Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Somewhere along the way in the past few months, blind Callie the Dachshund decided she’d be a personal groomer for the other dogs.  She loves to give their backs a careful going-over, licking them clean.  Oddly, she ONLY does backs … nothing else, please.  And she focuses only on the big dogs, for some reason, like Helen our blind 105-lb Rottweiler or Kenai our blind Lab.

I took this photo yesterday afternoon when I saw Callie busily grooming Kenai again in our dining room.  (Well, it’s more ‘dog room’ than ‘dining room,’ as you can see.)  Callie gets very intense and focused on this, and she will groom away as long as the other dog lies still.

In the background is Widget, sleeping as usual.  (Have you ever seen an "action" shot of Widget?)  Underneath the cot is all the stuffing from a soft toy that Kenai shredded yesterday morning while lying on that same cot.  (It’s odd what you notice in your own house AFTER you take a photo!)

The bedding piled on top of the Rubbermaid tub is for Bailey the miniature Dachshund.  Because he has some incontinence "issues," we have to keep fresh bedding on hand to change out a couple of times a day.

(An aside:  I just ran the blog spellchecker and it helpfully suggested replacing "Rottweiler" with "Rototiller."  Hmm.)

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Blind Goldie, who has one of the best noses in the nose business, convinced herself this weekend there was still food in the stack of empty dog dishes.  She kept jumping up on the green Rubbermaid tub (where we store the dry dog food) so she could push the dishes around, hoping (I think) to knock them over and scatter the kibble all over the floor. 

At first I thought she was imagining things, because there was no food in the top dishes.  I said, "Goldie, what are you up to?  There’s nothing there!"  But because she wouldn’t give up — even after I went to get the camera and take this photo — I finally went over to check the dishes.  Sure enough, the fourth dish down still had kibble left in it.

Her nose is really phenomenal, and she rarely ever "misses" when her nose tells her something she wants is there.  She can get obsessive/compulsive about this, and we’ve resorted to "hiding" (we like to think) toys, treats and other objects on top of bookshelves, inside closets, and in cabinets.  She’ll just stand there, outside a closet door, and bark and bark until we either give in (hmm) or until we give up and take the desired object and put it in one of the other buildings. 

We’ve read that the typical dog has about 220 million smell receptors in its nose, compared to about 5 million receptors in a person.  We figure Goldie must have twice the normal number for a dog!

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The November/ December issue of Bark Magazine has just come out with a wonderful feature story on the sanctuary. In the magazine’s preview of the article, they described it as "A visit to the amazing Rolling Dog Ranch — a sanctuary for disabled animals in Big Sky country — get inspired!"

We actually haven’t seen it yet (!), but people who have tell us it’s a six-page article illustrated with lots of photos, some of them full-page.  I’m heading into Missoula tomorrow and will get a copy of the magazine then.

You can find Bark at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-A-Million, Chapters (in Canada), Wild Oats, and Whole Foods, among other retail outlets. Bark does not post their articles online so purchasing a copy of the magazine is the only way to read the story.

To find other retailers near you who carry Bark, click here.

I was out scooping poop in the Widget’s House dog paddocks this morning when I looked over and saw Travis — a.k.a. "Perch" — surveying his domain from on top the big wooden reel.  The reel is left over from last year’s construction project, building Beauty’s Barn, when we had to lay in more power cable.  We moved the reel into the paddock to give the dogs something to climb up on.  As it turns out, Travis is the only dog who takes advantage of this. 

A few weeks ago I posted a photo of Travis perched rather precariously on top of an igloo dog house.  He loves heights, so if there’s something to climb, he’s all over it.  (I’m just glad we don’t have any trees in that paddock!)

If it looks wet in the photo, it sure was.  The "Pineapple Express" that’s hammered Washington state with flooding has been dumping lots of rain on western Montana, too, along with warm temperatures.  It’s been raining for days, and as you can see from the photo, our snow is now long gone.  Today we were in the high 50’s … a long way from the 10 below zero we had just a week ago today, on Halloween!

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I walked out into the living room tonight and saw Bailey the miniature Dachshund asleep with his face buried inside his stuffed bear.  Well, it once WAS a stuffed bear — and a big one at that, twice Bailey’s size — but over the past several months he’s happily ripped out all the stuffing.  ("I’ll show this pesky bear who’s boss!") 

He still loves this thing, even though it’s only a shadow (a rug?) of its former self, so we continue to launder it and give it back to him to beat up some more.  Or sleep in.  Whatever.  He’ll drag it all over the living room floor, just to keep it near him.

Anyone with Dachshunds will tell you they love to burrow under things.  Bailey does, too, but he’s also content sometimes to hide just a part of his body.  So tonight simply burying his face met the "burrow quotient" for the evening.

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One of our wonderful volunteers, Laura B. from Helena, brought Willie the blind Beagle and Spirit the paralyzed Yorkie back to the ranch from the vet clinic this weekend.  I took this photo tonight of Willie in our living room, enjoying the wood stove.  And making yet another appearance, over on the right is the sleeping geisha herself, Widget. 

Willie, who arrived recently from a Beagle rescue group in Atlanta, had a bad case of heartworms that needed treatment.  Before we could begin the treatment we needed to assess his heart function, where the heartworms were lodged in his heart, and whether he had any related pulmonary issues because of the compromised heart.  He also was dripping blood from his urinary tract, and it hadn’t responded to antibiotics.

