Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Little Spirit, our paralyzed Yorkie, met her new family today and leaves for Florida Saturday morning!  Glenn and Nicci B. of Tampa had originally planned to fly out just before the Christmas holidays to adopt Spirit, but they had to re-schedule their travel plans.  I took this photo as Nicci was seeing Spirit for the first time.  Alayne had brought Spirit over to our welcome center from the house and had just handed her to Nicci.  Spirit is wearing a ‘princess sweater’ that Nicci had earlier mailed out to us.

Glenn and Nicci once had a rescued, paralyzed Yorkie named Bella.  When Bella died recently, they wanted to offer their home and love to another disabled Yorkie.  So when Nicci saw our original blog posts about Spirit’s arrival at the sanctuary, she contacted us.  After hearing about the kind of extraordinary care they had provided Bella — who not only was paralyzed but also had other serious medical conditions — we knew Spirit would be in wonderful, loving hands with Nicci and Glenn.

So they flew out from Tampa to pick up Spirit today and take her home to Florida, where Spirit will be doing physical therapy with Nicci in their swimming pool when she’s not cruising in her wheelchair under palm trees.

Swimming pool?  Palm trees?  For Spirit, a new home in sunny Florida couldn’t come soon enough.  On her last day at the ranch, it was 32 degrees below zero at dawn.  I took this photo of the thermometer on our wood shed this morning just before the sun came up.  When Nicci and Glenn arrived this afternoon at 3 p.m., it was zero degrees; by the time they left shortly after 4 p.m., with the sun dipping behind the mountains to the west, it was 10 below zero.  As I write this at 7 p.m., it’s already 22 below zero and still going down. 

Spirit had only one thing to say: "Get me outta here!"

This little girl, who was lying in the road being kicked by her drunken owner when she was rescued last year, has come a long way.  It was a kind and compassionate lady named Denise S. who intervened and saved Spirit that fateful August day in Butte, Montana.  Thanks to Denise, Spirit will spend the rest of her life being loved and adored and living the life of luxury.  In a place where people go swimming in January.

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I was headed down the drive in the truck to go get a load of hay at 4 p.m. when I looked over at the front yard of Widget’s House and noticed Travis was missing.  Uh oh.  Today was bitterly cold and the dogs had been inside most of the day.  I had just let them back outside to run around for a bit while I went to our neighbor’s hay barn.  Alayne was in Missoula running errands and taking blind Joey to the groomers.  It was up to me to find the scamp.

I looked at the truck thermometer and it said it was already 4 degrees below zero.  Our low for tonight was forecast to be 28 degrees below zero.  Travis!!!  @#%!@%#!  For some reason Travis, who has a fused jaw, picks very, very cold days to pull this stunt, and usually late in the afternoon or early evening.  It happens once a winter when the snow gets deep enough that it begins pulling down the fence around the yard in some spots by about 4 inches.  Between the thawing and freezing cycles, plus new snow, the fence becomes locked in ice, and we can’t pull it back up in those spots.

We have four feet of sheep fencing (small squares), topped with two strands of smooth wire.  The gap that opens up when the fence starts sagging is between the sheep fencing and the smooth wire.  It’s still plenty high, and none of the other dogs even think about trying to get out.  But because Travis is a climber and percher, it’s a natural invitation for a boy with his gymnastic skills.  We’d been keeping an eye on the fence for the past week, having noticed a couple of spots where the ‘winter sag’ had begun.  Yet the gap was only a couple of inches at this stage, we’d never seen Travis checking it out, and he seemed content to stick with his buddies anyway. 

So much for that theory.

Because the snow is so deep and crusty with ice layers mixed in, I knew Travis was likely to stay on the plowed roads.  Our first concern is the highway, about 3 miles away, so I sped all the way out across the Flat towards Highway 200.  No Travis.  I turned the truck around and headed back.

