Rolling Dog Farm Blog

You may remember that last autumn our blind cat Cinder gave birth to two kittens a few months after arriving from the Bitterroot Humane Association in Hamilton, Montana.  (We didn’t know she was pregnant when we agreed to take her.)  We had found a home for one kitten, but that fell through, and the other kitten we had planned to add to the sanctuary "staff" as a barn cat.  So we ended up with two new staff additions. 

Alayne took this photo of the kitten we named Spark, checking things out in a very wet and muddy corral yesterday.  Spark is the very assertive one of the pair.  Her sister, Ash, is not nearly as confident or as outgoing, but both love to explore.  Our other barn cats stick to their territory — Smoke and his sisters Smudge and Skitter hang out at Lena’s Barn, while Joshua and Rocky never venture far from Beauty’s Barn.  Ash and Spark, on the other hand, go everywhere … basically, wherever we are, they are.  As we make our rounds from barn to barn, corral to corral, these two girls follow us along.  And some nights Spark will even sleep in Beauty’s Barn.

Like Cinder their Mom, Spark and Ash have small frames, bright green eyes, short stubby tails with a kink in the end,  and extra toes on each foot.  Spark is the one who got Cinder’s bossy, take-charge personality, though, and she’s been busy bossing the other barn cats around, even though they are all much bigger and older than she is.  In the animal world, it’s all about attitude.  And as we certainly know, the smaller they are, the more attitude they have!

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While Alayne had the camera out, she also got this interesting shot looking across the corrals to the mountains of the Scapegoat Wilderness.  She was struck by how the contours of the white horse — our old, blind guy Shasta — kind of looked like the ridgeline of the mountains.  The fresh snow had arrived in a big spring storm Monday.  We had a few inches of snow at the ranch Monday night and plenty of rain on top of it, so we were happily drenched.  We desperately needed the moisture, because for the last couple of weeks we were in the 70s and even 80s, when we should have been in the 50s. 

All the horses in the photo have their heads down because Alayne had just fed them their dinner.

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(Click on photos for larger image.)

I had just come back from Missoula late this afternoon and had gone into my office to check emails when I heard this rustling sound coming from the dog bed outside my office door.  There was Bailey, rolling around like mad, having the time of his life.  I grabbed the video camera and walked out to capture the moment.  He saw me standing there and stopped.  Now, that’s unusual because he is, as I’ve mentioned before, a dog who loves to perform for the camera. 

He scampered off the bed, scooted around the living room (his back legs list at about a 45-degree angle now), and then suddenly made a bee-line for the dog bed again.  I had turned the camera off and before I could fire it up, he had thrown himself into an entirely new ‘roll extravaganza.’  It was almost like he had to go backstage for a quick breather before his next performance.  And with no warning to the audience or cameraman, he was at it again.

So this is what I captured on video.  For a little dog who was rescued from an animal hoarder’s outdoor pen, Bailey has come a long way. 

(The clickity-clackity noise you’ll hear on the audio are Belvie’s toenails as he zooms around the house while I’m filming.  In the first couple of seconds you’ll see Belvie race into the video — I think he was trying to snatch one of the toys Bailey was playing with — and then he disappears just as fast.  But those are his feet you hear in the background.)

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-6363512699235571144&hl=en

Alayne took this photo of Nevada the blind puppy playing with wobbly Noodle this morning.  Nevada just loves Noodle and her sister Soba, and she plays with them all the time.  We’ve had a hard time getting video or even close-up photos of Nevada in action with the sisters, though, because whenever they realize we’re nearby, they stop playing to come over and be with us.  So Alayne took this shot from the back porch.

Noodle and Nevada were playing "king of the cot," roughhousing back and forth.  A few seconds after Alayne photographed them, Noodle tumbled backwards off the cot, leaving Nevada triumphant.

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In case you’re wondering, the cottage is named after Kelly, the very first blind dog we took in here at the ranch.  She came to us from a small private shelter in Deer Lodge, Montana.  She was found up in the mountains, lost and wandering around, where she must have been dumped.  Kelly was a sweet little thing, a gentle and loving soul.  Tragically, she died of pancreatic cancer less than a year after arriving.  But we’ve never forgotten her, and the cottage helps remind us of her every day.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

I’m not quite sure how this happened, but Dachshund No. 5 has arrived at the ranch.  They seem to slip in under cover of darkness, stealing hearts as they go (or, I should say, as they come).  These Dachshunds are fast moving up to challenge the Labs as the largest number of any one breed at the sanctuary.  At the moment the score is Labs 7, Dachshunds 5.  The newest arrival is Belvie, a miniature Dachshund who came to us from the Kootenai Humane Society in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. 

