Rolling Dog Farm Blog

We learned from ultrasound and lab tests this week that our blind cat Turtle’s cancer had returned … not only into her intestines again, but it had now spread to her bones.  The growth we noticed around her left eye turned out to be not an infection but an extremely aggressive bone cancer.  It was just four weeks ago that she had come through major intestinal surgery, which our vets thought at the time had successfully removed all the cancerous tissue.  As it happened, the cancer had already seeded itself elsewhere.

This sweet, affectionate girl was just wasting away, and with the new diagnosis, we knew the time had come to let her go.  So Alayne drove to the vet clinic today, where Turtle had been since Sunday, to hold her while we put her to sleep.  Even at the end, Turtle was still purring as Alayne stroked her.  I’ve never known a cat who would purr at the sound of our footsteps approaching, but that was Turtle.  She just adored people.  She was truly one of the sweetest, nicest, and most loving cats I’ve ever known.  Bless her little heart.

We had so much going on last weekend that I didn’t get a chance to post anything about our newest arrival, a little Schipperke named Patch.  Alayne picked him up at the Missoula airport late Friday evening.

Patch came to us from the Yolo County SPCA in California.  These wonderful folks have sent several disabled animals to us over the past few years.  When Patch was brought to the shelter, they contacted us.  He wasn’t really disabled but disfigured, and that’s good enough to get you admitted here!

His skin was blistered and raw, he was missing a lot of hair, his ears were crusted, he scratched constantly, and he looked miserable.  This is what he looked like after he arrived at the shelter in late March … they had already bathed and cleaned him up before the photo, so he looked much worse initially.  A vet told the shelter that the dog — who they named Patch because of how he looked — was a burn victim at some point in the past, and most likely his hair would never grow back. 

The shelter emailed me this photo, along with another one showing the bald sides of his body.  I forwarded the photos to our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, to get his opinion.  Dave said the dog didn’t look like a burn case because of the pattern of hair loss.  Without seeing the dog, he couldn’t offer a diagnosis, of course, but he suspected a skin disorder of some sort.  About this time another vet told the shelter the dog might have lupus.

I asked the shelter if they could take Patch to a veterinary dermatologist for an exam, and I said we would pay for it.  The Yolo County SPCA is in Davis, where the University of California’s College of Veterinary Medicine is located, so they have access to lots of specialists.  As our luck would have it, all the veterinary dermatologists in the country were having their annual convention (in Hawaii!), so they were a little hard to find.  Fortunately the shelter found another veterinary dermatologist in private practice in Sacramento who could see Patch — he was the only one left in the U.S. who wasn’t in Hawaii that week, I reckon — so they made an appointment.

It took a couple of weeks for the testing and biopsies to be completed, but last Monday we finally had a definitive diagnosis:  Patch has a very rare autoimmune disease called pemphigus foliaceus, a blistering disorder of the skin.  In this type of pemphigus (there are several forms of it), the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the proteins that connect the skin cells to each other. There is no cure for the disease, but it is treatable.  Patch will need to be on prednisone and a drug called azathioprine (brand name:  Imuran) for the rest of his life.

(The bill for the dermatologist came to $548, which is well worth it, if you ask me.  We now know what Patch has, and we know what he needs for medical care.  This is why we are such big believers in using veterinary specialists.)

The azathioprine has side effects — it can cause bone marrow suppression — and Patch will need blood testing every two weeks for the first few months he’s on the drug.  If all goes well with the azathioprine, we will be able to taper him off … or at least lower the dose … of the prednisone eventually.  Of course, what we’re doing in effect is suppressing his immune system so it won’t attack his own body, which carries risks in and of itself.

Because the shelter already had wisely put him on prednisone due to how itchy he was, his skin looks better now, and his hair is starting to grow back.  But he still has large bald patterns and his ears remain crusty and oozy.  The scarring on his face may be permanent, the dermatologist told us, because of how severe it is.  But this little guy — and I do mean little, he only weighs about 10 pounds — is a happy fellow who gets so excited at meal time … and whenever a cookie is present … that he literally jumps with joy.