I got to the stop sign about 1/4 mile from our gate, looked over, and there was Travis.  At first he didn’t recognize the truck so he took off running, but when I climbed out and called to him, he looped back and came straight for me.  I picked him up and put him in the cab, and then the two of us set out to go get that load of hay.  I took the photo after I got back to the house with the hay and the rat I mean the dog.

What happens now?  Well, when we’re not around to keep an eye on him he’ll be in a large 20′ x 10′ kennel during the day until the snow melts.  When we’re over at Widget’s House he’ll be able to run and romp as usual.  In law enforcement circles I think they call this "supervised release," don’t they?

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This is Bailey the miniature Dachshund, doing what he loves most — burrowing under fleece bedding.  Usually he’s completely buried inside, but he came up for air so I could take his photo.  His one variation on this, which I think you’ve seen in another blog posting, is to bury the front half of his body, face and all, in the bedding, while leaving his rear-end sticking out.  (I’m not sure if he does this for temperature-control or some other purpose.)

But the problem for burrowing Dachshunds — especially small ones who completely disappear inside a wad of bedding — is that no one else knows they’re in there!  It just looks like, well, a wad of bedding.  This is bad enough with sighted dogs who will walk right over the lump, but add in a houseful of blind dogs, and being a burrowing Dachshund can be downright risky.

So Bailey’s risk-management solution is pretty simple.  Whenever he hears paw-pads headed his way, the bedding stirs and he starts barking vociferously from inside the wad.  "Hey, look out, I’m in here!"  It works.  Sighted or blind, the other dogs steer away from the hidden Dachshund. 

Well, it works most of the time.  The deaf ones, like Pappy and Dillon, don’t hear a thing, and usually aren’t paying much attention to where they’re walking anyway, so they’re not even likely to notice the bedding moving on the floor.  Oh, well.  There’s a price to pay for risky behavior.

Or maybe I should have called this one "Pepper and Salt and Pepper."

I walked into my office this evening after dinner and was greeted by this unusual arrangement.  That’s blind Evelyn on the left, blind and deaf Spinner in the middle, and Birdie with muscular dystrophy on the right.  We had taken one of the dog beds out of my office to wash earlier in the day, and apparently there wasn’t enough bedding to go around!

Once I opened the office door and saw this sight, the trick was to make it over to the desk, pick up the camera, step back and take the photo … before any of them decided to get up.  Birdie’s the one who is most likely to make a move, but even she stayed still long enough for me to get the photo.

Seconds later they dispersed, and not a dog was to be found in my office.

(If you click on the link above for Evelyn and go to her original story on our Web site, you’ll notice she has eyes in the photos on that page but no eyes in this photo.  We had to remove her eyes last April after taking her to our veterinary ophthalmologist in Spokane.  See the post about her eye surgery here.)

Of all the 80 animals at the ranch, blind and deaf Spinner is clearly the most disabled.  I can’t imagine being blind … or deaf … but to go through life both blind AND deaf?  I’ve tried to think what that must be like, and it’s hard to grasp.  So every day we just marvel at how Spinner copes with her double-whammy of disabilities.  This afternoon we had a perfect example of how she does it, and that’s what prompted this post.

Spinner’s window on life is her nose.  It tells her everything.  Her sense of smell is so acute that she picks up on things the other dogs never notice.  But it’s how she uses her sense of smell that is so incredible to see.  Early this afternoon I let her outside to pee (she’d been in my office for most of the day). The wind was blowing about 12 mph, strong enough to kick up snow from the ground and send it through the air.  It wasn’t that cold, but still not the kind of conditions you want to leave a dog out in.  So after a couple of minutes I began to think to myself, "Keep an eye out for Spinner."

Often I can look out my office window and see her pass by, so I’ll hop up and go see if she’s made it to the front door.  (She frequently finds the door on her own and she’ll sit patiently on the steps waiting for us.)  But this afternoon she kept going around the house … I’d open the front door just as she’d disappear around the corner.  I’d head to the back door, open it, and see her disappearing around the other corner.  Of course, you can’t call to her as you would a blind dog, nor wave to her as you would a deaf dog.

