Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Travis, our dog with a fused jaw, eats a special blended liquid diet that he slurps up.  Now, as you can imagine, Travis leaves one heck of a mess behind.  The food is everywhere — in his crate, on his bedding, on the crate door, even on the floor outside the crate. 

We have the antidote to the mess:  Libby, our clean-up crew.  She is one of our original Seattle dogs, who moved to Montana with us in 2000.  Libby had been the victim of two separate animal cruelty cases back in Washington.  Animal control officers in Shelton, Washington, rescued her from the first situation when she was a puppy, but their shelter inadvertently adopted her out to another family that did the same thing to her.  Libby was nearly lifeless when they found her again.  Both cases were prosecuted.  Not wanting to adopt out Libby locally again, the shelter asked if we would take her. 

As you can see from her ample waistline, Libby hasn’t missed a meal since.  She is on a strict diet and she does get plenty of exercise, but plump seems to be her ‘natural’ weight.  (Or so we tell ourselves.)

Libby does love to eat, of course, and one of her treats is to clean up after Travis has finished eating.  By the time she gets done, the entire mess is gone.  She’s also very detail-oriented (this is important if you’re the clean-up crew), so she makes sure she gets the tough spots, too, like the corners of the crate door.

Nice job, Libby!

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Our blind two-year Nikki has now graduated from the round pen to riding in the pasture, and today was her second day at it.  Our horse trainer, Nichole Zupan, thought it would be beneficial for Nikki to follow another horse during these first few open riding sessions, so I rode blind Domino the Appaloosa while she followed on Nikki.  Alayne took this photo of us riding this morning. 

Ironically, Alayne had intended to use one of our sighted horses, Rocco, as the lead horse for Nikki, but he proved to need some work of his own.  Yes, folks, it was easier to use a blind horse!  So here’s a real-life example of the blind leading the blind.  In this case, it turned out well!

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Mariah drove into Missoula yesterday afternoon to pick up Birdie and Cody at the vet clinic.  (See "Medical Disaster Day" below.)  I took this photo right after Mariah arrived back at the ranch with them late yesterday evening.  That’s Birdie on the left and Cody on the right. 

So … exactly how many rocks did Birdie eat?  12.  Yes, 12 rocks.  Egads.  Dr. Bostwick sent the rocks home in a bag with Mariah so we could see for ourselves.  Dave did not have to open up her intestines — the one rock already in Birdie’s intestines he was able to push through and out — so the surgery was simpler and less time-consuming, and the recovery period faster, than for Buzz last week.  That reduced the bill to $864.00

Cody’s problem was apparently an overgrowth of bacteria in his gut — from what we don’t know — and IV fluids and the right medications got it quickly under control.  His hospitalization came to $339.00.

Both dogs were delighted to be back home.  The hardest part of Mariah’s job yesterday was just holding on to both dogs and keeping them still so I could take a photo!  (I took 22 shots to get this one I posted.)

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I took this photo last night of a rather unusual trio staring at Alayne, who was eating her dinner and trying to ignore the intense looks she was getting from the floor.  That’s Bailey on the left, blind (and plump) Callie in the foreground, and big blind Kenai in the back.  Just because a dog is blind doesn’t mean he or she can’t stare you down for your dinner, you know!

An aside:  In case you’re wondering, the black plastic tub on the right is an equine salt block holder.  We use it as a water bowl in the house for the dogs.  It holds a lot of water, but more important, it is heavy and very stable, so it doesn’t spill when a blind dog of Kenai’s size — 90 lbs — walks into it.  However, dogs will still walk away from the bowl with a mouthful of water and dribble it all over the floor … hence the blue towel for mop-up duty!

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Alayne took this photo of Claude, our Great Dane puppy, and Bailey the miniature Dachshund, sharing a dog bed on our living room floor.  To be honest, Bailey and the rest of the short-leg crowd are not very fond of "Clod," as they refer to him.  He’s huge, he’s mostly blind, and he’s a puppy, so he’s clumsy as heck. 

Claude has microphthalmos, or shrunken eyeballs, and they’re also pointed downward, so his vision is pretty much limited to seeing the difference between light vs. dark.  We think sometimes he also may be able to see large shapes … but that’s about it.