(We took these other three photos this evening, after I returned from WSU’s teaching hospital at Pullman.  Click on any of the photos to get a larger image.) 

I drove Brynn over to Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine today for her second stay at the teaching hospital.  I took this photo of Brynn with Dr. Marta Gonzalez Arguedas, on the right, and 4th year vet student Darbie C. on the left, just about 20 minutes after we got Brynn in her stall.  They had already found Brynn’s ‘sweet spot’ for a back scratch, which is why Brynn is making her funny face.

Dr. Gonzalez is a resident in equine internal medicine, and is the person our equine vet in Missoula, Dr. Bill Brown, consulted with on Saturday about Brynn’s latest lab results.  Originally we were going to bring Brynn back to WSU to close up a minor leak from her urethral extension surgery in February.  Instead, our goal now is to find out where her infection is, what is causing it, and what to do about it.

(Notice the window behind Brynn … I joked to Darbie and Dr. Gonzalez that they gave the only stall with a window to a blind horse.)

I will leave Brynn at WSU and head back to the ranch on Tuesday.  We just hope she won’t have to stay for a month, like she did last time!

(Click on photo for larger image.)

Alayne and I were letting the dogs out at Widget’s House this morning, and as Travis — our boy with a fused jaw — headed to the door, I looked over and realized his stomach tube was hanging out.  Oh, no!  Now, this isn’t essential to his feeding anymore, since we learned early on he can slurp a liquid food, and he very much wants to eat that way.  But the stomach tube runs from outside his abdomen, through the abdominal wall and straight into his stomach, so this is not a piece of hardware you want to come loose.

He’s had this tube in for years, and after the first several months, he got used to it and pretty much left it alone.  We stopped having him wear his trademark shirts all the time because he stopped worrying the tube.  But something started him working on it overnight, and now it was hanging out.

I grabbed him and started to examine the tube and the hole in his side.  Clearly it was painful and he didn’t want me touching him there.  He yiked, or I should say, it would have been a yike if only he could open his mouth.  (Imagine yiking with your mouth closed.)

We brought him back to our house for a closer look.  By the time we got here, just a couple of minutes later, he was bleeding from the hole in his side.  Blood dripped all over the floor.  We bathed him, cleaned up the area, and then wrapped a big bandage around his abdomen.  Then we called our vets in Helena at Montana Veterinary Specialists.  A short while later Alayne hit the road with Travis.  We took this photo of me with Travis just before she left for Helena with him.

Dr. Jennifer Rockwell, the vet on emergency duty today, consulted with Dr. Britt Culver, our internal medicine specialist at the clinic who had inserted the tube in Travis originally.  The upshot:  We’ll just take the tube out entirely, since we aren’t using it anyway.  If we need to medicate Travis orally — which is why we had left it in — we’ll find a different way to get the medication in him.  Travis will stay at the clinic for the next few days while the hole in his side seals up and so they can monitor him.

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Meanwhile, our blind cat Turtle is back at the clinic, too.  She had major intestinal surgery a few weeks ago to remove tumors, which turned out to be sarcomas and not gastrointestinal lymphoma, as our vets first suspected.  Although the surgery was a success — the pathologist’s report said our vets had good margins around the removed tissue, meaning they got all the cancer in that area — she has never regained her weight, she continues to be dehyrdrated, and she just looks like she’s wasting away. 

Dr. Rockwell took X-rays today and it looks like she may have new intestinal tumors developing.  Our specialist, Britt Culver, will do an ultrasound tomorrow to see if they can confirm that.  If so, it means the cancer has already returned and the prognosis is pretty grim.  On Friday I noticed Turtle’s face was suddenly swollen around her left eye, and the lymph nodes underneath the left side of her jaw were swollen, too, so she has some kind of infection.  They have Turtle on IVs tonight and we’ll know more tomorrow after the ultrasound.

