Rolling Dog Farm Blog

This is blind Penny, who arrived a couple of weeks ago along with Mad Max the Dachshund. She had also come to us from Becky's Brigade in Shreveport, which had seen her in a local shelter and asked us if we could take her. Like Max, she was also an owner surrender.

Penny was absolutely emaciated when she showed up here — we could feel virtually every bone in her tiny body. Over the past couple of weeks we've been getting weight on her, but even so she tipped the scales last week at 4 pounds 3 ounces (1.8 kg). Her mouth is a mess and she needs to have a dental, but we had to get her on a full course of antibiotics before she could have that work done (to prevent oral infection from spreading as a result of the dental).

But Penny also just didn't seem well. We couldn't quite put our finger on what it was, but my hunch was she might be diabetic, or had some other problem. So last week, when I took Wilbur, Mitch and Max to see the ophthalmologist, I also took Penny over to see our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Tanya Donovan at Burlington Emergency & Veterinary Specialists, for a complete work-up. Here's Dr. Donovan doing an initial physical exam on Penny:

After a full battery of tests, including an abdominal ultrasound, Dr. Donovan found she did not have diabetes. However, her pancreatic enzymes were off-the-chart high … indeed, one of those values was literally off the chart — higher than the diagnositic machine could read. Dr. Donovan said that would indicate two possible scenarios: either she was having pancreatitis, or she has a pancreatic tumor. But in fact, based on the rest of Dr. Donovan's diagnostic tests, Penny shows no signs of having either problem. Thus it is a complete mystery why Penny's pancreatic values would be so high. At this point all we can do is monitor her for any further signs. If we don't see any other changes in the near-term, we will do a recheck in 3 to 4 weeks. 

Dr. Donovan did find Penny to have a mild case of anemia, which could be from whatever undefined disease might be present in her, or it might be from an underlying condition in her bone marrow. We will recheck these in a month as well.

We mentioned to Dr. Donovan that Penny appeared hunched to us at times, and we learned why: on X-rays Dr. Donovan found evidence of an old disk injury, but it doesn't seem painful at all now.

But Penny has a great appetite, is bossy and demanding — she's a vocal little thing — and seems to have more pep and energy now that when she arrived. She's also very sweet and affectionate. She loves snuggling up next to Madison, a.k.a. "Granny," as you can see here:

And here she is again, with Wilbur on the other side (photo taken before his recheck last week – cone is now off):

[That's a completely shredded dog toy behind Wilbur, not a rabbit that got inside the house and didn't make it out alive.]

And if Granny isn't available, she'll settle for snuggling next to Wilbur inside a blanket (that's his tail sticking out on the left):

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Thank you for your votes!

This was Widget out on the ramp leading to the people wing the other day. She's ready to come in, and she's broadcasting her intentions to one and all with a lot of woo-woo-wooing long before she ever gets to the door. In fact, she rarely bothers herself with making it up the ramp. She expects us to come down the ramp and pick her up there.

(Apparently the shorter your legs are, the longer distances become. Who knew?)

On this particular day, she was even less likely to make the arduous trek up the ramp because she knew she'd have to make her way through all the rabble –that's what she calls them, "the rabble" — gathered on the porch at the top.

Here's what the crowd looked like:

From the left, that's new arrival blind Penny (more on her on Monday), blind Owen, Mad Max, blind Fuzzy, and Belvie by the door. Blind Sophie is on the ramp next to Widget.

So Widget will stay down below, woo-woo-wooing for a porter to come and assist. She woos first in one direction, then another:

And this woo-woo-wooing will continue until one of us hustles out to go retrieve Her Highness (Lowness?) and carry her in above the rabble throng.

We had some new arrivals come while I was out of town recently, so Alayne had her hands full handling the introductions and integration, needless to say! Here is one of the newbies, a 9-year old long-haired Dachshund named Max. He came to us from Becky's Bridge, a rescue group in Shreveport, Louisiana run by Rebecca Y. She also sent us little Wilbur back in January, as well as several others over the years. Max's owner had surrendered him to Rebecca's group.

We had agreed to take him because he was blind, but on arrival he showed an astonishing ability to act like a sighted dog: zooming everywhere at high speed, darting through barely opened doors, and never running into anything. On closer inspection, however, he seems to have a very dominant cataract in his left eye and the start of one in his left eye. That's the bad news. The good news is that since he obviously still has vision of some sort, he just might be a candidate for cataract surgery. The only way to know for sure what's going on, of course, is to have our veterinary ophthalmologist, Dr. Sarah Hoy, do an eye exam and an ERG, or electroretinogram, to test his retinal function. So Max will be joining our "group ophthalmology party" later this week when I'll be taking Wilbur and Mitch to see Dr. Hoy in Burlington.

Don't let that soft, demure expression in the photo above fool you. Max is a character — vocal, energetic, mischievous, and full of Dachshund chutzpah. This is why we call him "Mad Max":

Here's an interesting shot in which Dexter seems to be saying to Max, "Well, you may be new but at least you're a Dachshund.":

The other day Alayne saw blind Owen starting to crawl underneath the blankets on the bed in the dog room. She picked up the camera to see if she could chronicle what he was going to do next. As it turned out, he decided to unmake the bed — for reasons known only to himself.

In this next shot, he's starting to annoy blind Sophie, who is letting him know with a growl:

He decides that's not the best approach (maybe the growly bear Doxie made him think better of it) so he scampered up onto the bed:

This is where he systematically began pulling the blankets off in earnest:

Here he's starting to turn around so he can go head first like a bulldozer:

That's much better:

You can see by then that Sophie had left the scene of the crime.

Apparently Owen is sensing he's close to the edge here and takes a moment to ponder:

But the reflective moment quickly passed, and one final push sent it off the cliff:

It's as if he was wondering, "Hey, where did it all go?"

So he climbed down to check it out:

And found it very much to his liking:

Blind dogs can be … so helpful resourceful!

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Thanks to everyone who voted for us in the spring 2011 round of the Shelter Challenge!  We did get a fabulous $1,000 grant as a weekly winner for week 4. We and the animals are very grateful for all your dedicated voting! 

A couple of days ago Kate and Alayne noticed that our new arrival, blind Billy, kept going into the mud room by the back door and re-arranging the boots and shoes so he could sleep on the boot mat. Three times they picked him up and put him in the dog room, then put the footwear back in place. Three times he found his way back and insisted on sleeping there. That's when Alayne got the camera out.

He's wearing a soft cone in the photo because of his eye surgery, but Dr. Hoy removed his sutures yesterday so he is now cone-free. And since the cone came off he hasn't returned to this spot. Perhaps wearing a soft, rubbery black thing on his head made him feel a certain kinship with the soft, rubbery black boots. Who knows?

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Blog Break:  I will be traveling next week visiting family and will not be posting on the blog until the following week.

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