Rolling Dog Farm Blog

You may remember our post about deaf Tyler’s boat from last month, where I described how Tyler would only eat in this crate we called his "boat."  This was the photo we used in the post.

Well, somewhere along the way since then the boat fell out of favor.  Tyler became very fussy about where we put his dish, and he would no longer enter the boat to eat.  Perplexed, we couldn’t seem to find just the right spot that met his needs (whatever they were!).  Then Mariah found "the spot" … on the floor, just a few feet from Tyler’s boat.  Not just anywhere, mind you, but in an area about 18 inches square. 

This must be a mystical experience for Tyler, because last night he stopped eating in the middle of his dinner, circled around Widget’s House for a bit, then sat down to stare at the bowl.  We were still finishing up all the health exams and vaccinations with our vet Brenda Culver, and I had started feeding the dogs in the meantime.  (The dog hair on the floor is from 20 dogs being checked over!)

That’s when we noticed Tyler seemed to be meditating while fixated on "the spot."  He stayed like this for what must have been 10 minutes or so, staring at the bowl.  A couple of times he would get up, walk around a little, then come back to sit down and resume meditating.

So now we’re starting a count-down to see how long "the spot" lasts as his favorite dining location.  After that, who knows what’s next?

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Today was our annual vaccination and health exam day, when our vet Dr. Brenda Culver from Montana Veterinary Specialists & General Care in Helena came out to the ranch to do all the dogs.  In years past Brenda was able to do all the dogs AND the cats in one day, but with our growth it now takes about seven hours just to do the dogs.  Having Brenda make a ‘ranch call’ saves us a lot of time and effort, since we don’t have to make multiple trips to Helena. The annual visit also gets the dogs all on the same schedule, making everything easier to manage.

We started off with the dogs who live with Alayne and me in the main house and in the cottages next to the house.  That’s about half the dogs, actually!  Brenda and her vet tech Heather A. turned our welcome center into a temporary vet clinic for the exams.  In the first photo Brenda (on the left) is examining blind Evelyn.  The chart on the wall behind Brenda is a highly detailed illustration of the eye and its various internal structures; with more than half of the animals at the ranch blind (46 of them), this eye chart helps us better understand the various causes of blindness that we experience here.

In this photo Brenda is doing an eye exam on blind Helen. The eye Brenda is shining the light on is undergoing some changes — it’s now red — but is still comfortable.  Helen is built like a tank, weighs in at 100 pounds, and is one of those ferocious Rottweilers who will absolutely, positively lick you to death.  Helen is just one of the gentlest, sweetest dogs we’ve ever known.

By early afternoon we moved over to Widget’s House, where we worked on the dogs who live there.  In this photo Travis, our dog with a fused jaw, is enjoying the attention from Brenda and Heather.  He was hoping to get a kiss from Heather, but his breath stinks, so no way, pal!  Because he can’t open his mouth, we have some dental cleaning issues with this young fellow, but otherwise he’s as healthy as can be.

By the end of the day, the roster counted 36 dogs examined and vaccinated.  As a follow-up, we will be scheduling two dogs for echocardiograms after detecting heart murmurs, several for dentals, one for surgery to prevent bloat, while two others had blood drawn for tests.

Brenda will be back later this month to do the cats.  Oh yes, the cats!

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Today we said goodbye to Kathryn, who has worked at the sanctuary since the end of January.  Kathryn’s decided she wants to be a veterinarian — inspired by working here, she says — and she needs to take a few more pre-vet classes at the University of Montana in Missoula before she can apply to vet schools.  (Kathryn already has a biology degree.)  With the fall semester fast approaching, she figured the time was now or never.

As it turns out, while Kathryn’s back in school she’s also going to be working as a vet tech for our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown.  Thus we’ll still see a lot of her in the future!

I took this photo a few weeks ago, when Kathryn and I had just returned from picking up Guadalupe the blind mare in Spokane.  Since she’ll be working for our equine vet, I thought it was a very appropriate photo to use for her farewell, don’t you think?

Kathryn’s replacement, Sarah G. from Missoula, will begin working here at the end of the month, and we’ll introduce you to Sarah then.  In the meantime, we hope you’ll join Alayne and me in wishing Kathryn all the best in her academic pursuits!

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This weekend we had some of our wonderful volunteers come out on their regular visit, and the dogs loved every minute of it.

Mike C. spent the day walking dogs and working on obedience training.  Even though our dogs have large fenced paddocks (from 1/2 acre to nearly 2 acres in size) to run around in, they still like getting out and exploring the world beyond.  In this photo Mike is about to take blind Allie for a long walk.  On the porch at Widget’s House waiting their turn is blind Peabody and Travis, our dog with a fused jaw.

And here is Laura B. giving blind Penny a make-over.  Penny is the original love-bug, and one of the sweetest dogs we’ve ever known.  Laura has adopted four animals from the ranch, including old, deaf Chance and Winchester the cat.  I bet Penny was thinking the whole time, "Well, what about me?"

Our volunteers not only are a big help, but they add another dimension to the care we can provide the animals here.  We certainly appreciate it, and it goes without saying, so do the animals!

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We just learned that the TV story that was going to air on tonight’s local newscasts on CBS stations in Montana has been re-scheduled to air NEXT Sunday evening, August 13th.  See our original post on the story here.

Of the 24 blind horses here, we have only one who is difficult to trim.  That’s Madison, shown in the photo having her feet trimmed this morning by our master farrier, Rich Boyle.  Madison came to us from the Idaho Humane Society in Boise, who had rescued her from an awful neglect situation.  We gathered she had never been handled much, let alone had regular hoof care. 