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Wait, there’s more!  On Saturday morning, while Alayne and I were bathing blind Brynn in her stall, I was stunned to find her rear legs were cold as ice … literally.  I mean, it felt like I was holding ice cubes in my hand.  Yet her temperature was normal.  I called our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, from the stall. 

Well, Bill had just received the lab report on the urine culture we took from Brynn on Thursday, when we did her blood work.  Brynn has a massive growth of e.coli bacteria in her urinary tract, which suggests she has pyelonephritis, a serious kidney infection.  One of the classic signs of pyelonephritis?  High spiking fevers.

Dang.

Bill’s first concern on hearing about Brynn’s cold legs was that she was beginning to go into endotoxemic shock.  This can happen from the proliferation of the bacteria in tissue.  So Bill had me check her heart rate and her capillary refill, both of which were in normal range.   That cast doubt on endotoxemia, as did her behavior that morning … eating, drinking, being her usual self. 

But we needed to treat her for the pyelonephritis right away, and that meant getting the right drug in her.  After a flurry of phone calls, Bill connected with an equine internal medicine specialist at Washington State University veterinary teaching hospital.  The specialist, Dr. Marta Gonzalez, confirmed Bill’s initial recommendation, which was enrofloxacin, but she upped the dosage.

We had enough enrofloxacin on hand at the ranch for one dose, but that was it.  Bill had one bottle left at his clinic, so I hopped in the truck and headed into Missoula to get the drug.

Meanwhile, Brynn’s legs returned to normal warmth — we have no idea what that was about! — and her fever has not returned.  But she needs aggressive treatment and further diagnostics, so I am leaving for WSU Monday morning to take her back to the teaching hospital.  (The photo was taken during her last visit to WSU.)

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That is how our weekend went!

Yesterday we noticed our blind horse Domino kicking at his belly and swishing his tail constantly, as if he were being pestered by flies.  But it’s not fly season (yet), and no other horses were doing this.  He also wasn’t acting like he had colic, which is one major reason a horse will kick at his belly.  On closer exam we noticed he had some crusty stuff on his abdomen, just in front of where his penis is, and it looked like there was some other icky stuff coming out of his sheath.  (The sheath is a large fold of skin that wraps around the penis.)

Last fall we saw Domino peeing at an awkward angle, and his sheath seemed a bit puffy.  We had our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, examine Domino then.  Bill found a growth and sent a biopsy sample in for analysis.  The pathologist’s report said it was a penile wart.  (Ick.)  Bill was skeptical of that finding, but after we cleaned his sheath, Domino seemed to be better.  Until now.

Today was going to be ‘herd health day,’ when Bill comes out each spring to vaccinate all the horses and give them medical exams.  But we woke up to a driving snow storm — thick, heavy wet snow coming in sideways — and we ended up postponing Bill’s visit.  Yet I needed to have him look at Domino again and also get blood work on blind Brynn, so I trailered both of them into Missoula this afternoon.

Even under heavy sedation Domino was never one to "drop" his penis, making a thorough exam difficult, and thus Bill did general anesthesia today.  That’s what you see in these photos.  In the first one Domino is completely out, and Bill and his vet tech Linda are moving him into position on the big foam bed in the center of the surgery room.  The blue towel on Domino’s face is there to protect his eyes.

In this photo Bill has discovered another growth on Domino’s penis and is getting a biopsy of it.  The end of Domino’s urethra was also red and inflamed, and Bill found necrotic (or dead) tissue inside his sheath.  And then — here’s the truly disgusting part — we discovered maggots in there!  Egads.  No wonder the poor guy was kicking at his belly.  There were probably fifteen of those things squirming around inside.  They had been attracted by the necrotic tissue.

So Domino had a "deep cleaning," and the maggots are now all gone.  We’ll know more when the biopsy results come in next week, but Bill suspects a squamous cell carcinoma.

