteers, Katie R. from Helena, adopted blind Willie today!  Katie had been planning on adopting Willie for a few weeks, but was waiting until she got married — just two days ago, on Friday!  So on her way to Twentynine Palms, California, where her new husband Greg G. is stationed with the Marine Corps, Katie stopped by this morning to scoop up the Beagle boy and take him with her.

Willie was always a bit of a wallflower and quite timid around people.  Often he seemed interested in people until they got to within a couple of feet of him, but then he would drop to the ground and slink.  (We suspect plenty of abuse in his past.)  Yet the first time Willie heard Katie’s voice, he sprang to life and started running in circles, tail up, just as joyful and as happy as could be.  He was incredibly excited at the sound of her!

Alayne was there to witness his reaction, and she couldn’t believe the transformation.  We had never seen him like this before.  From then on, we figured we had an adoption in the works. 

In our spring newsletter article about Willie, we joked that he was learning how to be a Beagle and would soon graduate from Beagle Basic Training.  We invoked the U.S. Army’s famous motto, which for Willie meant, "Be all you can Beagle."  But little did we know at the time that Willie’s future would actually involve the U.S. Marine Corps, not the Army!

I took this photo of the newly married couple and their newly adopted
Willie just before they left on the long drive to
California.  Less than two hours later, Katie called from the road to say Willie had already climbed from the back of the car and into the front seat, and was now lying sound asleep on her lap as she drove. 

I think this is going to work out just fine!

(Click on  photo for larger image.)