Rolling Dog Farm Blog

A wonderful friend and supporter of the sanctuary, Randi S. in northern Virginia, just sent us a big box of peanut butter dog cookies.  Blind Goldie did her instant sniff test and determined there were no soft chew toys inside, so there was no need to start shredding the cardboard with her teeth.  Her nose told her it was the next best thing, though, dog cookies!  But she decided to wait patiently (i.e., for a few minutes) for Alayne to open the box.

Well, right after opening the box, Alayne went to answer the phone.  A couple of minutes later she came back to find Goldie standing inside the box, on top of all the packing paper, as if she were guarding the contents.

Alayne headed to my office to get the camera, and when she returned, it was apparent what Goldie was up to.  No, she wasn’t guarding the contents at all.  She had decided to help unpack the box, since Alayne wasn’t making much apparent progress.  (Patience does have its limits.)  Goldie was probably inside the box trying to assess how much packing material was in there.  When she realized Alayne had returned, Goldie scampered out of the box and then went to work.  That’s when Alayne got these shots of Goldie "helping."

In the first photo Goldie is getting a mouthful of all that packing paper.  (I think she’s also trying to figure out how hard it would be to break into one of the cookie boxes and help herself … speaking of "helping.")  In the second photo she’s in full unpacking mode … "Mom, let me show you how to unpack this thing quickly."

And finally, Goldie has all of the paper out of the box and … oh so very helpfully …. has managed to drag it through the big water bowl on the floor and then pile it in the water bowl!  Okay, so maybe we’ll cut Goldie a little slack because she’s blind and maybe she didn’t realize the water bowl was right there … or maybe she just decided it didn’t matter, because "there’s a lot of ridiculous paper here and I’ve got to put it somewhere!"

Sometimes you get more help than you can stand, you know?

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Every afternoon, between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., this is what rises up from underneath my desk.  Blind Widget has a daily routine, which is to wander into my office, mill around my desk chair, then stand up on her little short legs and put her front paws on my lap.  Her expression is inevitably, "So, what are you doing up there?"

My answer is usually the same:  "Widget, I’m responding to emails, what are YOU doing?"

She always times this visit for late in the afternoon, when I’m trying to finish up emails and other office tasks so I can head outside for evening chores.  For all I know, she just may be assuring herself that I’ve put in a full day’s worth of work while she’s been sleeping all day. 

So after I give her a thorough ear scratch and some loving, she drops back down to the floor, only to mill around briefly and … reappear!  Once is never enough.  This time she had a good flap o’ the ears before climbing up again, giving her the windswept ears-back look.

Having satisfied herself that I really am working hard, she typically heads over to a dog bed in my office for a snooze.  If both of the beds are occupied, she’ll wander back out to the living room, content to know she’s made her afternoon rounds and that all is as it should be.

(Click on photos for larger image.)

It’s a good thing these two sisters have different markings, because it would be hard to tell them apart sometimes!  It’s like they’re programmed to give us the same looks.  These girls are the cerebellar hypoplasia pups who came to us from an Iowa shelter a few weeks ago.  That’s Noodle on the left and her sister, the-one-formerly-known-as-Wobbles, now renamed Soba.  (Get it?  Soba … Noodle.  Okay, well, maybe that’s a little too much inside-Asian-cuisine … soba is a Japanese noodle made from buckwheat.) 

Noodle surprised us the other day and managed to get on a cot all by herself.  She is definitely much more compromised than her sister Soba, and we didn’t think she could climb up, but one afternoon we came out of the house and there she was, happily lying on the cot.  Now it’s her favorite spot.

Just in case you thought the photo above was a fluke, here’s another one.  These two girls do a lot of things in unison.  No matter where I moved with the camera, I got the same expression from each of them.  Photo after photo.