Thus Claude doesn’t see the little guys ‘way down there,’ and he often inadvertently walks over them.  This leads to a lot of Doxie growls of "Look where you’re going, you big oaf!"  But Claude is learning to be more careful around the short-legs, and they’re learning to skee-daddle out of the way when they hear him coming, so peace is (almost) at hand.

And, as you can see from the photo, they do just fine together when they’re in dreamland!

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When I walked into Kelly’s Cottage this morning to let the dogs out (these are the dogs that stay with Alayne and me at the main house), the smell hit me first … then the sight.  Birdie had thrown up everywhere, big gobs of green grass all over the floor and beds.

But the awful smell was coming from the crate that Cody, a new arrival, was sleeping in.  He had thrown up, too, but it was completely different from Birdie’s.  Foul smelling and brown.  Ick.  We were keeping Cody a ‘secret’ for the next print newsletter, but he’s going to make an appearance in today’s blog.

Birdie hadn’t eaten dinner last night, and we’d seen her munching a lot of grass yesterday evening, so when I saw the results this morning, I didn’t think too much about it.  She sometimes passes up her dinner or breakfast, so that in itself wasn’t unusual, and she often enjoys some fresh grass every now and then.  She sauntered out of the cottage this morning and was her normal cheery self.  But Cody didn’t eat last night either, and usually he goes absolutely wild at dinner time, dancing on his one rear leg.  So this was definitely odd for him.  However, Cody is undergoing chemotherapy and I figured this episode might be related to the treatment. 

I checked Cody out, and was stunned to feel his feet, tail and mouth were ice-cold.  Oh, my.  We took his temperature on the spot and he registered at 95.6 degrees, dangerously cold.  I called our internist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, right away.  He said the chemotherapy itself couldn’t be causing hypothermia, but I should clearly head in to the clinic.

As we were loading Cody into the truck, I told Alayne I’d like to have Dave check Birdie out while we were there.  The more I thought about her grass-eating yesterday evening and all the vomit this morning, it began to bother me.  It didn’t seem like her typical "I’ll-try-a-grass-tonic-for-my-upset-stomach" routine.  Into the truck went Birdie.

Two down, one to go….

A few days ago we had noticed that another recent arrival, the blind cat Cinder, had started getting pretty plump.  When she came to us from the Bitterroot Humane Association a couple of weeks ago, we noticed she had  good-sized nipples on her.  We thought she probably had a litter of kittens this past spring.  (We’ve had Cinder in isolation and hadn’t taken her to the vet yet.)  Then her tummy started filling out … at first we decided it was because she was finally getting plenty to eat.  But then Mariah and I examined her closely last week and concluded that, uh oh, she might be pregnant.  Into the truck went Cinder.

An hour later, in Missoula….

Here’s what we found in Birdie’s stomach — rocks.  Lots of them.  Aaarggh.  You can see one very large rock is already lodged in her small intestine, and Dave said it’s too big to get through.  And look at all those others in her stomach!  Oh, Birdie!!!  She is one of the smartest dogs we have, and why she would do something this dumb is beyond us.  Birdie’s been with us nearly two years as well.  The fact that she would do this one week after Buzz did the same thing — good heavens.  (They live in separate areas at the ranch, so it wasn’t copycat behavior, and Buzz was still in the hospital when Birdie ate these rocks anyway.)

This is what Birdie looked like when I left her at the clinic.  Ironically, she was her usual bouncy, happy self at the clinic … that is, until I put her in this kennel, and then she realized something was amiss.  Dave will have to do major intestinal surgery tomorrow, so we’re facing another $1,500 bill for this operation, too.

As for Cody….

By the time I got to Dave’s clinic, Cody’s temperature had increased to 99.6 degrees, much better but still below normal.  Dave suspected an overgrowth of bacteria in Cody’s gut, and put him on IV fluids and antibiotics.  His bloodwork turned out to be normal.  Cody will stay at the clinic for the next couple of days.  I took this photo of him before I left.  Cody has an amazing story, but you’ll have to wait till the next print newsletter to find out what it is!

