Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Our big Malamute with the damaged spinal cord is not doing well.  Kodiak’s back surgery was two weeks ago today.  The surgeon, Dr. Lawrence, had found the problem but was unable to surgically correct it.  His condition, called dural ossification, is progressive.  Dr. Lawrence had warned us that Kodiak might not be able to walk again after the surgery for weeks. The worst case would be that he might not return to even the very limited mobility he had before the operation.  Sadly, that is coming true.  He has not been able to walk at all … his back legs have zero strength and just collapse underneath him. 

Yesterday morning, for the first time since coming home, he didn’t look happy.  He was listless and his usual good appetite had disappeared.  He seemed depressed.  When we lifted him up to take him outside to lay on his bed on the porch, we noticed his front legs seemed weak all of a sudden.  He ate some dinner last night but without much interest.  This morning he wouldn’t eat at all but did drink water.  We took his temperature and it was normal. 

We called our specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, today to review what we were seeing.  We were concerned about pneumonia or some other kind of infection.  Both Dr. Lawrence and Dr. Bostwick had earlier told us that paralyzed dogs … especially big ones … can develop a variety of medical problems because of their paralysis.  Dr. Bostwick had us start Kodiak on some high-powered antiobiotics to complement the post-surgery antiobiotics he is still getting. 

Kodiak ate a little food at noon but didn’t want any dinner tonight.  Just now, when we brought him inside for the night, he could no longer use his left front leg at all, and his right front leg barely worked.  We checked his heart rate, breathing rate and temperature again.  Everything was within normal range.  Yet he still looked depressed.  No energy, no zip, just kind of blank.  We sat with him for nearly an hour, just loving him up.  We gave him another dose of his medication and kissed him goodnight. 

We hope things will be different in the morning. 

I was in the house this evening fixing dinner for the dogs when the phone in the kitchen rang.  It was Alayne, calling from Lena’s Barn.  She was doing barn chores and had seen something … well, something unusual.  "Come quick," she said, "I’ve got a blog item for you!"

I dashed to the office, grabbed the digital camera, and headed out to the barn.  As I rounded the corner, I saw what she was talking about:  Our blind foal Destiny and the pot-bellied pig Charlotte, happily eating hay together.  An odd scene indeed.

I quietly walked into the barn and came out one of the side stall doors, then tip-toed my way across the corral towards them … I was afraid that if Destiny heard me coming, she’d turn and start walking towards me to nicker a greeting.  (Destiny thinks she’s a person, not a horse … but that’s a story for another blog.)

Charlotte was placed with us a few years ago by the folks who work in the Northern Rockies Office of the Humane Society of the U.S.  She was ‘mechanically blind’ … meaning her eyes were fine, but her face was so fat she literally could not open her eyelids to see.  Functionally she was blind.  The people who had owned her were literally feeding her to death with the wrong food (commercial hog chow for ‘growing and finishing’ hogs) and too much of it, plus candy.  Although she may look fat in this photo, she is HALF the size she was. 

After years of strict dieting and proper feed, she can now see. Which explains how she found her way out of her new pen (moved there just this morning) and into the nearby horse corral to sample Destiny’s fresh hay.  We’re not sure what blind Destiny thought of her unexpected dinner guest, but she seemed rather gracious about it. 

A year ago today we lost our treasured old blind mare, Beauty. She had come to us in the summer of 2003 from a Kentucky animal control shelter, where she had been impounded following years of mindless neglect.  In the short year we had her, this girl made an enormous impact on us.  It was because of her that we significantly expanded our work with blind horses.  You can read her original story here.

She died just before Labor Day last year, when a stroke brought her long struggle with failing kidneys to an end.  As she lay dying we promised her that one day we would build a barn in her memory.  Not just any barn, but one with a heated medical stall and medical room where we could treat old, blind horses like her … and do so in comfort on bitterly cold winter days. 

When we made that promise to her, we thought it would take years to raise the money to build Beauty’s Barn.  Incredibly, thanks to the generosity of the sanctuary’s supporters, the money was raised in eight months and the barn is here today … one year to the day she died.

As you can see in yesterday’s post, we just performed the very first surgery in the new barn.  That seemed a fitting if unplanned way to inaugurate the building.  So although we’re still waiting on some electrical work to be done, we thought today was the appropriate occasion to officially announce that Beauty’s Barn is done.  Here are the first photos of it.  (Click on the images for a larger view.)

