Rolling Dog Farm Blog

We’re still digging out from the last couple of days of non-stop snow.  Beth was on the tractor for quite a while today, clearing snow from in front of the barns and around the other buildings.  This evening I needed to unhitch the horse trailer and had to clear some more ground to park it on.  So I climbed in the tractor and started clearing.

At one point I looked over and realized the snowbank I was piling the new snow on was getting as tall as the tractor itself.  I stopped the tractor, went inside to get the camera, and took this photo.  It was about 6 p.m.

From this angle the tractor looks taller, but if you look at the cottage in the background, you can see the snowbank is well above the windows of the building.  I think it’s about 8 feet high.  This is heavy, wet snow … ideal for Montana, which is still recovering from a long-term drought.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

With apologies to the U.S. Postal Service, our own motto today might be "neither rain nor sleet nor snow will keep Chance and George from their appointed chemotherapy."  It’s been snowing here for 48 hours non-stop — none of this forecasted — and I worried about whether to trailer blind Chance and George into Missoula for their chemo treatment this afternoon. 

We got off schedule last week because of a delay in their chemo drug shipment, and we now have a heavy snow warning on for late tonight through Friday morning.  (Memo to National Weather Service:  What about the past 48 hours?)  Thus I was concerned that if I didn’t get them in today, I probably wouldn’t tomorrow, either.  So we dug out the trailer, hitched up the truck, loaded Chance and George, and I set off for Missoula as the snow continued to fall.

This is the alternate week when Chance and George get the ‘heavy’ stuff — cytoxan injected intravenously — and we do this at Dr. Bill Brown’s clinic.  Bill determined that we didn’t need to use IV bags to drip the cytoxan into their veins, but instead could dilute it into 60 cc’s of fluid and inject it with a syringe directly into the vein.  This saves us money (no IV set up or materials) and time.  That’s what you see in this photo, with Bill injecting the cytoxan from a syringe into George while Bill’s vet tech Vicky holds the tube in the vein. 

Meanwhile, over in the horse stock, Chance was getting bored and antsy, just like the first time he came here for chemotherapy.  He started to reach over and pester George, considered untying George’s lead rope (the blue one looped around the post), and in general became quite the goofball.  A few minutes earlier Bill had taken off his cap and placed it on Chance’s back.  I saw it sitting there and thought I’d like to see what our goofy blind horse might look like wearing a hat.  Your typical horse would have thrown the hat off in an instant, but not Chance.  He seemed quite content to wear that hat.

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After leaving Bill’s clinic, I stopped at Dave Bostwick’s clinic to pick up blind and deaf Angel.  She will need sub-Q fluids every other day for her kidney disease, plus twice-a-day Norvasc for high blood pressure.  I also picked up the ashes from Keisha’s and Willis’ cremations.

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(Click on photos for larger image.)

Alayne took blind Widget back to Helena today so Dr. Brenda Culver could do a re-check on Widget’s prosthetic eye.  Alayne took this first photo while Widget was waiting for the doctor to come.  She had her cone pressed right against the door, as if she were using it as a sonar device to detect footsteps and other sounds from the hallway outside. 

Ordinarily Widget’s tail is straight up, signaling unbridled confidence and her innate desire to rule the world.  For those of us "Widget Watchers," this half-down tail in the photo is a sure sign of "I don’t know why I’m here but it can’t be a good thing."

A note on Widget’s tail:  It doesn’t wag like a ‘normal’ dog’s tail.  It bobs.  Back and forth, straight up, bobbing.  No wagging.

Then Brenda arrived and evaluated Widget’s eye … here’s a photo of the exam.  The news:  The eye looks great!  It’s just the way it should look at this stage in the healing process.  That’s a relief.  Although the eye appears red and bulging, Brenda assured us it’s in great shape.  It will in fact shrink down to more normal size in time.

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Our specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, called today with an update on blind and deaf Angel.  After three days of IV fluids, her kidney values did indeed come down … but are still elevated.  This strongly indicates Angel has chronic kidney disease.

She’ll remain at the clinic until Wednesday.  In the meantime Dave will take her off IVs and see what happens to both her kidney values and her appetite (which perked up a lot over the the weekend.)  If her BUN and Creatinine spike again and her appetite diminishes, this means we’ll need to give her regular sub-Q fluids (i.e., injected under the skin) back here at the ranch.  Of course, we will also be putting her on a low-protein diet to make it easier on her kidneys.

Meanwhile, tomorrow Alayne will take Widget back to Helena to see Dr. Brenda Culver for a re-check on her prosthetic eye.  And on Wednesday I’ll trailer blind Chance and Lonesome George into Missoula for their IV chemotherapy treatment at Dr. Bill Brown’s clinic.

We gave blind Chance and Lonesome George their chemotherapy treatment today.  This is the week when we give them cytarabine; on alternate weeks our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, gives them cytoxan intravenously.

We walked Chance and George down the drive from Lena’s Barn to Beauty’s Barn this afternoon so we could give them the injections in the warmth of the medical suite there.  While Kathryn and I tended to Chance and George, Beth was preparing all the stalls in Beauty’s Barn for the night … filling water buckets and putting hay and grain in feeders.