We’d never keep a dangerous or aggressive animal, and Madison is neither.  But she is wilder than a March hare when it comes to having her feet worked on, so we have to tie her up to a thick fence post set deep in the ground, then use a rope to keep one foot in the air at all times.  This makes it very hard for her to thrash around or kick out.  (Rich has an amazing rope technique to do this … I have yet to figure out how he does it.  I watch him do it, but there’s no way I could duplicate it.)

That’s what you see going on in the photo.  Today’s session went better than previous ones, showing she is beginning to learn that getting her feet trimmed is not the end of the world and she just might survive the experience.  She also figured out that the fence post isn’t going anywhere, no matter how hard she pulls.  That was ‘key learning No. 1.’

So thanks to a wise and patient farrier, a strong rope, and a stout post, Madison got all four feet trimmed today.

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You may remember a post from early last week, when our equine vet Bill Brown was  at the ranch to look at several horses.  Among the horses he examined was blind Rosie, who was very ‘ouchy’ on her feet.  She appeared to have a case of laminitis (severe inflammation in the hoof), but the X-rays we took that day told a different story: The soles of her feet were paper thin.  This can be caused by either leaving a horse on very rocky terrain or overly aggressive trimming.  Since Rosie arrived in this condition, we don’t know for sure what happened to her soles. 

Of course, we were very relieved she didn’t have laminitis, which is a very difficult disease to manage and can be life-threatening.  As painful as Rosie’s thin soles are, it’s a much better problem to have than laminitis!

Enter Pat Beebe, a lady who is a natural hoof care practitioner.  (For more info on this technique go here).  Pat had visited the sanctuary a couple of weeks ago and had seen Rosie then, and offered her services to help Rosie if she could.  So when we got the X-ray results back, we looked at the various treatment options and decided to invite Pat to take Rosie on as her ‘patient.’

So Pat came out today to begin the rehab work on Rosie’s hooves, which is what she’s doing in the photo.  This involves trimming and positioning the hoof to help the sole grow back.  It’s a long process and may take months, but eventually Rosie will be back to normal.

(In case you’re wondering, the big red thing with the white chute in the background is our tractor-mounted snowblower.  The black attachment to the left of the snowblower is the round-bale spear for the tractor.)

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The autopsy report on Sammy, our little diabetic dog who died suddenly less than two weeks ago, came back, and we finally may have an answer.  The mystery surrounding his death was the sudden temperature spike — to 107 degrees — even as his insulin levels were normal. 

The report showed no hidden tumors or other organ failures, although the autopsy (in animals, it’s actually called a necropsy) did show changes in certain organs consistent with diabetes.  However, after reviewing the report, our internal medicine specialist in Helena, Dr. Britt Culver, concluded that the most likely scenario was a blood clot that lodged in the area of the brain that controls the body’s ability to thermo-regulate itself.  With a blood clot cutting off that part of the brain — a type of stroke, as it were —  Sammy’s internal thermostat shut down, causing the rapid and uncontrolled overheating.

Diabetes can increase the coagulation in blood, thus making diabetes patients more susceptible to these types of secondary events.

We at least feel better having some kind of explanation for Sammy’s baffling and tragic death.

This photo of Sammy and me was taken on July 15th, a week before he died.  He was such a happy little character, even though he spent so much time in the hospital.  You can see where his left arm was shaved for the IV tubes he often needed.  The photographer was Jessica Parkes, who is a student at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Missoula and came out for a class project.  She shot a lot of wonderful photos that day and sent us a CD so we can use some in our next slide show on the Web site.  We’re grateful to Jessica for letting us use her photos, and particularly grateful she got this memorable photo of Sammy. 

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On her first day on the job, our new employee Mariah wasted no time in putting her training skills to work.  I had identified blind Levi as her first student, so that’s who began school today.  Levi is an incredibly sweet, eager-to-please dog, but he’s essentially had little training in his prior life.  He’s big, high-energy, and loves to jump up on people to greet them.  Given his size and lack of manners, he’s the kind of dog who can end up knocking you over in his exuberance.  Thus an excellent candidate for training!

Because he was badly beaten — he’s blind because his eyes are filled with blood, all the vessels having been ruptured by the blows — he needs a very calm and gentle approach.  His prior history of abuse resulted in Levi having a case of submissive urination … even a raised voice (particularly a man’s voice) can trigger one of these episodes.

So Mariah began with the basics — like getting him to focus, and then sit on command.  She spent about 30 minutes this afternoon working with Levi in Widget’s House, our disabled dog building.  Levi did very well, and clearly connected with Mariah, as you can see from the photo.  I’d call that a focused student, wouldn’t you?

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This is our new employee, Mariah Scheskie, who’s starting work here today.  Mariah came to us from the Missoula Humane Society, where she was the kennel manager, responsible for day-to-day operations.  She was also the primary adoption counselor for dog placement.  Earlier Mariah worked at Best Friends in Utah, where she was an animal caretaker at their Dogtown facility.  She has a lot of dog training experience, which we plan to put to very good use here!  Mariah is a graduate of the University of Montana, where she earned a B.S. in Resource Conservation.

In the photo I took this morning, Mariah is giving our blind foal Brynn (a.k.a. Squirt) a rub-down, which
results in a lot of quivering lips.  Whenever we scratch Brynn, she
immediately starts opening her mouth and moving her lips … it’s the
equine equivalent of "Ooooh, that feels good!"

(Click on photo for larger image.)