On the right side of the barn, the small roof covers the outside entrance to the medical stall.  There is an 8-foot door here so we can drive a tractor right into the stall if we have to move a downed horse with a sling.  The gray door is the outside entrance to the medical room.  There is also access to both the medical stall and medical room from the main aisleway inside the barn.

This wonderful building is a tribute to an old, blind mare who captured our hearts … and a testament to the sanctuary’s many generous friends and supporters who made it possible.  Thank you … thank you … thank you.

Today’s medical adventure was eye surgery … specifically, eye removal.  We had been treating our old blind Appy, Shasta, for a few days for an inflamed and clearly painful right eye.  The treatment had not made much difference, so today our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown from Missoula, came out to look at the eye.  His exam revealed a rough surface on the cornea … it appeared as if a small circular area had melted.  This is most likely from a type of keratitis, a common ocular problem in horses.  It was, as Bill described it, an "unhappy eye."

In the photo you see Dr. Brown and his new veterinary technician, Vicky Cruz.  Vicky volunteered for us last summer, so she knows our animals well.

In a horse that is already blind, our concern is focused on eliminating pain and discomfort.  Preserving vision is obviously not an issue.  In Shasta’s case, the best long-term solution turned out to be removing the eye.  This is something we have had to do on several of our horses (and some dogs).  In every case the animal was much more comfortable without the eye.

It takes people a while to get used to seeing an animal missing an eye … it’s even more of a surprise to see BOTH eyes missing (we have a horse and a dog missing both).  Yet the animal is already blind and doesn’t care.  Once we got over our own initial hesitation on our first case (see Patti’s story), we came to realize that this is often the best therapy for a blind animal with a chronically infected eye.

Bill proceeded to perform the surgery this afternoon in the medical room in Beauty’s Barn, our new barn for blind horses.  The barn is not officially ‘complete’ … we’re waiting on some electrical work to be finished … but the medical room and medical stall are done and able to be used.  Thus Shasta’s eye surgery became the very first use of the new barn! 

This photo shows Shasta prepped for surgery.

In less than 45 minutes, Bill had removed the eye and sutured the lids closed.  We moved Shasta to the adjoining medical stall to recover.  Not too long after, Shasta shook off his sedative, walked over to the gate separating the stall from the room, and nuzzled Bill on the shoulder. 

We have seen this many times … almost immediately these animals are more comfortable than they were before the surgery.  They can be so stoic, and yet they show such relief when the pain is gone.  Clearly this eye had bothered Shasta more than we realized.

In case you’re wondering, I did take photos throughout the surgery … but they’re rather gory and would be too graphic for most folks who aren’t used to seeing these kinds of operations in person.  After all, this is a family blog!

If you’ve followed the story of Kodiak, you know that he is essentially paralyzed right now.  Keeping him clean and comfortable and on dry bedding is a daily challenge.  Well, one of the sanctuary’s wonderful supporters, Mark C. from Missoula, offered today to buy a special bed designed for dogs in Kodiak’s condition.

It’s called the SleePee-Time Bed, and is basically a dog cot with a special mesh fabric that allows urine to flow through to a tray underneath the bed.  It’s a new product and we had not seen it until Mark told us about it.  You can read about the bed here.

Mark ordered the bed in an extra-large version for Kodiak this afternoon — thank you, Mark!

In Monday’s post I mentioned we were expressing Kodiak’s bladder.  This is not fun for either the ‘expressee’ … big old Kodiak … or the ‘expresser’ … me.  I guarantee you that it cannot be comfortable having someone squeeze your bladder so hard it makes you pee.  (Don’t try this at home.) 

To give you some idea of what kind of dog this Malamute is, here’s a little story from this afternoon when Alayne and I went over to Widget’s House to change his bedding again and clean him.  Kodiak knows what’s coming first … I’m going to express his bladder before we move him to fresh bedding.  So I’m hunkered down on the ground next to him, with my left arm underneath his body and reaching around to his groin, my right hand resting on the other side of his groin … and my face is somewhere near his shoulders.  Just as I start to press … he turns his head and licks my face.

I just melted.  Here I’m about to start this uncomfortable procedure that I know he doesn’t like, but he licks me anyway as if to say, "It’s okay, don’t worry, I still like you." 

Today we’ve been treating two of our blind horses for new eye problems … runny eyes, squinting, tearing.  Shasta, an old Appaloosa — the second horse to arrive here — developed this in his right eye.  Rocky, another blind Appy, had a similar problem in his left eye.  Then this evening when we went out to treat both horses again, we noticed Rocky’s RIGHT eyelid was now suddenly big and puffy.   The conjunctiva was so swollen I couldn’t even find his eye as I was probing around inside looking for it.  Yikes.  So I called our equine vet, Bill Brown, for advice.  He recommended some therapies and we’ll see how Rocky looks tomorrow.  Ironically, the eye we had been treating … the left one … looked great this evening.