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Brynn’s blood work was troubling.  Her key kidney values were still okay — her BUN was a bit higher, just outside normal range, and her creatinine was perfect — but her white blood cell count was high, as were several other values suggesting she’s still fighting an infection or inflammation.  Her fibrinogen — a key indicator of an inflammatory process — was the real shocker.  A normal count is under 500, and on two different readings Brynn’s levels were 1419 and 1527.  Bill said he had never seen fibrinogen that high.  Uh oh.

Yet her temperature is back to normal and she shows no signs of being sick.  But clearly something is wrong somewhere.

Bill is going to consult with Brynn’s surgeon at Washington State University’s veterinary teaching hospital, Dr. Claude Ragel, tomorrow.  I was planning to take Brynn back to WSU next week for her ‘leak repair’ surgery.  But now I may be taking her back so they can figure out what this new problem is … and if it’s related to her kidneys or urinary tract somehow.

(Click on photos for larger image.)

At the risk of "overexposing" Widget on the blog, I thought this one was worth sharing.  Regular blog readers know Widget is the professional sleeping hound, and a master of finding unique and odd ways to catch a few zzzz’s.  (Well, many zzzz’s.)

So yesterday afternoon, there she was in the living room, asleep in this rather unusual configuration.  Now, if that were me, I think my neck would get a kink in it, but she slept like this for hours.  I thought she was still sound asleep while I was taking her photo, because I kept clicking away and she never stirred.  And looks can be deceiving, as they say, because she often sleeps with her eyes open.  (Hey, when you’re blind and your eyes bulge, why bother closing them?)

But as I stepped around to the left side of the chair to look at her face, I saw her right eye moving around, tracking back and forth while staring up at the ceiling … so the little scamp was very much wide awake by this point and aware of what I was doing.  But that wasn’t enough to cause her to get up or change position.  No, sir.  She was settled in for the afternoon, and she stayed that way.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

Every horse care book you can buy will tell you, "Don’t feed your horses their hay on the ground."  This is to avoid getting sand colic and picking up parasites from eating on manure-covered ground.  Well, after seven years at this and having tried every type of feeder imaginable, we have yet to find a feeder that horses can’t — and won’t — fling their hay out of so they can happily eat it on the ground.  We’ve been through rack feeders, bunk feeders, hanging feeders, you name it.  It’s clear the horses have not read the horse care books.

Our most successful feeders to date — with success defined only as "keeping hay in" — are the same Rubbermaid tanks we use for watering the horses.  They’re big, have deep sides, and have plenty of room for horses to sift through the hay and push it around while they eat.  Horses are always sifting through their hay in search of something else … a finer selection, a fluffier stem of grass, who knows?   And they especially like to toss their hay in the air, hoping something yummy will fall out.

But success is still relative.  For instance, here are blind Kiowa on the right and blind Cactus Jack on the left.  Notice the deep, 100-gallon water tank serving as feed trough.  Notice the pile of hay flung onto  the ground next to it.  I took this photo yesterday afternoon while we were feeding.

Now, some horses are more insistent about flinging their hay onto the ground than others.  We have one big old blind gelding, Shasta, whose main goal in life is seeing how fast he can toss the hay out of the trough.

Why it’s more appealing to eat hay on the ground I don’t know.  But there are just some things you have to learn to accept (I guess).  So every day, morning and evening, we dutifully fill the troughs with hay.  As we walk away, we hear the first flakes of hay hitting the ground.  Oh, well.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

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Update on Brynn:  This morning her temperature was back to normal, at 100.8.  And we didn’t do anything different.  Go figure.

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Our blind foal Brynn, now 11 months old, has been experiencing dramatic temperature spikes in the past few weeks.  Ever since she came back from urinary tract surgery at Washington State University’s veterinary teaching hospital in early March, I had taken her temperature every morning as an early warning indicator of potential infection.

Because she still had a minor leak, she dribbled occasionally onto her legs and a little down her backside, yet this was an enormous improvement on her condition prior to the surgery.  But it meant we also bathed her rear end and legs every day, so I always took her temperature at the same time.  We do this routine while she’s eating her grain.

