Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Our vet in Helena, Dr. Brenda Culver, called today to say Sammy could finally come home after two weeks in the hospital.  It had taken this long to get his diabetes under control, with repeated glucose curve tests, changes in dosage, changes in insulin types, and constant monitoring.  So Alayne made the 70-mile trip to Helena this afternoon to pick up the little scamp.  Sammy was so excited to see Alayne at the clinic — he was beside himself!  He kept jumping into her arms and licking her face.

I took this photo a few minutes after they got back to the ranch late this evening.  Sammy, of course, had all this pent-up Jack Russell/Fox Terrier energy that was ready to burst after two weeks confined to a hospital cage.  Once we turned him loose, he raced around the yard, leaping and barking and just having a blast.

So what treatment did Sammy finally start responding to?  Cat insulin!  No kidding.  The insulin bottle even has the outline of a cat on it.  Go figure.  Naturally, this isn’t your usual generic run-of-the-mill insulin but an expensive type:  $110 a bottle.  However, based on his dosage (6 units once a day), one bottle should last about two months.  In any case, we’re just delighted our vets may have found the answer for Sammy!

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We just posted an update to our main Web site, with new pages about recent arrivals in the Meet the Animals section, a new slide show, and the summer issue of our quarterly print newsletter.  This is the cover of the summer newsletter.

If you know of family members or friends who would enjoy getting our print newsletter, please email me their names and addresses and we’ll be happy to put a copy in the mail to them.  You can email me at steve@rollingdogranch.org.

For the Web site updates, you may need to hit ‘refresh’ or ‘reload’ on your browser if you don’t see the new pages … this is because your computer may have the older versions of those pages stored in memory.

We’re also sending out our monthly email newsletter this Thursday (hopefully!), so if you would like to receive it, please go to our Web site and sign up for the newsletter on the home page.  It takes just a few seconds.  Like our mailing list for the print newsletter, we don’t share the email newsletter list with anyone, ever.

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We’re having an event in Missoula next Saturday, June 10th, at the Caras Park Pavilion from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and we’ll be taking some animals on the road with us!  The purpose of the event is to give folks a chance to meet some of our disabled animals and see first-hand how these special creatures can have a wonderful quality of life.

Of course, we’ll also have a ‘giving table’ where folks can make donations for the animals, and we’ll have some Rolling Dog Ranch logowear for sale, too.

The image you see here is the flyer we prepared to promote the event.  If you’re in the Missoula area and would like to download a PDF of the flyer and post it in your work place or any other location, you can click here.  (It prints out on an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper.)  We hope to see you there!

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We took blind Nikki for her first trailer ride on Friday.  Nikki’s trainer, Nichole Zupan, and I loaded her up, along with Nikki’s Aunt Lena, and took them for a short drive.  Then we practiced unloading, and like everything else she does, Nikki handled it with aplomb.  Before I took this photo of Nikki with Nichole, Nikki had been casually standing on the ramp, just checking things out.  She’s an amazing little horse.  However, I think both Nikki and Lena considered this a ‘trip to nowhere’ and wondered what we were doing!

By the way, Nikki’s training is going great, and Nichole rides her during every session now.

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Tonight as I was walking from the kitchen to my office, I looked over and saw blind Widget in the living room, sound asleep on a pillow.  Widget is a world-class sleeper and regularly books about 18 hours or more of shut-eye a day; during the few hours she’s awake Widget is very active and very bossy.  There isn’t a bed or chair she hasn’t appropriated for sleeping, but Widget is definitely of the view that there’s nothing better than a pillow — especially when it’s exactly her size!

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One of our regular blog readers, Cathy, asked in a recent comment to see some of our feline residents on the blog.  With that in mind, I went out to the cat house this evening and took this photo of deaf Snowball.  He had been lying on the fleece bed by the window, and when he saw me come in, he got up and began prancing back and forth.  That’s when I saw this "Who, me?" look and took his photo.

