Rolling Dog Farm Blog

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I finally figured out how to capture video with our digital camera, and when I saw Bailey this afternoon doing his ‘towel thing’ in the living room, I grabbed the camera and shot this video.  The living room usually starts out rather neat in the morning, but by the time Bailey and his short-leg friends get done burrowing under the various blankets and towels on the beds, the place looks like this.  We’ve been calling Bailey "Bailey-mon" with a mock Jamaican accent, which for some odd reason seems to resonate with him. 

Bailey’s new favorite toy is this shaggy bear.  It had been in the toy chest in the living room in recent weeks until someone … probably Birdie … pulled it out again.  That’s when Bailey discovered it.  He just loves this thing.  I took the photo this morning while Bailey was snoozing in the sun with his bear.

It once actually looked like a bear until someone — there are too many potential suspects to know for sure — ripped the stuffing out of it.  Now the poor bear is just a shapeless, shaggy shadow of its former self.  Yet Bailey adores it nonetheless.

Bailey even scoots underneath his bear and then starts moving around the living room wearing it.  One of our volunteers came in the house this afternoon and saw this furry black object moving across the floor, and for a second she thought there was a rather unusual animal in the house.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

Last night I headed out as usual to close up the barns about 9:30 p.m. and check on all the large animals.  I am usually conned into feeding more hay to the horses, who manage to convince me they really didn’t get all the dinner they’re entitled to.  I was in Lena’s Barn filling Nikki’s feeder when I heard a ruckus coming from the stall next door.  It was Lonesome George, our old mule.  I hurried over to see him lurching in his stall, then stand with feet stretched out, then lurch forward again.

My first thought was colic, when the intestine seizes up.  We’ve gone through this before with George, and in fact Alayne and I spent our anniversary night with George and the vet two years ago because of a case of colic.  I went into his stall and put my hands on him … and noticed he seemed cold to the touch.  Uh oh. 

I called Alayne, who had started putting the dogs up, and asked her to bring the thermometer and stethoscope.  A few minutes later Alayne rushed in with the equipment.  I took George’s temperature and found he was very low at 94.5.  Normal is about 101.  I couldn’t believe it would be that low and took his temperature three times, with the same result.  His heart rate was 50, when the normal range is 30-40 beats per minute.  His respiration rate was at the high end of normal.  Yet in spite of all this George was interested in eating, and he had good gut sounds. 

Knowing we had a problem, we called Beth and asked her to please finish putting the dogs up for us.  We then called our equine vet, Bill Brown, at home.  None of George’s symptoms were completely consistent with colic, and he seemed — as Bill called it — a "little shocky" because of the low body temperature.  Bill suspected either some internal bleeding (which there is no way to treat) or perhaps we caught the tail end of a mild case of colic … and possibly both. 

Bill finally concluded that the best thing we could do under the circumstances was give George an injection of banamine, a powerful anti-inflammatory.  About this time Beth came over to Lena’s Barn to see if she could give us a hand, and that’s when we took the photo.  Beth is holding George while I give him the injection, and blind Nikki is leaning over from the adjoining stall to see if she can help, too.

Good news:  Early this morning we were relieved to find George back to his usual self, with a normal temperature and his endearing muleish ways.  Whew!

(Click on photo for larger image.)

No sooner had I posted last night’s blog on the mountain of grain than one of our fabulous supporters e-mailed with news to make the horses happy:  She had just read the blog and was sending a donation to cover the full $572 cost of the grain and woods shavings we had delivered yesterday.  Wow.

Thank you!

Here are three of our blind horses who will benefit from this awesome gift.  I took this photo late last summer.  That’s 6-month old Destiny on the left, our mare Lena in the middle, and our yearling Nikki on the right.  Lena helped raise Nikki when she came to the ranch in 2004 from New Jersey as a blind 4-month old foal.  Destiny was Lena’s ‘foal project’ in 2005 when this little blind girl arrived from South Carolina at the tender age of 1 month.

Now these blind girls are hanging around in a snowy corral during the day, eager for the big thaw so they can get turned out to pasture again.  But until then, they love coming into their barn stalls at night, where grain is waiting in their feeders and wood shavings cover the floor.

On my weekly trips into Missoula, I stop at Cenex and load up the truck with equine senior grain and bales of wood shavings for the stalls.  This means I’m in the back of the truck, lifting and pushing and stacking the 50 lb grain bags and the big, bulky bales of shavings as the Cenex guys keeping loading more on the tailgate.  With a canopy on the back of the truck, I’m bent over inside, trying to lift all this stuff and make as much fit as possible.  One of the Cenex guys said to me a couple of weeks ago, "You know, you buy so much you should just have us deliver pallet loads to you at the ranch."

Hmm.

I said, "You deliver out that far?"  (We’re 60 miles from Missoula.)  "Sure do," the Cenex guy said.