Her temperature was always normal until a few weeks ago.  Then one morning she suddenly had a fever of 105.6.  Normal temperature in a horse averages about 100 degrees, so 105 is a bad sign.  Fearing the worst — the surgeons at WSU had told us that one risk with Brynn’s surgery was the possibility of urine backing up into her kidneys — we rushed her into our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, for blood work.  The blood tests showed her kidney values were still fine. 

Yet even with such a high fever, Brynn didn’t act sick, she had a great appetite, and she nickered up a storm.  After Brynn spent several hours at the clinic that day, Bill said, "You know, I’ve never seen a horse with a fever that high act so normal."  It turned out that this episode seemed to be associated with a flu, because she developed a snotty nose.  A course of antibiotics brought her fever down over the course of three days, and it remained steady.

Then last Tuesday, she spiked again overnight to 105.8 degrees … with no snotty nose, no respiratory issues, no signs of any other illness.  And she still didn’t act sick.  Brynn was perky, happy, nickering, eating, drinking, and being her usual sweet self.  More antibiotics, coupled with an anti-inflammatory, and her temperature returned to normal … in ONE day.  That’s weird. 

This morning, dang, another spike … she was at 104 degrees … while still ON antibiotics.  When I went into her stall I noticed she felt warm to the touch, and the thermometer confirmed it.  I called Bill, who by this point was as puzzled as we were by the rapid cycling of her temperature and the fact that it doesn’t seem to affect her at all and make her "sick" — even though she clearly is.  Bill spoke with Brynn’s equine surgeon at WSU this afternoon, and they both concluded that she must still have an infection somewhere … perhaps in her urinary system.  We’re going to get blood work in the next day or two and see what her white blood cell count looks like.

Alayne took this photo of me taking Brynn’s temperature this evening.  (Once she spikes a fever, we take her temperature three times a day to stay on top of it.)  Right after I pulled the thermometer out and started walking around Brynn’s backside, she peed … and the stream of urine splashed all over my pants.  That’s actually how the day started, too:  Nevada the blind puppy peed all over me when I took her out of her crate this morning.  (Occupational hazard.)  So by this evening I was already on my second set of clothes!

(Click on photo for larger image.)

Alayne got this interesting shot this afternoon of Daisy the miniature Dachshund checking out a dead-to-the- world blind Joey.  We had a sunny, very warm 70-degree day — that’s unseasonably warm for us, where the average high temperature for April is only 54 degrees — and the dogs were finding the shady spots to sack out.

Joey had found her shade, and was completely conked out when Daisy … followed by Alayne … went to visit.  In case you’re wondering why Joey’s face looks a bit different, she doesn’t just have her eyes closed — we had to have them removed a few weeks ago because they had become chronically painful.  But Joey is doing just fine, and since she was blind to begin with, all she knows is the pain is gone.

I’m not sure if Joey woke up because she heard the camera shutter clicking, or whether she just had this sensation of someone staring intensely at her, but a minute later she came awake.  At that point Daisy assured herself that everything was okay with Joey and she wandered off in search of more interesting pursuits.  Joey yawned, rolled back over, and went to sleep again.

Ah, springtime.

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Here’s blind baby Nevada on the left, meeting wobbly Soba for the first time.  This is about as stable as we’ve ever seen Soba, although what the camera doesn’t capture is the slight bob-and-weave as she tries to stand still.  Nevada was initially very submissive with Soba and all the other dogs she greeted for the first time.  (Good puppy behavior!)

Soba was fascinated with Nevada’s face, and would run her nose across Nevada’s cheeks, first on one side and then along the other.  She very slowly and deliberately checked out Nevada’s face.  I wonder if it was because she just couldn’t figure out why this puppy didn’t have eyes.

After maintaining this sitting position while Soba gave her the once-over, Nevada lied down, rolled over, and stayed that way for what she thought was an appropriately respectful amount of time.  Then, quite done with being submissive, she leaped to her feet and bounded back over to Soba, racing around her legs just like she does with us.  She seemed to be saying, "Okay, enough of that deference stuff, let’s play!"

(Click on photo for larger image.)