Notice how far apart Noodle’s front legs are in the first photo.  There are times when her legs look like they are sticking out at unnatural, 45-degree angles from her body.  We had our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, X-ray Noodle’s joints to make sure they were okay, and they were.  Most cerebellar hypoplasia animals adopt a wide stance with their legs (the front ones in particular) to achieve added stability, but Noodle is the most extreme case we’ve seen. 

Everything was looking pretty much the same here until Soba decided to try and steal her sister’s bed and pull it over to her cot.  It’s a good thing she doesn’t have great motor skills, because she wasn’t able to get it, though try she did!

(Click on photos for larger image.)

On Saturday our wonderful volunteer Laura B. from Helena picked up Brody and Nevada at the vet clinic and brought them out to us.  Joining Laura at the ranch to volunteer was her daughter Kate, who lives in Missoula.  Together they make volunteering a regular mother/daughter event … one drives east, one drives west, and they meet at the ranch!  Laura and Kate get so much done, we’re always amazed after they leave how much they accomplished.

In the photo is Laura on the left, holding wobbly Rudy, a little guy with cerebellar hypoplasia who came to us from a Utah rescue group last year.  Laura adopted him just a few weeks after he arrived.  Now he comes back to the ranch to "volunteer," too.  In the foreground is Brody, who was enjoying the sunshine after several days in a vet clinic kennel.  Kate is holding baby Nevada.  Sneaking in from the left is blind Widget, who heard the camera clicking and figured if there was going to be a photo, she might as well be in it.

Our vet in Helena, Dr. Brenda Culver, found that the lens in Brody’s right eye had detached and was rubbing up against the cornea (ouch), causing the pain and discomfort we were suddenly seeing.  She went ahead and removed his eye, which is why he’s wearing a cone on his head.  Brenda had just completed an eye exam on him a few weeks ago, which shows you how fast these things can develop in an eye that has other chronic problems.

Brenda also did exploratory surgery on Nevada’s eyes, and as we suspected, there were no eyeballs behind those sealed lids.  Brenda removed the tear glands, which will eliminate the constant discharge from Nevada’s eyes.  It turns out that Nevada didn’t even have normal orbits, or eye sockets … they just never fully developed.  Brenda was going to put a prosthesis, like a little marble, in each eye socket to keep the eyelid from sinking in, creating a concave look.  But unfortunately Nevada’s orbits were so small and ill-formed there wasn’t room to put the prosthesis in either socket.  We also had Nevada spayed at the same time.  All her bloodwork looks great … so aside from her eyes, she’s one healthy little puppy.

I took this photo of Brody a short while after taking the photo above.  He was really happy to be home, and all he wanted to do was crash in the living room.  Which, as you can see, he had no problem doing!  (That’s Bailey snoozing in the background.)

One of the things we do here, in addition to directly taking care of 80 animals, is communicating our basic message that disabled animals can have a wonderful quality of life.  (Regular blog readers don’t need to be convinced of that, of course!)

The biggest challenge we have is helping people in the horse world understand that this is true of blind horses, too.  Most people assume that a blind horse is going to be dangerous, hard to handle, and miserable.  Of course, we have 25 blind horses who prove this isn’t the case.

Now, we’re the first to admit that there are some horses that just won’t adjust well to blindness.  If you have a high-strung, spooky stallion, for example, that animal might not cope with blindness.  But the fact is that most horses, if given time to adjust, can and do adapt very well to being blind.  How well they adjust has everything to do with their personality, not the disability itself.

Our most important target audience for our blind horse message is the equine vet community, because too many vets still buy into the old myths about blind horses.  We hear, far too often, that an equine vet has told a client that the "most humane thing you can do is put the animal down."  What we want is for the vet to discuss all the options for a blind horse, not just recommend euthanasia as the first and only course of action the owner should take.  We think many equine vets do this because they honestly just haven’t considered all the other options, and they may not know what else to recommend.  We want equine vets to be the "first line of defense" for a blind horse, not the first one saying, "better to put it down."