And then there was Cinder the blind cat … who is VERY pregnant, we found on ultrasound.  At least two kittens for sure, if not more.  She is very far along.  Dave offered to take one of the kittens as an office cat when it’s weaned.  (Thank you!)  Here’s Dave playing with Cinder after the ultrasound.  She is really just the sweetest, most affectionate little cat.
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Oh, yes.  There was some good news today.  I brought Buzz home.  He’s doing fine and he was so happy to be back at the ranch!  His bill came to $1,534.00.  Did I already say "Aaarggh!"?

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Missoula’s local CBS affiliate, KPAX TV, aired their feature story about the sanctuary on last night’s newscasts.  It aired on other CBS stations in Montana this weekend as well.  This morning KPAX posted the video on their Web site, and you can find it here.  You’ll see this screenshot of our blind horse Nikki; the story is titled "A home for disabled animals."

Note that the video only works on PC’s with Windows Media Player, not QuickTime or RealPlayer.  (We use Macs at the ranch and had to fire up an old PC to watch it!)  The video also seems to cut off a bit early at the end, at least it did when we watched it. 

It’s a very nice story and we think you’ll enjoy it.

Happy viewing!

We’ve discovered that whenever Bailey sees me get the camera out, he thinks he needs to do something — anything — to get his photo taken.  (Unless he’s waking up, of course, and then he’s content to let the opportunity for ‘exposure’ pass him by.)   For instance, this evening I was getting the camera to take a photo of a new arrival, Claude the Great Dane puppy, who was asleep on the living room floor.  Bailey saw me come out of my office with the camera, so he hopped off the dog bed he was on, scurried across the floor and grabbed a stuffed toy in his mouth, which he began shaking back and forth.

This happened so fast that I was still fumbling with the camera, trying to set it to video mode, and by the time I was shooting, he had pretty much finished giving the toy a good thrashing and was rolling around on his bed in a kind of victory celebration.  Then — poof! — it was over, as if he were exhausted by the performance.  All in all, he was pretty impressed with himself, as you’ll see.

http://www.dropshots.com/dropshotsplayer.swf

Last night we had the biggest scare we’ve ever experienced since moving here in 2000.  About 9:30 p.m. Alayne was over at Widget’s House putting dogs up when she saw a bolt of lightning strike the ground to the south of us, across the county road; in an instant a raging grass fire erupted.  I was in Birdie’s Cottage, one of our smaller dog cottages, when she reached me on the intercom.  "Fire on the flat!", she yelled.  "Call 911!" 

I ran outside and immediately saw a hideous sight in the distance — a mass of flames.  It was hard to tell how close the fire really was to our property, but as you can see from the photo, it looked far too close!  The wind was coming from the south, the direction the storm had come from, and so we were right in the path.  (The trees you see just to the left of center in the photo are cottonwoods on our property.  It looks like they’re engulfed in flames but they weren’t.)

I called 911, which routes the calls to the Sheriff’s Department in Deer Lodge, our county seat, 80 miles away.  Next I called one of our friends, Tim Jacobsen, who is a member of the Ovando Volunteer Fire Department. 

We had two blind horses out in a pasture still, so Mariah and I headed out in the darkness to go get them while Alayne continued to call our nearest neighbors to alert them.

With so many animals (including 24 blind horses), there’s no way we can evacuate suddenly.  Our plan for a grass fire — we worry a lot about this every summer — is to pull all the horses into the corrals and barns, and then defend those structures with hoses and fire lines.  The ground around the corrals and barns is relatively free of combustible material, so we think we would have a reasonable chance of keeping a grass fire at bay. 

But seeing a grass fire erupt this close was truly frightening.  We laid out the hoses by the barns and then waited to see what the wind would do.  Just five minutes or so after the fire erupted, the wind died.  Whew.  "What a relief!", we thought.  But it was only temporary.

We could see Tim and the other fire department volunteers begin arriving on the scene.  Thank God for these folks, I kept thinking.  Then the wind came up again, this time from the east, pushing the flames westward now.  That’s when Tim called Deer Lodge to ask for reinforcements.  Two more times the wind shifted abruptly, forcing the fire department volunteers to regroup.  As the minutes ticked by, more and more vehicles arrived, including from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.  Tim said he estimated that at some points the fire was moving at 25 miles per hour, with the flames six feet high.  (Grass fires are notorious for being fast-moving.)

