Rolling Dog Farm Blog

The daily medical treatments vary week by week here, but I thought I’d show you what we’re doing every day at the moment.  Usually our kitchen counter isn’t this neatly arranged, but for the purposes of the photo I figured I should organize everything.  What you see are most of the medications we dispense every morning.  Currently getting daily treatments are six dogs, five horses, and one cat.

In the mix are heart drugs, steroids, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, joint supplements, thyroid medications, iodide, pergolide, phenobarbital, potassium bromide, eye ointments and topicals, and yes, molasses.  (Not all the drugs are in this photo.)  In the small round Rubbermaid is Brynn’s antibiotics, big fat pills we pulverize in that coffee grinder and then mix with the molasses.  (Coffee grinder works great, just don’t use it for coffee later!)

Speaking of Brynn, she is doing better … she’s still running a fever but her temperature is coming down  every day.

Since our kitchen also serves as the pharmacy and dispensary, our biggest challenge is just making sure we don’t, um, accidentally add a little dexamethasone to the pasta sauce or sprinkle the trimeth sulfa on the pizza.

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My mistake, of course, was to add that last line in yesterday’s post … the one where I pointed out the very last patch of snow at the ranch.  I should have known better.  We woke up this morning to three inches of snow, the wind howling, and visibility less than 1/4 mile. 

That meant a snuggly day for the dogs.  At lunch time I was trying out a new video camera and captured what our living room looked like.  (Our last video camera died many months ago, which is why there haven’t been any ranch videos on the blog in a long time!)  Not shown in this video were several other dogs in the house:  blind Willie and blind Kenai asleep on cots behind me, blind Helen asleep in Alayne’s office, Dolly asleep in our bedroom, blind Joey in the green crate you’ll see in this piece, and then Alayne’s "minions," as I call them … blind Goldie and Oscar the Doxie, swirling around Alayne’s ankles in the kitchen.

There’s nothing exciting or funny going on here.  But it will probably make you want to go take a nap.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-7485462103745071588&hl=en

I mentioned in last Thursday’s blog that I take Brynn’s temperature every morning, just before I give her rear end and back legs a warm, soapy sponge bath to deal with the residual urine drips.  Taking her temperature gives us an early indicator of any infection, and ever since coming back from surgery at Washington State University’s teaching hospital she had been normal.

Until this morning.

As soon as I slid the digital thermometer into her rectum, I could tell it was going up way too fast.  My heart sank.  Dang!  Sure enough, the little alarm sounded when it reached 105.2.  While Alicia continued to hold Brynn at the front end (please note:  for some reason, no matter whether it’s Alayne or Alicia who’s helping, I’m ALWAYS the one who gets the back end of the horse to work on), I reset the thermometer and tried again.  This time, 104.8.  Average temperature of a healthy horse is about 100, so Brynn was way off.  Our worry all along is that something might go wrong from her urethral extension surgery, like suddenly leaking urine into her abdomen or backing up into her kidneys.

I called from Brynn’s stall and reached our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, on his cell phone as he was pulling into his clinic.  He didn’t like the news any better than I did.  I noted she was eating her grain just fine while I was taking her temp and she wasn’t acting sick or puny.  To rule out an anomaly with the thermometer, Bill suggested I get a different one and try again.  With a brand-new thermometer, I got 105.2 again.  Then Alicia (still safely at the front end, I might add) noticed some discharge coming from one of Brynn’s nostrils — the color of banana creme pie, she called it.  I called Bill again.  The consensus:  Better get her in.

Alayne was already getting our personal truck ready to head into Missoula for errands, so she switched to the sanctuary truck, which was hitched up to the horse trailer.  She took the photo above as I was loading Brynn into the trailer.  Poor Brynn was thinking, "Not another trip to the vet, please!"