This is why we participate in the annual convention of the American Association of Equine Practitioners, the equine vet association, with an exhibit booth and materials promoting our BlindHorses.org Web site.  But even though we reach a good number of the vets who attend the convention, we realized we needed to do more to get the word out. 

So tomorrow, on Friday, we are stepping up our education campaign with a mailing to all equine vets in the U.S., as well as those in Canada and overseas who are members of the American Association of Equine Practitioners.  This is a sneak preview of the postcard we’re sending out to these vets to promote our BlindHorses.org Web site.

By the way, that’s our beautiful blind Lena on the cover of the postcard.  You can see why I call her the "prettiest horse in the universe"!

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Many months ago I posted an item and a still photo about blind Widget "looming" over the other dogs until they give up their bed or chair to her.  Widget will quietly walk up to them, stand there motionless (except for her little tail bobbing), and stare intently at them.  (Hey, she’s blind, but a stare is a stare!)  She will maintain this posture for what seems like an eternity … it may be only a few minutes, but it’s almost always more stress than the other dogs can bear.  Sooner rather than later, they crack under the pressure and surrender their spot to Widget.

She does this with all dogs, large and small, blind or sighted.  Only two dogs withstand "The Loom" as we call it … big, blind Kenai and our old boy, Dillon, who’s pretty much oblivious to all sorts of things going on around him.  Eventually Widget will give up, dropping her tail in a sign of waning confidence in her ability to intimidate, and wander off, or she’ll just climb up and settle down next to them (but that’s NOT the same as winning the stare-down and having the bed or chair to oneself!).

So when I saw Widget looming over Oscar just the other day, this time I dashed to the office to get the video camera.  This showdown had been going on for a while, so unfortunately I captured only the last few seconds, missing out on all the tension that was buzzing in the air!

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-5802585056290384941&hl=en

Alayne drove new arrivals Nevada the blind puppy and Brody the blind Lab to our vet clinic in Helena today.  We took these photos shortly before Alayne hit the road.

Nevada is going in for an eye exam, general medical check-up, blood work and a spay.  We are a bit concerned about the chronic discharge from her eyes.  We’ve had puppies born without eyes before, but have not seen this kind of discharge.

So our vet Dr. Brenda Culver will be figuring out — probably through either exploratory surgery or ultrasound — what’s going on behind Nevada’s sealed eyelids.  But otherwise Nevada is healthy, happy, and playful.  Her eyes don’t seem to bother her at all.

(In the photo behind me are two of our three barns — that’s Lena’s Barn on the left and Scout’s Barn on the right.  Beauty’s Barn is about 150 yards down the drive to the right.)

Here’s a close-up I took of this little girl today before she went to
the clinic.  It’s hard to get a good shot of Nevada because she’s
always swirling around our feet and trying to climb up our legs!

Brody, on the other hand, is clearly having some kind of problem with his eyes.  He seems uncomfortable, squinting at times, occasionally rubbing his eyes with his paws.  He’ll lie on the floor with his eyes mostly closed … not dozing, he’ll be wide awake … but looking like they’re bothering him.  Even in some of these photos I took today he was squinting.  Yet they don’t seem red or inflamed.

During her eye exam on Brody a couple of weeks ago, Brenda detected through ultrasound that his retinas were detaching.  We could be seeing complications from that.

Alayne left both Nevada and Brody at the clinic this afternoon, and we’ll post an update on these two adorable animals as soon as we have any news.

(Click on photos for larger image.)

We discovered several weeks ago that our blind foal, Cash, had a real thing for zippers.  Whenever I would finish feeding him his mare milk replacer in the bucket, he would lift his head up, wipe his dripping white mouth on me (we’re just "human napkins" for this two-month old foal), then keep moving his lips across my jacket until he found the zipper.  He’d grab the zipper with his lips and run it up and down, fascinated with both the sound and the motion. 

If he couldn’t find the zipper, he’d find my yellow chore gloves and lift them out of my coat pockets.  Resourceful, to say the least.