I took this photo above of Belvie and Bailey this afternoon.  The only way to get Belvie to sit still long enough for a photo was to have Alayne hold a squeaky-toy over my head … hence the intense look you’re seeing in those two faces.  Bailey came out to have his photo taken because, well, he’s a camera hog.  (His motto is, "Have camera, will appear.")

Belvie belonged to an elderly man who had to go into a nursing home.  His toenails were so long they curled underneath his feet, and he was terribly skinny.  (He’s still thin.)  Belvie first went to a private rescuer, but he needed medical treatment for an abscess on his face and some dental work that this rescuer couldn’t afford, so he ended up at the Kootenai Humane Society.  He was briefly adopted by a family in Missoula, but that didn’t work out, so back to the shelter he went.

The Missoula family felt bad about it and contacted us to see if we would be able to take him.  In the meantime the shelter continued to try and find someone to adopt him, but didn’t have any success.  So we agreed to take him, but only after Alayne had come down with a bad case of Dachshunditis and mumbled to me from her sickbed, "Well, jeez, what’s one more Dachshund anyway?"  (Hmm.)

Belvie’s got the classic bad back problem that affects our other miniature Dachshunds.  He can get around at an astonishing rate of speed, but swiveling and sashaying (is that a word?) as he goes.  He has difficulty climbing up and down, and occasionally teeters over, but he’s not as compromised as Bailey by any means.  The back problem, of course, affects his neurological capabilities, so he has the usual incontinence issue our other mini-Doxies have.  (Please join us as we celebrate National Linoleum Appreciation Week.)

Belvie is obsessed with soft squeaky toys, just like our blind dog Goldie.  Whenever we come into the house, he gets excited and grabs a toy and starts running in circles through the living room, around the kitchen and across the dining room, making a big loop through the house, squeaking as he goes.  In this photo he couldn’t take it any longer and began barking at Alayne to demand that she finally … "finally, I tell you!" … give him that toy!

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Today was "herd health day," when our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, comes out to do the spring vaccinations and annual health checks on all the horses.  With 32 horses at the ranch, it takes most of the day!  In this photo Bill and his vet tech Linda C. are getting a little help from blind Nikki on the left and blind Destiny on the right, as Bill gets ready to examine blind Lena.  Just because they’re blind doesn’t mean they aren’t inquisitive, and these girls definitely are that.

In this photo Nikki was trying to steal the clipboard literally right out of Linda’s hands.  Nikki had no idea what a clipboard was, of course, but the best way to find out is to steal it and then check it out yourself.  Linda managed to grab it back before this three-year old took off with it.

We saved the best part for last, which was getting the strangles nasal vaccine up each horse’s nose.  Needless to say, there isn’t a horse alive that likes having an 8-inch plastic tube stuck up its nose and then a liquid squirted out.  Our two Belgian draft horses not only really don’t like this procedure, but their sheer size makes it even more of a challenge to get the vaccine delivered to the right spot.  So I handed the lead rope to Linda while I shot this video of Bill giving Rooster and Beaver their strangles vaccines.  (At the end of the first clip of Rooster getting his dose, the audio is not very clear but Bill is saying something like, "Hey, my shoulder is still in the socket!"

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-5753229436276866110&hl=en

There’s something about lush green grass our dogs just love.  Maybe it’s the fact that here in Montana, it lasts for only about 6 weeks before browning out in July, so they have to make the most of it.  Bailey is a great example … he can’t get enough of playing in the grass.

Multiple times throughout the day he goes to the front door so we can let him outside to roll around in, hide in, or sleep in the grass.  But only for a while.  Then he’s back at the front door, barking to be let in.  This so we can do it all over again in, say, an hour’s time.  There are days when I feel like nothing more than a New York City doorman without the uniform (or tips).  Sometimes I think it’s the anticipation of going outside to be in the grass that’s more exciting than actually being there. 

