Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Shelby just sent me this photo of all three blind and deaf ones snoozing together … Spencer on the left, Manny in the middle and Katie on the right.  She had tiptoed into the house at lunch to get the photo with her phone.  When she wrote me the email, she said, "At the moment I've got Katie in my lap and Spencer is sleeping beside me with Manny. I think it's safe to say they're settling in."

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Weekly Winner and $1,000 for the Animals!

Yes, the Shelter Challenge people finally posted the weekly winners for Weeks 4 and 5 (at the same time), and we — or I should say, you — won $1,000 for the animals here! Thank you so much! We thought we had won it a couple of weeks ago when we got a few emails from people congratulating us for the win, but the Shelter Challenge had not posted any results past Week 3 … so we were reluctant to say anything. I gather the Animal Rescue Site must send out an email of some sort, but I don't know why they don't update their page at the same time. In any case, the check for $1,000 also just arrived and is now in the bank. Thank you for all your dedicated voting to benefit the animals at Rolling Dog Farm!

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Shelby M., who adopted blind and deaf Katie and Spencer from us a few weeks ago, recently sent me this photo of her blind and deaf Pug, Manny, curled up with Katie. Shelby wrote, "Manny is delighted to have another pillow." I'm not sure where Spencer was when the photo was taken, but since Katie and Spencer were always using each other as pillows, I'm sure all three dogs are delighted to have yet more choices for their sleeping comfort.

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The real kind. Not the drinkin' kind.

We've had three wild turkeys start hanging around in the past couple of weeks. It's not unusual to see a flock of these beautiful creatures cruising through the farm every now and then, but what is a bit unusual is to have a group take up residence for a while. I call them the "three amigos," and they appear to be toms (males) because all three sport rather impressive beards. (A small percentage of the hens can have beards, but they're also not generally very prominent.)

I took these photos on Wednesday morning from the back deck. The turkey in the photo above had been scratching around in some of the leftover hay on the snow. Even though I was a good 100 feet away and slipped out the back door without making a sound (or so I thought), he instantly knew something had changed and turned to head for the woods.

You can see our chickens were out on the ramp of the eggmobile, sunning themselves and watching their larger cousins. If you click on the photo for a bigger image, you should be able to see our rooster, Duke, at the front of the ramp, standing guard.  He is foolish enough to try and take on a tom turkey weighing two to three times his size, but the fence protected him from himself. We know he's foolish enough because he will also take a run at us on occasion, which results in a dust-up that he loses every time, much to his diminished pride. Current score is something like Steve/Alayne/Kate 21, Duke 0. We keep a rooster not because you need one to get hens to lay (they'll lay just fine without a rooster), but because we'd like to hatch out our own chicks this spring.

After the tom in the photo above skittered off, about 10 minutes later the other two amigos came out of the woods to check things out. The same thing happened — as soon as they sensed my presence, they left for the safety of the woods:

One of their favorite spots is the half-acre cornfield I planted last year. They scratch through the snow, hunting and pecking for corn kernels in the ground.

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that if you search for "wild turkey" on Google, the bourbon is the number one search result and counts for two of the top four results:

We prefer the feathered one, thank you.

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We found out this morning that one way to hasten blind Avery's departure from his crate in the morning is to have another dog wander into it and make himself at home. I posted several months ago about how Avery (in the back of the crate) likes to take his sweet time coming out of his crate; when we let everyone else out in the morning, we just open his crate door and let him saunter out on his own … eventually. This can take an hour or two on some days.

Today, we had already taken all the dogs out and brought them back in, while Avery was still lounging in his crate. The next thing we knew, blind Willie had wandered into Avery's crate and taken up residence. He cruised into the back, sat down and chewed on himself a bit, got up, sat down in a new spot, milled around, and finally parked himself at the front of the crate. 

This did not go over well with Avery, who promptly vacated the premises.

Of course, this gave us an idea — any time we want to hurry up Avery's exit in the morning, we'll throw a couple of dog cookies into his crate and then send the Dachshund brigade in after them. That should do it.

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A couple of evenings ago I was sitting in the living room when a blanket on the floor started to move. Judging from the snorts coming from inside it, I knew it was Wilbur who had come to life. After a few seconds I realized he was trying to come out from underneath the blanket but not having much success. Usually he just throws it off and sticks his little head out. I had the camera right next to me so I picked it up and started clicking, wondering what would happen.

