Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Our equine vet, Dr. Steve Levine, came out today to do the annual vaccinations, dentals, and other routine medical work on our horse herd. The day had started out raining, but by the time Steve arrived, it had simply become a hot and humid summer afternoon. It was a nice change to have a day actually scheduled in advance with Steve, rather than the after-hours and weekend calls we usually have been seeing him for.

In the photo above, Steve is giving blind Nikki one of her vaccinations while Kate holds her; that's blind Bridger in the background, who shares the paddock with Nikki. Oddly, Nikki and Bridger didn't really get along back in Montana, but here in New Hampshire they've become quite the pair.

Here's Kate with Nikki right after Steve got done with the vaccinations and deworming:

Here's Kate right after she realized the other Steve really was taking her photo for the blog:

Actually, I didn't do much except take photos during the entire thing. Well, I did carry the two buckets with the syringes and dewormers, but pretty much I just took photos while Kate and Steve did all the work.

Here they are with blind Cash:

And, last but certainly never least, here's the Queen Bee, blind Lena:

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Tonya asked about the previous post, "why are there seven closets in one hallway?" The way we heard the story, the previous owners had a large family and the father wanted everyone — children and adults — to have his or her own closet to put their stuff in. He didn't want to see their stuff lying around the house. And, as other people have pointed out, who ever has enough closets in their house anyway? Needless to say, we sure have found ways to use every one of them!

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The current Shelter Challenge started on July 4th and ends at midnight on September 18th. 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.

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

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.  [Yes, we are still listed as Rolling Dog Ranch for the purposes of the contest, not Rolling Dog Farm.]

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last Shelter Challenge. Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too. Thank you!

When the weather's hot, the coolest spot in the house is the floor in the "hall of seven closets" that connects the dog wing with the people wing. It's a simulated "tile" flooring, and that along with the twelve windows in the hallway combine to turn it into a cool, breezy spot to sleep. I took this photo of blind Madison this morning enjoying a nap. Even though it was probably more comfortable outside in the grass in the shade of the oak tree that hangs over the front yard, Madison prefers to come inside — and this is where she often ends up.

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The current Shelter Challenge started on July 4th and ends at midnight on September 18th. 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.

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

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.  [Yes, we are still listed as Rolling Dog Ranch for the purposes of the contest, not Rolling Dog Farm.]

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last Shelter Challenge. Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too. Thank you!

I was wondering what I was going to post on the blog for today when our friend and neighbor, Jim D., called this afternoon to say he was coming over with the first haywagon load to put into our hayloft.  I turned to Kate and said, "Well, I know what I have for the blog now…."

You may remember that Jim was the fellow who built all the ramps for the dogs last year when we first moved in, as well as our horse sheds, and he's helped with lots of other projects since then, including providing much of our firewood for the first winter and growing all the hay we feed out. There is so little that Jim can't do, in fact, that Alayne and I joke we should have a T-shirt made up that says "1-800-Call-Jim".

The trick with growing hay in New England is dodging frequent summer rains; weather is always an issue with putting up hay anywhere, but in this climate it's particularly challenging. So you kind of have to get your hay done whenever you get a long enough break in the weather, baling what you can before the next rain. Jim's already got about 1,800 bales stacked in his hay barn, but we will get about 800 bales put away in our hayloft. The wagonload today had about 230 bales on it.  The total crop we will buy from Jim will be about 5,000 bales, with the rest stored in his barn.

That's Jim on the side of the wagon, feeding bales onto the hay elevator that's carrying them up to Kate, standing in the loft door. After taking the photo, I joined Kate in the loft, and we managed to get the wagon unloaded and the bales stacked in under 20 minutes.  Compared to when Alayne and I last did this, on a 94°day (34° C) a year ago, today was much nicer … 10 degrees cooler with a light breeze.  The loft was hot, but not an oven. Nevertheless, I'm sure Kate was thinking, "Could you please put down the camera and hurry up getting in here?!?"

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The current Shelter Challenge started on July 4th and ends at midnight on September 18th. 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.

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

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.  [Yes, we are still listed as Rolling Dog Ranch for the purposes of the contest, not Rolling Dog Farm.]

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last Shelter Challenge. Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too. Thank you!

This little lady arrived just in time for the long holiday weekend, brought out to us from Davis, California by TLC Pet Transport. Sophie had been surrendered to the Yolo County SPCA by her elderly owner, who said she could no longer care for this long-haired Dachshund. We were first asked if we could take Sophie back in mid-May, when we received an email about her from Ashley D., who had sent us Dexter T. Dickens a couple of years ago and more recently, had tried to save a precious little girl named Megan this past January.

This is one of the photos that came with Ashley's email:

(Yes, her tongue is out about 80% of the time!)