On her next pass around the back side of the house, she was about 20 feet away from me when I opened the back door and stepped out.  Almost immediately she came to a dead stop.  She lifted her nose in the air, then turned her head over her shoulder, nose still up.  Suddenly her body did a little quiver — we’ve learned this is a sign she recognizes what she’s smelling — and she sprang forward, headed right for me.  When she got to within an arm’s length of me, I reached out with my hand, touched her on the nose, and then she followed my hand as I "waved" her through the door.  It happened in an instant. 

Even with the wind blowing and from 20 feet away, she could smell that I was there AND she knew in what direction to find me.  This is really an awesome thing to behold. 

I took the photo of Spinner later this afternoon.  This is her classic "I’m checking things out" mode, with her nose up and over her shoulder.

It would be easy to feel sorry for an animal who’s both blind and deaf, but this girl is nothing but pure inspiration.

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Cody, our three-legged boy who is originally from Miami, Florida, isn’t as much of a weather wuss as he was at the beginning of this winter.  At first it was a battle just to get him to go outside.  Now he will bound through the snow to go bark at Travis on the other side of the fence, for instance, even though the snow is up to his chest.  Cody would still rather not be outside for long, thank you very much, but at least we can get him to go outdoors.

This afternoon when I let him out of Kelly’s Cottage, he zipped around the house, came to an abrupt halt, and then started pawing at this one spot in the snow.  He’d paw, stick his head in the hole, paw some more, and stick his head back in.  I have no idea what he thought was under the snow, but something obviously got his attention.  After a couple of minutes of this he gave up, raced around the house a couple more times, then gave me a look that said, "Okay, that was exciting, can I go back inside now?"

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Alayne and I had perfectly timed — or so we thought — our hay move this week so we could have our volunteers help us pick up a load tomorrow, on Saturday.  One of the volunteers who had planned to come out was Beth, who was our first employee and is now teaching and working in Missoula.  Beth had emailed to say, "And…can we please move a load of hay?  For some reason, I’ve been extraordinarily eager to do that!"  So we had a full day of activities planned for a large group of wonderful volunteers on Saturday.

Well, and then along came the weather.  We’d had snow showers all morning and a steady 14 mph wind all day, blowing the snow in sideways.  By noon today the National Weather Service had issued a winter storm warning for tomorrow beginning at 6 a.m.:

A POWERFUL WINTER WEATHER SYSTEM WILL BRING 10 TO 20 INCHES OF SNOWFALL TO THE MOUNTAINS AND 3 TO 6 INCHES TO THE LOWER ELEVATIONS BY EARLY SATURDAY EVENING. IN ADDITION…SOUTHERLY WINDS OF 25 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 55 MPH WILL CAUSE SIGNIFICANT BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW…ESPECIALLY IN THE HIGHER TERRAIN. LOCAL WHITEOUT CONDITIONS ARE PROBABLE.

So I dashed off an email to the volunteers this afternoon, advising them to stay home tomorrow and stay safe.  Then Alayne and I realized, dang, we’d better go get some hay before this thing blows in!  I went and got the sanctuary truck, the Chevy Silverado we call the "Big Dog," and backed it up to the flat-bed trailer.  I lined the ball on the hitch up with the tongue of the trailer, and started to crank the handle on the trailer nose-jack to lower it down.  It dropped a few inches and then sat there, the handle cranking but nothing happening.  It might have iced up inside or it might be a mechanical problem, but there was no time to figure it out.

We went and got our personal truck, a Dodge Ram 2500, and headed over to our neighbor’s hay barn to get some bales.  Alayne and I were able to stack 22 bales in the bed on the first run and 26 on the second run (I got smarter at the stacking business).  I took the photo late this afternoon just before we unloaded the second run into Scout’s Barn.  The wind was still howling but the snow had quit.  And there’s the non-functioning flat-bed trailer.  Maybe it just wanted a day off?