Late today the good news was her blood work still looked great.  No changes in her kidney values or other key indicators.  Whew.  But her fever remained at a stubbornly high 105.  Bill thinks Brynn could be having an equine flu, so we started her back on a twice-daily dose of antibiotics (trimeth sulfa mixed with a couple of tablespoons of molasses … um, um, good!).  She still acts like she feels perky, which is a really good sign!

An aside:  If you look closely right below Brynn’s tail, you’ll see a small dab of white on the ground.  That’s the last patch of snow at the ranch.  Yes!

A wonderful couple from Missoula, Andrea C. and Seth N., came out this weekend to the ranch and adopted blind Penny!  Andrea first emailed us a week ago to ask about Penny, and after a flurry of follow-up emails, Andrea and Seth decided to come and visit with Penny on Saturday.  They brought along their other dog, 11-year old Sydney, to meet Penny too.  After all, everyone in the family needs to agree on an adoption — especially the other dog!

It doesn’t take much to fall in love with Penny, and pretty soon they decided to take Penny home and make her part of their family.  I talked with Andrea this evening, who said Penny had made herself at home and settled right in.  On Saturday night … Penny’s first night there … Andrea’s 7-year old nephew stayed over, and Penny slept next to his bed the entire night and never stirred.

Andrea emailed this photo tonight that Seth took of her with Sydney on the left and Penny on the right.

Thank you, Andrea and Seth!

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We noticed that Bobby the blind cat didn’t look good this morning.  He had a lot of icky drool hanging off his mouth, and he kept stretching his head way up, then bringing it down and stretching it out again.  The drool didn’t smell bad (yes, we check these things out closely!), which was kind of weird because it looked like it would stink.  Bobby had all his teeth removed a few years ago because of chronic stomatitis, an oral inflammation in the gums, and this particular strain of stomatitis did not respond to any treatment.  The only thing left to do was remove all his teeth, and ever since he had been fine. 

But when I looked in his mouth this morning, I could see bright red areas along his gums.  Uh oh. 

I was headed to Missoula today anyway to take blind Brynn the foal in for her bi-weekly blood draw, so I called our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, to see if he could look at Bobby.  For good measure I added wobbly Ito the dog to the trip, since Dave had said he wanted to re-check her bloodwork.  Ito is on two medications to control the seizures which are part of her overall neurological problem.

In the first photo Dave is examining Bobby.  Yes, his stomatitis has come back.  Aaarggh.  So he’s on steroids and antibiotics for the next several days, and hopefully we’ll get it under control again.  Bobby was a very good patient — no fussing at all.  After working on Bobby, we drew blood from Ito (I had to hold her still for Dave so I didn’t get any photos).

Then, after running a couple of errands, I headed over to Dr. Bill Brown’s clinic for Brynn’s blood draw.  Ever since she came back from surgery at Washington State University, we’ve been taking her temperature daily and checking her bloodwork every other week.  This is because there’s a remote chance the urethral extension the surgeons did to stop her constant leaking could inadvertently cause urine to back up her ureters and into her kidneys.  If this were happening, we’d first learn it from her temperature, i.e. if she developed a fever from infection, and her kidney values — BUN and creatinine.

So far her temperature and kidney values have remained normal, and today was no exception.  In this photo Bill is pulling blood from an unusual place … on Brynn’s cheek!  Brynn has had so many needles jabbed in her jugular vein over the past several weeks, especially during her month stay at WSU, that she gets a bit cranky when we try and draw blood from that location now.  It turns out there’s a perfectly good alternative site on a horse’s cheek, in a certain spot a few inches below the eye.   Bill was reminded of this from a veterinary journal article he had just read a couple of days ago.  (Title: "The transverse facial venous sinus: an alternative location for blood collection in the horse.")  Who knew?

Sure enough, Brynn was very cooperative when Bill inserted the needle.  He showed me how to do it and gave me the syringes and blood vials, so next time I get to do it back here at the ranch.  (Oh no.)  This will save me having to trailer her in to Missoula for such a simple, quick procedure.  I can just pull blood from Brynn, leave her and the horse trailer behind at the ranch, and drive the blood vial into town when I do the rest of the errands.  Well, that’s the theory, anyway.  We’ll see!