For some dogs, it’s even better if they can find a hole in the ground to curl up in, surrounded by the thick green stuff.  The other night I was looking for blind and deaf Spinner to bring her inside for bedtime.  I couldn’t find her anywhere.  Finally I saw a flash of white through the grass.  I walked over and found her sound asleep in this hole that our old boy Dillon had dug a few years ago. 

Come summer, it’s a favorite sleeping spot, nice and cool on a warm evening.  I went inside to get the camera to take this shot.  Spinner was so comfortable I was reluctant to wake her up, but the temperature would drop another 15 degrees before dawn and I didn’t want her staying out when it could get that chilly.  I decided to ignore the dictum about "let sleeping dogs lie" and tapped her on the ear to wake her.

Spinner’s hole is on the opposite site of the same tree you see in Bailey’s photo. That little pine sees a lot of sleeping dogs in the course of a day!

In case you’re wondering, we DO eventually mow the grass.  As you can see, it’s pasture grass, not lawn grass, so we use the rotary brush cutter on the tractor to cut it.  But for now, we let the dogs enjoy their jungle.

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I picked up Brynn this morning at Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Pullman and got back to the ranch late this afternoon with her.  Alayne took these photos of Brynn unloading from the trailer and then showing off her latest hair-do.  (She was clipped at the hospital for her ultrasound imaging.)

The news on Brynn is mixed.  She definitely has a kidney infection, which we had started treating even before she left for WSU with an antibiotic called enrofloxacin (trade name is Baytril).  But an echocardiogram at the hospital showed a possible infection in her heart, so she is now on a separate antibiotic for that, too.

Brynn did have another fever spike over the weekend but she quickly came back to normal.  Why she spiked when she’s on the antibiotics we don’t know, but of course that is alarming.  Hopefully it means she just needs longer treatment, and in fact she will stay on the Baytril for an entire month.

We knew she had a small hole in her heart, called a ventral septal defect, or VSD, from an echo- cardiogram we did when she was three weeks old.  Sometimes VSDs from birth actually close up on their own as the heart grows along with the rest of the body; other times they stay the same size, and sometimes they get larger.  Well, from the latest echocardiogram at WSU last week, we learned the hole in her heart has grown and is now categorized as ‘moderate to severe.’  The cardiologist also thinks Brynn may be experiencing the backflow of blood in different chambers and valves in her heart.

All that, combined with the possible infection — I say "possible" because it’s difficult to determine for certain, thus her official diagnosis lists this as "possible bacterial endocarditis" — means we need to be paying as much attention to her heart now as her kidneys.  Brynn’s specialist asked us to bring her back in a month for another echocardiogram, which should indicate whether we successfully treated the suspected infection.

And speaking of kidneys, it turns out she’s down to only one kidney now, the left one.  They could not find the right kidney on ultrasound, and during endoscopy last week the doctors could not detect any urine coming down the ureter from that right kidney.  We knew from ultrasound when Brynn was a few weeks old that her right kidney didn’t appear normal.  When she was at WSU back in February for surgery the surgeons could not get a good ultrasound image of it then, either.  So we suspected it had shut down and/or shrunk in size.  Brynn also has one or more stones in her left kidney.  What’s more, the radiologist’s report said "the left kidney is severely enlarged for the age of the patient."

This means she is now officially in chronic renal failure, too.

We could get depressed by these findings, but Brynn remains her happy, loving self.  And as long as she’s happy, we’re going to take our cues from her.  When I went into her hospital stall this morning, she realized it was me and walked over to start running her lips over my beard.  I mean, that’s just the way she is.  Through all of this, she has never acted sick or looked puny.  So as long as she’s not ready to give up, we aren’t, either.

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Here’s Travis, who came back from the vet hospital last week after pulling out his stomach tube.  Our vets had decided the best course was to leave the tube out and let the hole in his side seal up.  He loves not having that hardware in, and we can just tell he feels less constrained.  (I reckon I would, too.)  I got these photos of Travis this weekend, when he was back to his zippy self.  Now, in many of his photos he appears like he does here, as if he has no ears.  He adopts this pinched look whenever I say, "Traaaavissss, sit and … stay!"  That’s about the only time I can get his photo, because otherwise he’s in constant motion.  But something about being told to sit and stay makes him give me this disappearing-ear look, as if to say, "Okay, I’ll do it, but I’m not happy about it."