You may be able to see the shovel and crowbar leaning up against the barn door.  We had a melt-off earlier this week with temperatures in the high 30s, so the snowmelt collected around the base of those sliding doors and then — of course — froze again.  So I had to whack and chip at the ice to free the door in order to slide it all the way open.  That’s kind of how today went!

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We proudly launched a new Web site today called UnwantedHorses.org, and as the name suggests, it’s about all the unwanted horses in America.  Alayne and I have fielded countless calls and emails from people across the country over the past several years, hoping we could take the horses they no longer wanted.  These are the folks who at least are trying to place their animals in a safe haven like a sanctuary.  Many others simply dump their unwanted horses at auction houses and livestock exchanges, which are a pipeline for slaughterhouses.  In 2006, more than 100,000 unwanted horses were slaughtered in the U.S.

On one level the problem is a question of numbers, of supply and demand being out of balance.  But it’s actually much more complex than that, because it has to do with our relationship with these animals and how we view them.  It has always amazed us at how quick people are to get rid of their horses, once they can’t be ridden or bred or used for some purpose.  That led us to look deeper into the problem of unwanted horses, and what can be done about it.

Thus UnwantedHorses.org was born.

Please take a look and let us know what you think.

The credit for the beautiful design, by the way, goes to our fabulous graphic designer, Terrel Armstrong, who’s responsible for making us look so good!  She also designed our main Web site at RollingDogRanch.org and our BlindHorses.org site.  In addition to the Web sites, Terrel designed our print newsletter and handles the layout work for us every quarter.  And she does all this pro bono!  She’s our behind-the-scenes star, and we couldn’t function without her.

This is Joshua, one of our barn cats.  We call him ‘the hydrologist’ … and for a reason.  He is fascinated with water — running water, to be precise.  Not the boring, ordinary kind of water sitting motionless in a water bowl, of course.  But any water coming out of a faucet or hydrant or dripping off the roof.

Joshua’s territory is Beauty’s Barn, and he lives in the medical room when he’s not keeping an eye out for wayward mice.  Whenever we use the faucet in the medical room, Joshua comes darting in to see if he can lick the last drips from the nozzle after we shut it off.  With one bound, he’s up off the floor and into the sink.  He’s not thirsty … he always has a water bowl in the room … but there’s just something about water coming out of the faucet.  He’s like that with a hose, too.

For Joshua, water has to be flowing to be of any interest.  Any other hydrologist would be interested in our snowpack because of its water content.  But snow … well, snow just sits there.  It’s boring.  Like the water bowl.

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This is what my office floor looked like this afternoon.  I was working on ‘thank you’ letters and emails to the wonderful people who had made year-end donations when I swiveled around in my chair and realized just how many dogs had crowded into my office.  The camera was sitting here on the desk next to the computer, so I picked it up and took the photo — I never had to leave the chair!

Starting clockwise from the lower left, that’s blind Callie the Dachshund, blind and deaf Spinner, Daisy and Bailey the miniature Dachshunds, Birdie who has muscular dystrophy, and blind Goldie.

Now, in truth my office floor doesn’t always look like this.  (Thank heavens!)  Things got a bit crowded because Alayne had come in a few minutes earlier to use the photocopier, and her little gaggle of "minions" (as I call them) followed her. That would be Callie, Goldie and Birdie.  Bailey and Daisy came in because they realized Alayne and I were both in my office, and they like to hang out with us when we’re together.  When we’re in our separate offices, Bailey and Daisy are usually in the living room on the beds in there.

This is what my office looked like before Alayne arrived with her minions.  In fact, I was going to post a blog tonight about my office mate, Spinner, which is why I already had this photo taken.  Then the gaggle arrived!

After Alayne left, the crowd dispersed, leaving Spinner and me alone again.  Whew.

(Click on photos for larger image.)