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Blind Goldie thinks the ultimate gift just arrived:  three big boxes filled with 104 stuffed toys with squeakers!  Joni B. from Austin, Texas, ordered this wonderful gift from PetEdge, a wholesale pet supplier, and had them shipped directly to the ranch.  We knew better than to let Goldie get anywhere near these boxes, so we had the UPS guy leave them out on the driveway on the OTHER side of the yard gate.  Then, with Goldie stashed away inside the house, we quickly moved the PetEdge boxes to Birdie’s Cottage.  There they will be safe from this cardboard-chewing, squeaker-destroying little dog.

The toys were all Zanies with names like Fleecy Friend Toy Camel and Berber Bear and Cuddly Berber Baby in Blue Koala and Cuddly Berber Baby in Pink Elephant.  Goldie managed to snatch, before we could even take the tag off, the Embroidered Berber Bone in Green.  What she does with a new toy — this is before she rips it open and takes the squeaker out to puncture it — is proudly walk around showing it off to everyone … other dogs, people, whoever might be around to notice her with the new prize.  "Look what I have!  Look what I have!"  Once she’s convinced everyone has seen her toy, she then finds a quiet spot to lie down and kill it.

I took this photo while she was busy racing around the yard, showing her Berber Bone to anyone who would pay attention to her.

We’ve had to break the news to Goldie that a) Joni did NOT send the toys only for her, and b) she can destroy only one toy at a time.

Thank you, Joni!

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Today was one of those "drop some off and pick some up" trips to the vet clinic.  I took the new arrivals, wobbly sisters Noodle and Wobbles, and blind Joey to our vets in Helena late this morning.  I took the photo of Alayne holding Joey with the two girls in the truck just before I left.  Noodle was talking to us when I got this shot.

The sisters were going in for general medical exams, bloodwork, and a spay for Wobbles (Noodle had already been spayed).  I wanted our vet, Brenda Culver, to look at Joey’s eyes because we’ve been seeing what look like significant changes going on in both of them … and neither one looks good.

We always have to monitor the eyes in our blind animals because blindness doesn’t mean the eye is basically "finished" with a disease process … in fact, blindness is often just a symptom of the underlying problem, and changes can keep occurring within the eye.  That’s why we’ve had to remove eyes in many of our blind animals, because the disease process is ongoing and ultimately results in a painful, chronically infected eye.  One veterinary ophthalmologist we know described the eye as a ‘house of cards,’ saying if you removed one card — i.e., had one problem occur somewhere in the eye — you can often expect a series of other problems to develop subsequently.  We’ve certainly found that to be the case.

Sometimes, if cataracts develop early, they can mask other changes occurring in the eye.  That’s why Brenda had to ultrasound blind Brody’s eyes to find out if there were changes going on behind his cataracts … and there were.  His retinas are detaching.  I suspect Joey’s eyes have been undergoing changes in the past couple of months and we hadn’t noticed because they were hidden by her cataracts.  By the time they became visible — like now — a lot has gone on inside them.

So I dropped Noodle and Wobbles and Joey off at the clinic, and picked up Brody and blind Turtle.  Brody was happy to see me (well, smell/hear me, I guess!) and gave me a big smooch.  Even Turtle, who just came through major intestinal surgery, was purring up a storm.  (In case you’re wondering, the bill came to $1,749.34.)  We are still waiting on the biopsy results on Turtle’s intestines — the tissue samples went to Colorado State University.

Alayne took this photo of me with the two of them when we got back to the ranch about 5 p.m.  Brody was shaking hands because, well, any time is a good time to shake hands as far as he’s concerned!  Turtle was purring in my arms because, well, she thinks any time is a good time to purr!