We watched all this from the loft in Lena’s Barn, where I took the photo.  It gave us the best vantage point to keep an eye on the fire.  By the time I took the photo, the wind had reversed course again, now coming from the west, so the fire was being driven back to the east.

Finally a brief rain squall blew in from the northwest, helping dampen the flames.  By 1:30 a.m. the fire was largely out and most of the crews had departed. 

In the morning light we could see that the fire was farther from us than it looked last night … about a mile and a half away.  Still, too close for comfort!  Had the south wind continued, we would have been in serious trouble.

We are just very grateful to all of the amazing folks who turned out to battle this fire — thank you!

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Yesterday morning we noticed Buzz, our Golden Retriever with a neurological condition, had thrown up overnight.  We monitored him during the day, and although he was more subdued than his usual self, he  seemed like he was getting over an upset stomach.  But we found he threw up again last night, and again this morning when we let him out.  He also seemed weak and wobbly (well, more wobbly than normal!).  Buzz had really deteriorated overnight, and something was clearly wrong.

I was headed to Missoula to take a dog in for a chemotherapy appointment at 11 a.m. today with Dr. Dave Bostwick, so I called Dave to let him know we had a very sick dog on our hands and were bringing him in.

An ‘upset stomach’ doesn’t begin to describe the problem.  An X-ray (shown in the photo above, with Buzz on the exam table) revealed that Buzz’s stomach was full of debris, and some was visible in his intestines, too.  Oh, no.  Somewhere in the past 48 hours, Buzz had devoured all sorts of things.  We couldn’t tell exactly what from the X-ray, but it looked nasty.

Buzz needed surgery to open up his stomach and intestives to remove all this stuff, but first Dave had to get some IV fluids and antibiotics in him.  That’s what you see Dave doing in this photo.  Dave scheduled the surgery for 2:00 p.m. this afternoon, and said he thought it would take about 45 minutes to an hour.

I finished running errands in Missoula and got back to the ranch by 3:30 p.m.  No call from Dave.  I called the clinic, got no answer, and realized it meant Dave was still in surgery.  Uh oh.  I headed out at 4:00 to help Mariah and Alayne take care of the horses.  By 4:30 p.m. still no word from Dave. 

Finally, at 5:20 p.m., the phone rang.  At the other end was Dave.  His first words were, "Holy beeswax!"  He had been in surgery for three hours with Buzz, and said it had been a long time since he’d seen a gut that full of debris.  In fact, Dave said, "It was a stinking disaster!"  (I told him I’d quote him on that.)

But Buzz is alive and came through the surgery okay.  Dave said Buzz had pieces of dog toys so big that he couldn’t understand how they could have gone down Buzz’s esophagus in the first place … and not just one piece, mind you, but multiple pieces so big it defied imagination.  As Dave noted, "The first one must have been unpleasant, so why would he go back and eat a few more?!?"

And Buzz had some fabric that extended the entire length of his small intestine; it had finally balled up and pulled the intestine with it, so the small intestine was bunched up.  Dave ended up cutting out 6 inches of small intestine altogether.

Now that Buzz is through surgery, the main risk is from the intestinal sutures pulling apart.  Dave also saw some spots on the intestinal wall that were thin and "worn" from the debris working its way through, so Buzz is at risk for any of those rupturing later.  Dave thought Buzz had a 75% chance of pulling through.  He will remain in the hospital through the weekend.

Dave estimated the cost for the surgery and follow-up care this weekend would be about $1,500.  Ouch.

The oddest thing about this entire episode is that Buzz has been here for nearly a year, and we’ve never seen him eating his toys!  He’s always running around with toys in his mouth — in fact, it’s rare to see him without a ball or toy in his mouth, because he always wants someone to play fetch with him.  And while he’s shredded some bedding in the past, we’ve never known him to be a bed-eater.  So why would he suddenly start eating these things in the past couple of days?  Who knows?

Unfortunately, Dave said, once you see dogs do this kind of thing, they typically become ‘repeat offenders.’  Beginning tomorrow we will be scouring Widget’s House and the dog paddocks to remove anything that Buzz could ingest in the future, and replace them with ‘Buzz-safe’ items!  (How about a bowling ball?)

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