The shelves you see along the walls are lined with carpet and give these guys a wonderful place to perch.  The window opens onto their outdoor enclosure.  Just below the window on the outside is a cat tree that allows them to climb down into the enclosure and then to get back in on their own.  Even the blind cats come and go from the enclosure.  The only cats who can’t use it are the wobblers like Wobbles, so we take him outside to enjoy the enclosure, then take him back inside later.

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Alayne and Beth are leaving tomorrow for Spokane, Washington, where we’ll be participating in the annual Pet Fest at the Spokane County fairgrounds this weekend.  Pet Fest is a "companion animal trade show and pet adoption extravaganza," and this year the organizers are expecting about 5,000 visitors.

We have more disabled animals from Spokane than any other single community in the country, so this seemed like a good event for us to participate in.  We’ll have an exhibit display about disabled animals and hand out our newsletters and our blind horse brochure.  (The photo I posted is a thumbnail of the actual display design for production purposes, which is why you see hash marks for trimming, etc.)

If you live in Spokane, eastern Washington or northern Idaho and have time to make it to Pet Fest, we look forward to seeing you there!

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Beth took this wonderful photo of Buzz running through the dog paddock in front of Widget’s House.  He is such an incredibly happy boy, despite his neurological challenges.  Now that it’s springtime, he is out cruising the paddock all day long — it’s a rare thing to see him lying down or even standing still.  Even though he’s fully grown, Buzz acts very much like a puppy, and he’s always joyful.

In case you’re wondering, that’s our house on the left; in the center behind Buzz is our new welcome center (formerly the cat house, the cats are now in another cottage); on the right is Scout’s Barn; and on the far right behind Scout’s Barn is Lena’s Barn.  The trees are cottonwoods that line an irrigation ditch that winds its way across the ranch.

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Little Sammy spent the entire Memorial Day weekend in the hospital because of a setback with his diabetes.

Early on Friday morning he started another round of obsessive/ compulsive drinking, and then suddenly his back legs began going out from underneath him and he became very wobbly.  He tried to be his normal self and rush back to his cottage, barking with excitement like he normally does, but even his bark was odd:  It was a deep, hoarse sound, completely different from his usual high-pitched bark.

We called our vets in Helena at Montana Veterinary Specialists and told them we were on our way.  With that, Alayne loaded Sammy in the truck and off she went.  Sammy had just been in the hospital a couple of weeks ago because of a similar but less serious episode; after a glucose curve test, our vets changed his insulin and we expected Sammy to be stable again.  Unfortunately, that was not to be.

This time it turned out Sammy had suffered something called … ready? … the "Somogyi effect".  This is when the body encounters first hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and then hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) in rapid succession.  It’s too much for the body to handle.

We’ve had diabetic animals before (ironically, including a cat named Sugar) and the disease had always been easy to manage with daily insulin injections.  Our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, told us over the weekend that there are some diabetic animals who don’t achieve that level of stability, and the caregivers (and their vets) frequently need to refine and adjust the insulin dosage.  Brenda said it’s clear that Sammy just may be one of those cases.

Brenda and her husband Britt, who’s the internal medicine specialist in the clinic, have been caring for Sammy all weekend long, continually monitoring his glucose curve tests and calling us with updates.  They report he’s doing well, and expect we will be able to take him home on Wednesday.

We had planned to make this delightful little dog available for adoption after Memorial Day, but now we’ll need to hold off for a while and assess how he does.

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Today we tackled a major spring cleaning at Widget’s House, our main building for the disabled dogs.  We have two volunteers, Lisa S. and Christina O., who drove up from L.A. for a few days at the ranch.  They worked with Kathryn all day on this project.  The biggest part of the job was scrubbing down the crates the dogs sleep in at night.  I took this photo in mid-afternoon.  Lisa and Christina were just off the porch washing crates, Kathryn was getting ready to carry one back into the building, and others were still drying in the sun.

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