All this meant chest X-rays, an echocardiogram of his heart, a heartworm test, urinalysis, a blood panel, and an ultrasound of his urinary tract and prostate gland.  Oh yes, and the heartworm treatment itself.  Total cost:  $511.44.

The good news is that Willie’s heart was in good shape and he’s already had his heartworm treatment.  Our vets kept him at the clinic to monitor because the treatment can be risky, but he came through just fine.  The blood in his urine is a prostate issue related to the fact that he isn’t neutered yet.  We have to get him clear of heartworms before he can go under anesthesia for neutering, so one thing at a time!

Spirit’s cornea in her left eye had an ulcer that is now healing successfully, thanks to surgery last week to speed the corneal healing process.  However, it turns out the lens in that eye is partially detached.  We won’t know for another 10 days to 2 weeks whether it will become completely detached or remain like it is.  So we’re not out of the woods yet, but Spirit was glad to be home after a long stay in the hospital.  Her bill came to $196.86.

This gives you a good example of why we’ve spent more than $30,000 so far in vet bills this year, huh?  Willie didn’t seem too concerned about the cost, he just wanted to make sure I kept adding logs to the fire. 

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I had to take little old Ricky, who came to us this past June, to the vet today to be put to sleep.  I took this photo of Alayne holding Ricky in happier days.  Already ancient when he arrived, stone deaf and with no teeth, we knew Ricky wouldn’t be with us for that long.  But the speed with which he deterioriated in the past couple of months was still rather astonishing.

Unfortunately, his mind went first, with what our vet Brenda Culver had called "old dog cognitive dysfunction syndrome," or doggie Alzheimer’s.  Then his body began shutting down, and it became impossible to keep weight on him as his kidneys began failing.  Ricky’s tiny frame got thinner and thinner.

Finally, this week we realized the time had come to let him go.  He was "existing" but not living, not enjoying life any longer.  This little guy, who we had called a "kissin’ fool" because he always liked to lick us whenever we picked him up, no longer even did that in the past week.  Indeed, today as I picked him up off the back seat of the truck to carry him into the clinic, I held him next to my face to see if I could get one last kiss … but it didn’t happen.  He didn’t even seem to realize I was there, bless his little heart.  A few minutes later he was gone, peacefully.

Yes, when we got up this morning, it was 10 below zero.  I took this photo from our front door, looking west towards Widget’s House, about 7:30 a.m.  There wasn’t a peep coming from over there … the dogs were totally sacked out.

On summer mornings by this time you can hear them all barking, ready to go outside.  On cold winter mornings like today, with the big ceiling-mounted unit heater quietly whirring and keeping the building toasty warm, those dogs are still sound asleep when I head over at 8 a.m. to let them out. 

And speaking of Halloween, here’s our costume entry this year:  It’s blind-and-deaf Spinner, who decided she’d appear as a … snowcone.  Spinner figured if she has to wear a cone on her head, she might as well have some fun with it, right?  So a snowcone it is!

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We had a fierce winter storm blow in last night, although more wind than snow, and the temperature plunged.  This morning when we got up it was 11 degrees.  All three-legged Cody had to do was look out his cottage door this morning and decide he was NOT going out there.  "No way," he seemed to say.

Cody came to us from a rescuer in Pennsylvania, but he had started out his life-saving journey in a high-kill shelter in Miami, Florida before being transported to Philadelphia and then on to us.  So he is a complete ‘weather wuss,’ as we call him. 

Thus this morning he absolutely refused to go outside when Alayne was trying to get the dogs in Kelly’s Cottage to roust themselves and head out for their potty business.  He sat down, he laid down, he rolled over, and he ducked into a crate to hide.  In short, he wasn’t going.

Alayne finally had to pick him and carry him out the door and set him on the ground. 

I took this photo of Cody when Alayne and I were coming back from Widget’s House this afternoon, when the sun was shining and it had warmed up a bit.  But I think Cody spent all of 15 minutes outside today.

He’s in for a rude surprise tomorrow morning.  As I write this at 8:30 at night, it’s already minus 4 degrees and will be even colder when we wake up!

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We’re now successfully weaned our little blind foal, Brynn, and it went without a hitch.  Regular blog readers may recall that baby Brynn has several medical problems, including a hole in her heart, an ectopic ureter (one kidney is sending urine to her uterus and not her bladder), and malformed vertebrae in her neck.  But so far she is doing just fine, and growing … and growing!

Because her neck is so short — she literally can’t reach the ground with her mouth — we have to pile up hay so she can reach it.  For the past couple of months this meant feeding her separately from her momma during the day, or the mare would have eaten all that hay instead.  (And her Mom was quite the pig!)  So Brynn spent her days in a pen next to her momma, happily munching away, and then we’d put her back with momma at night to nurse.  Thus the weaning process started early and gradually.

So when the time came to say goodbye to her momma, Brynn wasn’t upset at all. We expected at least a little crying and vocalizing, but she didn’t make a sound.  Nor was the mare upset, either!  When the folks came to pick up the mare, Alayne and I walked her out to the trailer and calmly loaded her.  She didn’t even look back towards Brynn’s pen (okay, so putting some grain in the feed manger in the trailer kept her focused!).

With the mare in the trailer, I slipped a halter on Brynn and walked her through the corrals to her new stall in Lena’s Barn.  It was an adventure for her, and before long, Brynn was inquisitively exploring her stall, smelling the new smells and feeling her way along.

As the trailer left with momma on board, Brynn had her head buried in a new pile of hay.  This may have been the most stress-free weaning ever!

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