So today Cenex came out with a 1 ton pallet of grain — that’s 2,000 lbs, or 40 bags — and 21 bales of wood shavings.  Kathryn, Beth and I unloaded it all from the Cenex trailer and stacked the bags and bales in Lena’s Barn and Beauty’s Barn.  This photo shows one of the stacks of grain in Lena’s Barn, with the wood shavings in the white bags in the background.  (The apparition coming in from the burst of light is Kathryn.)

The supplies delivered today cost $572.73, including a bulk purchase discount.  This should last us just about three weeks.

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If the floor of the barn in the foreground looks damp … well, it is.  We’ve had two days of warm temperatures (hitting 40 degrees) and the snow is starting to melt.  Lena’s Barn was not built with a large enough eave on the north side, and when the snow outside the doors begins melting, it runs into the barn.  Even building the floor up didn’t eliminate the problem entirely … especially with as much snow as we have.  We learned all this the hard way our first winter, which is why all the supplies in the barn aisle are now stacked on pallets. 

The real fun is when it melts during the day and freezes hard at night, leaving the barn doors locked in ice in the morning … as they were today.  We keep crowbars outside the barn to break the ice and free the doors.  Having endured this for several winters with Lena’s Barn, when we built Beauty’s Barn last year, our main requirement was for a 10-foot porch on both ends to keep snow away from the doors!

Yes, some day we’d like to have an extra $1,000+ to spend to build a roof extension on Lena’s Barn, but for now … crowbars will have to do!

(Click on photo for larger image.)

We’re getting ready to send out our first email monthly newsletter on Thursday, March 2, so if you’d like to receive it, please sign up for it on our Web site home page here.  There’s a simple registration form that takes 30 seconds to fill out. 

Our privacy policy is simple:  We don’t share our mailing list with anyone, ever.  Period.

You’ll find an unsubscribe link in our email newsletter, so if at any time you want to be taken off the list, you can do so with a click.

Our email newsletter will also have a ‘forward to a friend’ feature, so you can easily send it on to anyone you think might enjoy reading it.

Kathryn called me from Widget’s House this morning and said, "I think I’ve got a ‘blog moment’ for you … you should see Timmy playing with his Kong!"  So I grabbed the camera and headed over. 

Timmy came to us a few months ago from a Denver vet clinic. We were told he was like Allie, our dog with cerebellar hypoplasia who wobbles.  He wasn’t.  Timmy is paralyzed and needs help doing everything.  He can’t walk, needs to be carried outside to pee and poop, and requires frequent bed changing.  Oddly, he actually looks a lot like Birdie, our Lab with muscular dystrophy — they have the same thin body, sleek head, and long legs — although Birdie isn’t paralyzed at all.

Timmy is an incredibly sweet, gentle soul … and he’s crazy about his Kongs.  In fact, Kathryn gave me the headline for this post.  When I walked into Widget’s House, she said "You should call this one ‘For the love of Kong.’"

(Click on photo for larger image.)

Here’s part of the gang at Widget’s House, waiting to go inside this evening for dinner.  Kathryn is on the other side of the door … she had been preparing their bowls.  From left to right are Buzz the Golden Retriever with a neurological condition, Luke the blind Lab, blind Bud, blind Penny, and blind Pepper.  In the foreground on the right is Allie with cerebellar hypoplasia, which makes her wobble (and that would explain why she’s blurry!).

A few were already inside, while the rest of the gang was at the back door, also waiting en masse to go inside for dinner!

(Click on photo for larger image.)

We started Angel on her sub-Q fluids this morning to help treat her chronic kidney disease, which our vet just diagnosed last week.  This beautiful blind and deaf girl came from Spokane County Animal Control a couple of years ago.  Recently she had been dropping weight and losing her appetite, and after a battery of tests, we found her kidneys were compromised.  We also found she has high blood pressure, so she’s getting a daily dose of blood pressure medication called Norvasc.

The fluids really help … they flush out the toxins in her kidneys, which makes her feel better, and in turn increases her appetite.

To read Angel’s story, click here.

The other cat on the bed is blind Turtle, a new arrival who came from the Humane Society in Bozeman.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

Our farrier, Rich Boyle from Simms, Montana, came out today for his regularly scheduled trip to trim the horses’ hooves.  In this photo our employee Beth is holding blind Faith (we actually call this old mare ‘Snitty’ because of, uh, certain personality traits) while Rich trims her hooves.

Very interested in the whole operation is blind but inquisitive Nikki, leaning over from the adjoining corral.  Nikki is totally blind but she’s mapped her environment so well that casual visitors can’t tell she’s blind.  She runs and bucks and whirls in her corral and never collides with anything; people watch her antics and can’t believe this filly was born blind.  She turns two this year, and in the spring we are going to start training her for riding.

To see what Nikki looked like as a baby when she arrived at 4 months of age, click here.

(Click on photo for larger image.)