Over in the disabled dog building, Widget’s House, Kodiak and I have been learning how to express his bladder.  He still can’t walk or even stand up, and he naturally pees on his bedding.  So before we change his bedding, to keep him dry as long as possible, I express his bladder and try to empty out as much urine as I can.  We had a veterinarian and his wife from Kansas visiting here yesterday, and he showed me how to do this.  I already knew how to express cat bladders and bowels (we had a paralyzed cat, Gracie, who needed this done), but I hadn’t done it on a dog before. 

Now, the challenge here is Kodiak’s sheer size … at 110 lbs, he’s big and so is his bladder … and the fact that he is laying down.  It’s a lot easier to find and express a bladder when the animal is upright.  (And the urine is sure to follow gravity DOWN.  That’s helpful.)  It’s a tad more problematic when the dog is laying on his side.  But, Kodiak is a sweet, tolerant boy, and we are learning together how this works.  We roll him over on his side, Alayne holds him there, and then I reach around on both sides from underneath him and press gently but firmly with open hands where his bladder is. 

Once his bladder is expressed, we move him to fresh bedding … and this is a two-person job.  Alayne lifts him with his shoulder harness and I use a sling that goes underneath his rear, and together we haul him up and over to his new bed.  Of course, the laundry machines in Widget’s House are going around the clock now, washing and drying all his bedding!

After five days in the surgery hospital in Spokane, Kodiak came home to the ranch this evening.  (See original post on his surgery here.)  Jerry Black, our fabulous volunteer who makes so many trips for us, drove to Spokane today to pick him up.

We slid Kodiak out of Jerry’s truck on some bedding and gently set him down on the porch at Widget’s House, our disabled dog building.  Jerry helped me while I washed him up.  Kodiak wanted to go for a walk, but his legs just wouldn’t work at all … we tried again and no luck.  So we helped him pee, I cleaned him up again, and then we moved him over to his bed on the porch. 

The surgeon had cautioned us that Kodiak would be very weak and might not be able to walk after the surgery … that it might take days or weeks for him to get back to where he was before the surgery.  And there’s a possibility he might never return to even that compromised level.  This evening his legs just folded up underneath him, and he couldn’t pull them out by himself. 

Despite all this, Kodiak was very happy to be back at the ranch.  He drank lots of water, ate a full dinner, and … as you can see in the photo above … he enjoyed surveying his domain again from the porch.  (He had no idea I had stuffed his meal with several medications.)

Even though the surgeon couldn’t fix his problem, the operation was still a major one.  It opened his back right down to the sheath surrounding his spinal cord.  This is what his back looks like now.  The patch contains a transdermal pain medication.  We’ll take Kodiak to our local vets to have his stitches removed in two weeks.

Of course, we had really hoped the surgery would help him walk again, but we knew there was a chance his condition wasn’t operable.  Now our goal will be to keep him clean and comfortable.  We know his neurological problem is progressive, and only time will tell how far it will advance.  For now, we’re going to help him enjoy his life the best he can.  We can tell he isn’t ready to give up, and so neither are we.

For all of August we’ve had a wonderful young lady working at the sanctuary.  Emily E., whose family lives in Helena and who attends Boston College, came to volunteer one day at the end of July.  We liked her so much we offered her a job for the rest of the summer.

Emily has done just about everything there is to do here, from horse care to grooming dogs to cleaning the cat house.  I took these photos of Emily this morning in "her" tractor, listening to her MP3 player while she’s cleaning out the sighted horse corral.

Emily grew up with horses and is on the Equestrian Team at Boston College, so she was a natural at working with our blind horses.  She’d take them out to pasture every morning and bring them back in the evening.

Today is Emily’s last day … she goes back to Boston College for her senior year this weekend.  We’ll miss her!

This is Widget, our blind Beagle/Dachshund mix, hard at work in her office this morning.  It’s not easy deciding which bed to lay on, whether to choose a sunny spot or shade, and which side to sleep on.  Or at least that’s what she tells us.

We tell her, "Widget, it’s time to get a real job!"

Widget came to us a few years ago from a shelter in New York.  Although she’s completely blind, she doesn’t consider that a disability.  Blindness she can deal with.  Her real problem is she’s a Beagle trapped inside a Dachshund body.  Widget says, "Now that is a true handicap!"