We agreed to take her, and Ashley kindly offered to foster Sophie until TLC Pet Transport could pick her up on their next scheduled trip to that part of the West Coast. That turned out to be in late June. So in the meantime, Ashley doted on Sophie, took her to the vet for a much needed dental, blood work and other care, house-trained her (thank you!), and … yes, tried to get her to lose some weight! 

She tips the scales at 18 pounds, and her blood work showed her thyroid is fine, so the vet who Sophie saw in California suggested we investigate Cushings as a possible cause. She also has some bald spots that might be related to the same issue, so we'll be following up with our vets here.  Sophie appears to be blind from progressive retinal atrophy (PRA), and her eyes seem very comfortable.  She's 7 years old.

Sophie has an adorable personality, and reminds us a lot of blind Callie, just with more hair.  She's also a bossy, demanding little thing, and since we really haven't been bossed around much since losing Bailey, she kind of filled that niche, too. She gets along great with everybody, and has settled in over the past few days. Here's blind and deaf Spinner checking her out:

Ashley warned us that Sophie's low-slung, ground-hugging torso and feathery long hair combined to make her a magnet that picks up just about anything on the ground. Sure enough, after one day here she had already helped us rake the recently mowed front yard by picking up lots of grass clippings in her coat. (It's time for our fabulous groomer, Lori Fillion, to make another trip up to the farm!)

If you saw this shape from a distance, cruising across your yard, you might at first glance think a ground hog had moved in, though upon closer inspection the harness suggests it is more likely a companion animal of some sort:

It's funny, though — we had similar weight issues with Callie, who was just as low to the ground, and even though she had lost a lot of weight in the aftermath of her brain tumor and radiation treatment, it never changed her fundamental oblong, low-riding shape. I suspect Sophie will prove to be similar.

Sophie says, "Please note, I'm a lot cuter than a ground hog!"

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This is completely unrelated, but a year ago this past week I had a brief blog post about how humid it is here in New Hampshire, and included a photo showing the outside humidity at 98%. This morning when we got up, our wireless weather station from Davis Instruments was showing a full-up 100% humidity outdoors:

I'd never seen that before.

No, it wasn't 4:27 a.m. … and it wasn't 5:45 a.m. either, which is what time the camera says I took that shot. It seems someone needs to reset some clocks on various digital devices!

Here's another great shot that Kathy K., who adopted the blind Poodle sisters from us a couple of months ago, sent me this weekend. That's Priscilla on the left, Molly, and Franky. Kathy wrote, "They are like the three musketeers, always together playing and following each other. :)"

Who said a tug of war can't have three participants, eh?

Vicky L. from Connecticut, who adopted blind Lucy from us earlier this year, just sent us this wonderful photo of her daughter Kendall taking Lucy for a bike ride. (Please note pink carrier for Lucy, who also has a pink collar, leash, bed and toys!) Vicky wrote, "Lucy sends great big hugs and kisses. She is doing wonderfully! When I say she is part of the family…I mean she is truly part of the family. She goes everywhere with us and still people are shocked to find out she is blind. Her new favorite place is going for bike rides with us. On our really long rides she curls up in the basket and takes a little nap. That's when neighbors along our bike ride are not stopping us to see our little beauty!"

I told Vicky, "That was such a heartwarming photo — it’s hard to explain how much it means to us to see the kind of life Lucy is having after being given up on. Wow. Thank you."

Our first calf of the season was born on Thursday to Sage, a first-time momma cow. Kate was the first person to see her, so she won "naming rights" and decided to call her Annabelle. I took these photos Thursday afternoon, just a few hours after she was born. (For background, see our post from February on humanely raised pet food.)

Here's Sage, nudging her along on the way back to the herd … she was communicating to Annabelle with a low, quiet moo as they slowly moved forward:

This is Susanna on the left, who was born last year, greeting the new-born little girl:

We have three more cows due to deliver — two any day now, and the third one in August.  We had a couple of cows not get pregnant last fall, so to make up for the shortfall, we are now also raising four Holstein male calves we got from a local dairy down the road from us when they were a week old.

Typically male dairy calves get shipped off to veal "farms" (really, factories) a few days after birth, where they spend a short, miserable several months confined in veal crates and on restricted diets before being slaughtered. This is the "dark side" to the dairy industry that many people, even many well intentioned vegetarians, don't know about. But if you're drinking milk — or eating cheese, yoghurt or other milk products — it's because a calf didn't get that milk. Instead of going to a veal farm, our Holstein steers (now about three months old) will have a natural life outdoors.

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Speaking of humanely raised pet food, the newest issue of Bark magazine has a feature article by me on that subject. It's in the June/July/August issue — this is the cover — but they also just posted it online. You can read it on the Bark website here.

The article is adapted from, and expands on, the blog post I wrote back in February.