So we just shot some video of Cash doing his zipper thing.  Here it is:

http://admin.brightcove.com/destination/player/player.swf

We had a little blind puppy arrive at the end of last week from the animal control shelter in Elko, Nevada.  She was born with no eyes in her head.  A young man found her by the side of the road and, thinking someone had injured her, took her to a vet clinic.  After the vet found the puppy was blind from birth, not from abuse of some sort, the young man then took her to the shelter. 

The shelter staff fell in love with this adorable little girl, but couldn’t find anyone willing to adopt her.  A wonderful lady in California, Dara O., volunteers long-distance for this animal control shelter, trying to find options for animals who are at risk of euthanasia.  Dara contacted us last Monday about the puppy.  In her email she wrote:

I have contacted several other rescue organizations and unfortunately none of them were able to help her and her time is running out.

I called Dara to say we could take the little girl.  Now, normally when we agree to take an animal from an out-of-state shelter, we have to arrange the travel.  Not this time.  Dara handled the entire enterprise, made the reservations, paid for the airfare, and got everything squared away.  All I had to do was say "yes," and that was it.  (I could get used to this!)  On Thursday, the shelter staff took the puppy to the tiny airport in Elko to catch a puddle-jumper flight to Salt Lake City, and from there she caught the connecting flight to Missoula.  Alayne picked her up at the airport at 4:30 that afternoon.

Back at the ranch late Thursday, we let this blind puppy out of her crate … and immediately all she wanted to do was romp and play with me.  She kept jumping up on me, running little circles around my feet, then whirl around and roll over, get up, and do it all over again. 

A few minutes later it dawned on me what we were going to name her:  Nevada!

On Friday, Karen from the Elko shelter emailed us to say: 

She left a big hole in our hearts – she is a special one.  We are so grateful that you were able to accept her into your wonderful sanctuary. I know that Dara asked, but we will always love to hear about her if you can.

So, thanks to a young man who picked up the puppy and got her to safety, a shelter staff who cared about her, and a volunteer who made it all come together, baby Nevada got another chance to enjoy life.

She does have some discharge from her eyes, and she has a bit of
a runny nose, so we have her on antibiotics.  We’ll be taking her to our vet clinic in Helena next
week for exploratory surgery on her eyes and a medical exam.

Alayne and I got some video of Nevada yesterday evening.  In the first clip you’ll see a close-up of her … you can see she’s listening to the sounds, mostly birds, and then when she hears my voice, she zooms right towards me.  In the second clip you’ll see her playing with me. 

(Towards the end of that clip the phone on my belt starts ringing, and I answered it after Alayne turned off the video camera.  We don’t have cell service out here, but we do have "industrial-strength" cordless phones that can cover up to 3,000 acres, so we can take a call wherever we are on the ranch.)

With that introduction, here’s Nevada:

http://admin.brightcove.com/destination/player/player.swf

Alayne and I were doing some random videotaping yesterday afternoon, and I thought you’d enjoy this one-minute clip I shot when we walked into the front yard of Widget’s House.  There’s nothing in particular going on and it ends a bit abruptly, but it will give you a good idea of what some of our little characters are like.

On the video I point out blind Emmy Lou racing around, but what I didn’t notice at the time was the other figure running big circles … deaf Tyler.  Right after the start of the video you’ll see a white shape come streaking in, then moments later he’s in the background making a big loop.  That’s Tyler.

Travis, our boy with a fused jaw, is also in this.  He loves to jump on people, which he knows he is NOT supposed to do, but he does it anyway, then immediately sits down at your feet and does a tail-twitter thing.  He knows he’s guilty, he looks guilty, but it feels so good he can’t help himself.

(For those of you who are receiving these blog posts via the daily FeedBlitz email, the videos are not appearing.  I don’t know why FeedBlitz isn’t embedding them — they embed the photos just fine — but you’ll need to go directly to the blog — click here — to see the video.)

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-3316603962618508230&hl=en