Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Alayne took these photos of Widget cruising through the snow in the front yard yesterday. Despite her ground-hugging clearance, Widget loves being a little snowplow, as we've highlighted before. The other dogs stay close to the house in the area we've shoveled out, but Widget will dive into the snow and be the only one out there blazing trails:

I took this photo of Wilbur on Christmas Eve. We looked at him that night, dozing on his pile of fleece blankets on the living room floor, and marveled at how his life had changed since this time last year. It was a few days after Christmas 2011 — in the middle of the week between Christmas and New Year's — when someone reported this little stray dog out on a street.

Of course, we don't know the history, other than no one came forward to claim him at the shelter in east Texas. Who would turn a dog like this out, or not bother to look for him if he were truly lost, is hard to fathom.

Here's what he looked like in the shelter cage that week:

It was that photo that made us say "yes" when we were asked if we could take him. Those bulging, gray eyes were enough.

A year later, Wilbur is cherished and adored and has everything he needs to enjoy life. Like Widget, he is one of those dogs who make us smile and laugh every day. We feel truly blessed to have him in our lives. So over this Christmas it occurred to me that Wilbur was, in a way, a special Christmas present to us, and his new life was the Christmas present we were able to give him.

But it was all of our donors whose gifts really make this sort of happy ending possible, so Wilbur says, "Thank you and Happy New Year!"

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Before we take a blog break for the holidays, we're bringing Widget in to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Widget's on her special Christmas blanket that Alayne brings out for the holiday season. It's just one of the many perks Widget is accustomed to enjoying.

It's hard to believe we've had this girl for 10 years now. She's been an inspiration and a joy to have in our lives every day she's been with us. (Yes, and during that entire time she's also been the boss of us.) Widget's given us more blog material over the past decade than any other dog we've had, as you can quickly tell by typing "Widget" in the search field.

This holiday season we are grateful for many things — for the incredibly special dogs like Widget who share our lives, and for all of you whose donations make it possible for us to give dogs like Widget another chance.

Thank you, and happy holidays!  We'll see you the first week of January!

We mailed our holiday print newsletter to our donors the week after Thanksgiving, and just posted the PDF version online on our website. As you can see, little Wilbur made the cover of this issue. Blind Bugsy will get his star turn in the spring issue next year.

If you haven't already made a gift this year for the disabled animals here, Alayne and I hope you'll consider doing so over the Christmas holidays. Everything we do — from transporting animals like Wilbur from halfway across the country, to providing specialized medical care, to ensuring a safe and loving new start in life — is made possible only because people make financial donations to support our work with these special animals. We just couldn't do it otherwise.

You can make a gift online at our website or mail a check to the farm at P.O. Box 150, Lancaster, NH 03584.

In addition, if you own stock in a brokerage account, you can also donate shares as a tax-deductible gift for the animals. Email me at steve[at]rollingdogfarm.org for more information on how to make a stock donation.

Thank you so much!

Having heard there was quite the kerfuffle about this basket in recent weeks, and a lot of attention on the blog about it, Widget decided she needed to check it out. Alayne caught the inspection on camera a couple of days ago.

She sniffed, treaded, pawed at it, and located the corners:

And:

In the end, she didn't understand what the fuss was about, nor why any self-respecting large dog would squeeze herself into such a tight space. In general, she found it lacking.

"Me," Widget said, "I've got much better accommodations than this."

Okay, apparently there is something the bigger dogs find very appealing about that wire basket! This is blind and deaf Spinner snoozing in it yesterday evening.  Maybe blind Madison tipped her off to its unique comforts. Who knows?

While we were taking these photos, I told Alayne that I bet Spinner would react when the flash went off — and sure enough, she did. Here she is, popping up after detecting the burst of light:

This brought a flood of memories, because it was how she responded to the beam of a flashlight that made us think she might be able to see when she first came to us way back in 2005.

We learned subsequently during exploratory surgery that she had blue eyes and that the white we were seeing when we looked at her was the back of her eyes. It turned out she had an extremely rare condition known as restrictive strabismus, that experimental surgery had been done with some success, and we found a surgeon in San Diego who offered to give it a try with Spinner.

So I flew her to San Diego for consultations with the surgeon, who determined she was a candidate for surgery … and then came the heartbreaking aftermath. (As a post-script to that last blog post, the one eye that might have been a candidate for follow-up cataract surgery eventually rotated back down, so nothing more was possible.)

Although our hopes of giving her vision again were dashed, Spinner continued to live a wonderful, happy life — and as you can see, she finds new ways of making herself comfortable!

We love getting updates on the wonderful animals we've adopted out over the years, and here's a recent photo taken this week of blind Stoney. Wendy M. adopted Stoney and blind-and-deaf Baron from us back in 2008 in one of our amazing double-adoptions. They've since moved to the Washington, D.C. area.

Wendy wrote, "Just thought I would pass on this cute picture of Stoney that I took today. She loves to sit in the sun and nibble on grass, or go on treasure hunts for the treats that Baron has hidden in the grass."

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It was just a couple of weeks ago that I posted a photo of blind Madison contorting herself to fit inside this wire basket in the dog room. Well, the other day I walked in and found her in an even more awkward position on the same basket — half on, half off, with head slumped over and resting on the floor. It did not, dare I say, look even remotely comfortable, and yet she was sound asleep. I had walked in, walked out to get the camera, came back, took photos, pondered a bit, and then left. And she never stirred.

This was definitely one of those "it-works-for-me-but-I-can't-explain-why" moments.

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