Then there’s his leering look, which I captured a few seconds after the shot above.  I think Travis thought he was about to be released from his sit-and-stay, but why that would translate into a leer is something known only to him.  Or maybe the leering is inadvertent, caused by the fused jaw and the pointy head.  Who knows?  But at least you can see he really does have a set of ears, even if they don’t look like they’re attached normally.  Notice he’s managing to point them backwards … how does he do that?

(Click on photos for larger image.)

On Friday morning I went out to the cat house to feed the gang and found Wobbles on the floor, eyes half-shut, mouth wide open and breathing oddly … shallow breaths, very labored.  He was clearly in respiratory distress.  He couldn’t move, and just lay there looking at me with obvious discomfort.  I said to him, "Wobs, oh no, not again!" 

I suspected aspiratory pneumonia, which he has had before — although he seemed in worse shape this time. He looked like he was going to check out at any moment.  I couldn’t believe it, because just the night before he had been himself … he came wobbling out to greet me when I went in to feed them, and he went straight to the food bowl to eat.  What a turnaround.

I called Alayne, who was over letting the dogs out at Widget’s House, to tell her Wobs was in crisis and I needed to get him to the hospital.  I grabbed a crate, put Wobbles in it, and carried him into the house while I got the truck keys and other things.  I called our vet clinic in Helena, Montana Veterinary Specialists, and told them I was on the way.

A few minutes later Wobs and I were headed down the highway.  If you want to see the route we drove, click on this link to a Google map.  At one point, about 30 miles into the trip, I looked into the crate and for a fleeting moment I thought Wobs had died … he had collapsed against the crate door and wasn’t moving.  I pulled off the highway, opened the crate, and found he was still very much alive, but too weak to pick himself up.  So I rearranged him and then hit the road again.

It’s on trips like this when the 70-mile drive to the hospital seems like an eternity, even when you’re going 80 mph.  (If our auto insurer is reading this, that’s a typo, oops, I meant 65 mph.)  It’s one of the most beautiful stretches of highway in the country, but it’s a little hard to enjoy the scenery when you’re worried about making it to the hospital in time.

Dr. Jennifer Rockwell was waiting for us, and in less than two minutes they had Wobs on oxygen while Jennifer began examining him.  I took the photo above of Jennifer taking his temperature while vet tech Rick administers oxygen.  Vet tech Jayme had just finished getting the intensive care cage ready for Wobs.  Shortly after I took this photo they had Wobs on IV fluids and IV antibiotics.  X-rays of his lungs confirmed my suspicions:  another bout of aspiratory pneumonia.

He gets this — we think — because of his cerebellar hypoplasia.  Our hunch is that while he’s eating, he may suddenly fall over, or lurch forward, and the abrupt movement causes a piece of food to go down the wrong way and into his lungs. 

The amazing thing?  By Friday evening he was already bouncing back.  He was up and about in his cage, eating, drinking, and looking for attention.  Jennifer said she couldn’t believe how fast he responded, given the kind of shape he was in when he arrived.  By Saturday morning, when Jennifer called with an update, Wobbles was completely back to normal.  This, too, is true to form for him … these bouts of pneumonia come on very suddenly, but with prompt medical care, Wobs overcomes them just as fast. 

Jennifer will take more chest X-rays tomorrow to see how his lungs look, and we will leave him in the hospital for a couple more days so they can monitor him.

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I’m leaving for Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine on Monday to go pick up Brynn on Tuesday and bring her back to the ranch.  I should have an update on the blog either tomorrow night or Tuesday night.  Basically she’s doing fine, her fevers are gone, but now we have a cardiac issue to worry about.  Not that Brynn is worrying about it, though … the doctor says Brynn is her happy, chipper little self!

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Alayne took these photos of three-legged Cody sleeping on the cot right outside our back door.  Cody is quite the exhibitionist when he sleeps.  You could really say, well, he gives it his all.  And leaves nothing to the imagination.

First there was this position above, with the front leg tossed casually over the step.  Notice the air of total nonchalance in this pose, reinforced with the ear flicked back.

As if that wasn’t enough, he then rolled completely over on his back for this position.  This really is about as decadent as it gets, don’t you think?   When he’s not on a cot, he actually sleeps curled up much of the time, but put this boy on a cot, and he lets it all hang out.

(Click on photos for larger image.)