The blanket itself began to take on various lifeforms, such as the humpback:

The longback:

The modified humpback:

The I'll-try-the-other-end-of-this-confounded-thing:

The Loch-Ness-monster-under-the-blankie-thing:

The oh-I'm-so-close-I-can-feel-it-thing:

The dang-that-wasn't-it-and-here-I-am-back-in-the-middle-again-thing:

At this point I could tell he really was stuck inside the blanket — it's a double-sheeted kind and sometimes certain dogs I mean Dachshunds chew holes in one side or another … holes small dogs like to burrow into and then can't get out of.  After 45 seconds (according to photo data) of watching him explore the blanket, I put the camera down and extricated the little guy from his predicament.

This next shot is not from that moment, but one I took today. I had gone downstairs about midday and Alayne was in the kitchen, and I said, "Lunch?" Wilbur heard that, instantly popped up, threw the blanket back, and peered at Alayne with a "Yup, I'm ready for lunch, too!" expression:

He definitely knows when it's mealtime around here, that's for sure.

Maybe me saying "Lunch?" was all it would have taken to get him out of the blanket on the other occasion.

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The new Shelter Challenge started Monday, January 9 and ends at midnight on March 18. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories … please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day … consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

I noticed a while back that one of our two Belgian draft horses, Bob, sports an awesome and very stylish mustache. It curls and twirls and is blond as well.  Some horses have these, while others don't … and I'm not sure why that is. His brother Bill also has a mustache, but it just doesn't have the same flair as Bob's (sorry, Bill):

While I was taking these photos this morning, Kate was about to start feeding the boys … and the load of hay on the utility vehicle just out of reach was driving them crazy while I was clicking away. Bill finally had enough and tried to grab a bale:

Close … but no cigar. With boys this big, it's easy to forget just how far they can reach with heads and necks so massive.

Bob says, "What, you making fun of my mustache, little fella?":

Um, no sir, just admiring it.

Speaking of mustaches, did you know there was an American Mustache Institute?  Me neither.

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A number of people have asked about Wilbur's bulging eye. Our other vet, Dr. Chris Plumley, also examined Wilbur's eye the other day and doesn't think it really is bulging per se. He thinks the appearance is partly the result of shallow eye sockets, combined with the gray coloring of the cataracts, which makes for an "optical illusion" (if you will) that it is bulging. And we know from the eye pressure test we did that he doesn't have glaucoma, and there's no squinting or tearing, so there are no outward signs of discomfort.  We will be taking Wilbur to our veterinary ophthalmologist in Vermont for a definitive diagnosis on both of his eyes, though.

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The new Shelter Challenge started Monday, January 9 and ends at midnight on March 18. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories … please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day … consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Well, it took a while, but finally that special person came along to adopt two very special little dogs — our dynamic duo, Katie and Spencer, both of whom are blind and deaf. In the photo above, their new Mom, Shelby M., is on the right holding Katie while Alayne holds Spencer.

We've had Katie and Spencer on PetFinder for adoption for almost a year, and the PetFinder stats would show about 200 "views" each week — far more than the others we had on PetFinder. Yet I think in all that time we had only three inquiries on them, each from people who didn't have fenced yards and didn't appear to understand why having a fenced yard for a blind and deaf dog would be, um, essential.

Most people just have a hard time understanding how a blind and deaf dog can have a good quality of life, and I think the double disability was really a show-stopper for almost all the people who saw Katie and Spencer on PetFinder. 

But we never got discouraged, because we knew that eventually the "right someone" would want to adopt this lovely brother/sister pair. It turns out that Shelby, who is a librarian in Augusta, Maine, has a blind and deaf Pug — so she already knew that dogs with this twin disability can still have a wonderful quality of life.

Here's a photo of Spencer and Katie that I took this afternoon, not long before Shelby arrived to meet them for the first time:

Shelby, thank you so much for adopting these adorable little ones!

—

The new Shelter Challenge started Monday, January 9 and ends at midnight on March 18. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories … please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day … consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

I took this photo yesterday when Kate and I were moving another load of firewood from the big pile on the ridge above the farm (this is directly to the west of the house and barns). We have a large woodshed (8' deep x 32' wide, or 2.4 m x 9.7 m) right next to the outdoor wood boiler, but it can't hold all the wood we use, so periodically during the winter we have to restock the woodshed from this pile. We started off with 24 cords of wood, and at this point I bet we end up going through almost all of it before we finally shut down the boiler in April. (A cord is a stack of wood 8' wide, 4' high and 4' deep, or 2.4 m x 1.2 m x 1.2 m.) One of the very nice things about our outdoor wood boiler is that I don't need to split the wood before using it; I can put these big log pieces right in the firebox. That saves a tremendous amount of time and labor.

Since I took that photo, we got a couple of inches of snow overnight, followed by freezing rain this morning and then just plain old non-freezing rain on top of everything. It was a lot of fun doing chores outside in that mess!

—

The new Shelter Challenge started Monday, January 9 and ends at midnight on March 18. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories … please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day … consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.