In the photo Kathryn is giving George his dose.  I think he knew what was coming, because I had to pull him the entire 150 yards down the drive to Beauty’s Barn.  (Ever pulled a mule?)  Once we were done, I turned George loose so he could head back on his own, and he suddenly could walk at twice the speed.  Imagine that.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

It’s getting a little brisk.  When Alayne and I got up this morning, it was 35 below zero.  As Kathryn and I headed out to start taking care of the horses, it was 30 below.  Alayne took this photo when we got back to the house … when it was 20 below.  That’s me on the left
and Kathryn on the right.  (I told Kathryn she kind of reminded me of a
Bedouin bride.  Alayne thought we both looked "suspicious.")  I had been as frosty as Kathryn, but in going inside just for a minute to get the camera (and to coax Alayne, who was feeding dogs, outside to take this photo), much of my frost melted! 

It’s going to be another cold one tonight.  As I write this, it’s already 10 below zero with the sun still out at 5:30 p.m.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

Our beautiful blind and deaf cat Angel has lost weight, and in recent days I haven’t been able to get her interested in eating the canned food she’d normally devour.  So I asked our specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, to evaluate her today and see what he could find. 

The ultrasound showed no anomalies or tumors in Angel’s organs, and her complete blood count (CBC) test came back normal.  The bad news:  Her chemistry panel revealed elevated kidney values.  Her BUN reading was nearly four times normal, and her Creatinine was almost three times normal.

Dave explained that if the kidneys aren’t functioning correctly, the toxins they’re supposed to remove instead build up in the body.  The toxins lead to diminished appetite and thus weight loss.

I left Angel at the clinic today so they could run IV fluids to her over the weekend.  The fluids will flush the toxins out and also help expand her kidney volume.  Then we’ll re-run the chem panel on Monday.  If her BUN and Creatinine values come down, we’ll pretty much know the answer … that she does indeed have kidney disease.  If Angel’s kidney values remain high, then the chances are the problem is lurking somewhere in her gastrointestinal tract.  If so, Dave will have to run other diagnostics to pinpoint the cause.

The photo of Angel above is from our archives.  I don’t have a photo of Angel at her exam today because I had to drop her at the clinic while I raced around town keeping other appointments and running errands.  You can read Angel’s story on our Web site here.

We just posted on our Web site this evening the sanctuary’s 2005 annual report.  In it we describe the highlights of the year and document for our supporters how we used their generous donations.  After all, the sanctuary depends entirely on private contributions to operate, and we wanted to prepare the annual report to provide donors with an accounting of how we spent the funds we received. 

The image is a thumbnail of the cover from the four-page report.  As always, we are indebted to our awesome graphic designer, Terrel Armstrong, for taking the words and photos I give her and turning it into something that looks so nice! 

To save costs, we are not printing the annual report but only posting a digital copy online.  It’s an 800 KB PDF file.

You can access it from our main Web site home page or by clicking here to download the file directly.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for an Arctic front moving in late tonight through tomorrow.  Of course, "Arctic" is a relative term for us, since it was minus 8 this morning and it’s just fallen below zero again tonight … this before the new front has moved in.  The Weather Service forecast for the Blackfoot region reads:

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Thursday: Snow likely. Snow accumulations of 1 to 2 inches.
Highs zero to 7 above. Temperatures steady or falling into the single
digits in the afternoon. East winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 45
mph in the afternoon. Wind chill readings 25 below to 35 below zero.

Thursday night:
Snow likely in the evening…then chance of snow after midnight. Little
or no new snow accumulation. Lows 18 below to 25 below zero. East winds
15 to 20 mph. Wind chill readings 30 below to 40 below zero.

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We hope they’re right on the snowfall amounts, but our experience is that these east storms often carry a lot of snow with them.  In any case, it’s the wind at sub-zero temperatures that’s the real problem, so today we spent getting ready for this Arctic blast.  We topped off all the water tanks, moved hay into all the barns, and cleaned all the stalls, since the blind horses might have to stay indoors for up to 24 hours until this thing blows through. 

We also re-arranged the sighted horses this evening to make sure each had guaranteed access to shelter (the ones at the bottom of the herd hierarchy can get pushed out of sheds by the others).  We have a big 48′ shed that is divided up into various runs, and we placed the dominant horses in runs by themselves so they wouldn’t keep anyone else out.

Take for example Rooster, one of our two Belgian draft horses who came to us from the National Park Service because of a back problem.  At 18 hands high and weighing 2,000 lbs each (twice the weight of a typical horse), Rooster and his brother Beaver tend to get their way when it comes to the other horses.  So these two need to be in a pen by themselves on a night like tonight!

The storm was first forecast to have arrived by 8 p.m. (it’s now 10:20 p.m.), then 11 p.m., and now 2 a.m.  So who knows when or even if it will really arrive?  At least we’ll be ready!

Yes, it’s true.  We’re going to start a monthly e-mail newsletter at the beginning of March, and we just posted the simple sign-up form on our main Web site today.  Look for it under the nav bar on the left.  If you see any glitches in the sign-up process, please let me know. 

Right now we communicate on the blog (almost) daily and in our quarterly print newsletter, but we realized we also needed something in between daily and quarterly.  So the e-mail newsletter will provide a brief summary of the highlights from the past month and a preview of the month ahead (to the extent we know what to expect, which is rare!).  You’ll also have the ability to forward the e-newsletter to friends with the click of a button.

We’re looking forward to launching this new medium, even if the ‘inner editor’ in me is feeling some trepidation!