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Our spring 2007 print newsletter is now in the mail.  We took the print copies to the Ovando post office late Wednesday and they went out in the mail on Thursday, so they should begin arriving in mailboxes any day now.  With the nonprofit bulk rate we use, the actual time the newsletter takes to show up in any given location is completely random … sometimes incredibly fast, other times frustratingly slow (the longest we know of was three weeks to Kansas!).

We have plenty of extra copies — once you start a large print run, the extras cost hardly anything at all, just the cost of the paper — so if you have family, friends or colleagues who might enjoy receiving a copy of the newsletter in the mail, please let us know and we’d be happy to send them one.  The newsletter also has a handy contribution envelope inside.  Just send names and addresses to me via email here.  As a reminder, we don’t share our mailing list with anyone, ever.

In the meantime, we posted the PDF version of the spring newsletter on our Web site over the weekend, so you can read it there, too.

We also posted new pages on four of our recent arrivals on the Meet the Animals section of our Web site. Willie’s story is the same one from the spring newsletter, while the others are expanded versions of the newsletter stories on Claude, Daisy and Guadalupe.

These two adorable girls arrived on Friday from the Humane Society of North Central Iowa.  That’s Noodle on the left and her sister Wobbles on the right.  They’re Collie mix pups about 8 months of age.  Alayne took this photo of us late this afternoon.  They have cerebellar hypoplasia, a neurological condition that affects fine motor skills and balance.  It’s the same condition that Allie the dog and Wobbles and Claire the cats have.

But Noodle and her sister Wobbles are definitely more challenged than the other cerebellar hypoplasia animals we have.  They make Allie look like, well, a ballet dancer by comparison!  (If you’ve ever seen Allie in person, you know that’s a significant statement!)  So they definitely wobble and flop a lot, and once they get going they can have a hard time stopping.  When they tumble over backwards it can make us wince … but my-oh-my, they are such happy, joyful little things.

When they see us come through the gate into the isolation yard, they struggle to their feet — it’s not easy for them to get up — and bounce and wobble their way over to us, big smiles on their faces, making happy little barks as they come.  Then they’ll lick us and lick us.  They just love to be petted.  These sisters are happiest when they’re held, and they go absolutely still.  That’s because their brains no longer have to think about maintaining balance, and so their bodies just relax.  Of course, they’re usually so excited to see us it takes a while for them to calm down and become still … but they do!

When the shelter staff emailed us about them, they wrote:

When the puppies first came into the shelter some people told us that we should just put them to sleep, but we couldn’t do that when their eyes were so full of life. They WANT to be here. Just because they are different or require more work doesn’t mean they should be dead.

And full of life they are!  It’s such an effort for these girls to get up, to walk, to hold themselves still long enough to drink from a water bowl … but with sheer determination, they (eventually) do everything they want to do.  Despite that effort, they are incredibly happy, and their faces show it.  I hope to get some video of Noodle and Wobbles "in action" this coming week so you can see what I mean.

Until then, please join us in welcoming them to the ranch!

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Now that the snow has finally melted, we’ve started taking some of the horses out to pasture this week.  It’s not so they can graze, since the grass hasn’t come up yet, but for exercise and to get them out of their corrals so we can get in with the tractors to clean out a winter’s worth of manure.  I took this photo of Alayne with blind Kiowa this evening when we went to get him and bring him back to the barn.

Kiowa is the only horse we have who plays "hard to get" when it’s time to come in.  Even his pasture buddy, Cactus Jack, will head right for us when he hears us walking towards them.  We put the halter on Cactus and lead him back to his corral; he’s happy to go in.  Kiowa, though, just can’t let himself be "caught" … unless, of course, there’s some grain involved.  Then it’s just a question of shaking the grain bucket and Kiowa comes right on over.  While he’s got his face buried in the bucket, we toss the lead rope over his neck, and when he comes up for air, we slip the halter on his head.  We give him a couple more mouthfuls of grain, and off we go to the barn.

Bribery.  It works.

Or, from the horse’s perspective, it would appear that this scrawny blind Appaloosa has managed to train his handlers pretty well.  Hmm.

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