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Apples

May 22, 2011

The apple trees are all bursting with blossoms now — a truly gorgeous sight. We have probably about two dozen apple trees in three different orchards on the property, all producing delicious fruit. The trees have been "let go" for at least a couple of decades and are in need of substantial pruning, and the result is that while we have lots of tasty apples in several varieties, the apples are on the small side compared to the commercial ones you can buy.

But my oh my, what a treat in late summer to walk by one of these trees, pick an apple off a branch, and enjoy! Whoever planted these orchards a long time ago planted enough varieties that mature at different times, so it's a rolling apple season for us. Alayne made loads of apple sauce last year, and we're hoping to learn how to make apple cider this year, time permitting.

Here's a close-up showing just how dense the apple blossoms are:

Of course, no one is happier about the apples than the horses, because several of the trees helpfully drop their fruits right into the horse paddocks:

We've pruned the branches back so they are out of the way of the blind horses, but still overhead so that come late summer, it's an apple-fest for them!

—

The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th. 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.

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this current 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!
Ahoy Matey!

May 19, 2011

Ellen M., the board-certified veterinary internal medicine specialist who adopted Snuggles from us last fall, emailed us at the end of March with some disturbing news: Snuggles had a melanoma cancer in her jaw and would be undergoing surgery in a few days. A board-certified veterinary surgeon trained in oncology was going to do the surgery, which Ellen said would mean "losing part of her upper jaw … from the right canine tooth back to the right 3rd premolar (the big tooth on the upper jaw)."

Of course, as upsetting as that was for us to hear, we were also relieved that if this were going to happen to Snuggles, at least her Mom was a veterinary specialist who handles these kinds of medical crises on a routine basis!

A couple of days later, Ellen emailed to say the surgery had gone well and there had been no issues with anesthesia. Ellen wrote, "She has a permanent snarl on the right side of her face. I'm sure when the swelling goes down and her hair grows back, she will look better. And she doesn't care about her looks so I won't either. I am googling famous women pirates (if there are any) for her new nickname. She has had this little growl that she does when she's excited that sounds like a pirate saying 'AARRGH'. With her missing eye and now her new scar, she seems to be transforming into a pirate."

I replied to Ellen, saying "We applied the pirate theme to blind Widget, too … who also has a growl that sounds like 'aarrghhh!' We’ve been calling her a pirate for years, ever since she lost her other eye, and she acts like one, too — 'what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.' Snuggles and Widget have more in common than you’d think!"

Well, now that Snuggles' hair has grown back over the surgery site — she's recovered completely and is doing great — Ellen dressed her up in a pirate outfit and sent us that adorable photo this past Sunday. The only problem now is that Widget wants an outfit like that too!

—

The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th. 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.

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this current 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!
More Eyes, Larger Version

May 17, 2011

No, it wasn't Friday afternoon when we had to call our equine vet, Dr. Steve Levine. It was worse — Saturday afternoon. I was out feeding the horses and noticed blind Bo's right eye was closed shut and tears were streaming down his face. I struggled to get his eyelid open, but when I did, I could see blood and edema, or fluid, under the cornea. There were lots of tiny blood vessels laced across the outer surface of the cornea, all headed towards the area where the blood and edema were located inside. Typically when you see this, it means the body is directing blood to where healing is needed. It looked like trauma to the eye, but I couldn't see any visible damage to the corneal surface itself, i.e., an ulcer of some sort.

I gave Bo some oral banamine for pain relief and called Dr. Levine. I felt awful, because it was late on Saturday, it was pouring rain, and clearly this hadn't just happened. I was hoping he'd be able to walk me through what I could do to keep Bo comfortable until Monday morning, but he insisted he should come out and look at the eye. He was so gracious about it and said, "You feel worse about me coming out than I do, so don't worry!"

About five minutes later my cell phone rang and it was Steve, saying he had just had an emergency colic call come in right after he got off the phone with me. He would need to stop at that client's farm first and then head to us. That made me feel a tad better that I wasn't the only person screwing up his Saturday evening.

When Steve arrived, I haltered Bo and brought him up to the main barn. In the photo at the top, he's injecting a nerve block for the eyelid so we didn't have to fight to keep Bo's eyelid open. I have often said that the strongest muscle in a horse is not in the leg — it's the eyelid. Especially when the eye is painful, a determined horse can keep the eyelid closed tight. I have, over the years, become pretty good at prying them open enough to get the job done, but a nerve block makes life much easier!

After examining Bo's eye, Steve put a stain strip in under the eyelid, waited for a few seconds, and removed it. Then he pulled out a flashlight and immediately we could see where the problem was — sure enough, there was a small ulcer, right where all the vascularization was. Here we are looking at it:

The yellow stain "pools" in any break in the corneal surface, and under the light it glows like neon. You can't miss it.

Of course, at this point I felt even worse, because I could have done the stain too, but I didn't have the stain strips. If I had, I could have saved him the trip out. A corneal ulcer is generally easily treatable with topical antibiotics, which we had on hand.

Steve started the treatment on Bo's eye and left me with stain strips to check his eye later in the week, as well as for future cases like this. On Sunday, Bo was already holding his eye open much more, a sign the healing has begun and he's more comfortable.

—

The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th. 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.

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this current 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!
Updated Website Now Online

May 17, 2011

We just rolled out our updated website with our new Rolling Dog Farm name. It's at RollingDogFarm.org. Our existing RollingDogRanch.org website will automatically "roll over" or re-direct to the new site. Alayne and I will still be able to receive emails addressed to our old RDR email accounts, but we now also have email accounts for steve[at]rollingdogfarm.org and alayne[at]rollingdogfarm.org.

Thanks to our awesome web designer, Amy Austin, our updated site retains the same "look and feel" of the old site but is a much slimmer, easier-to-navigate version of its former self. The old site had literally thousands of individual pages and files associated with it, so "under the hood" it was very complicated any time we tried to make a change or update something.

To make it easer to maintain, and less time-consuming for me to manage from a content standpoint, we will no longer have full individual pages on each animal who arrives here. Instead, we have full pages on a representative number of our disabled animals — like Widget, Cash, Spinner and many others — but we will rely on blog posts for information on new arrivals and news about current residents. We have also added new content, some of which will be familiar to long-time blog readers.

Please note that we cannot get everything changed over to the new name all at once. This blog, for instance, will continue to have the old name and banner for a while. I will probably have to start a new one and then link back to stories on the original blog, since the posts all have unique "permalinks" tied to that blog name. Our online donations page currently has the RDR name on it; I'm waiting on Groundspring to update the banner to match the new website, which should happen sometime later this week.

If you have recurring donations set up, you don't need to do anything. Similarly, we are still able to deposit checks made out to Rolling Dog Ranch.

Our PetFinder page will need to change, too, but at least until the current Shelter Challenge ends, we will still be Rolling Dog Ranch — so nothing changes there.

Amy and I haven't figured out what we're going to do about the existing RDR Facebook page, either.

There are lots of "moving parts" and it will take us some time to get to them all, so please bear with us. It's going to be a gradual … um, you might say "rolling" … change-over to the new name.
My Eyes Are Gone But So Is My Pain

May 15, 2011

I took this photo of little Avery this morning. He's been doing just great since coming home from surgery on Friday — especially when his cone is off! We've started removing it when we're around and can supervise to see if he begins pawing at the sutures. We could already tell this weekend that he was feeling so much better after having his eyes removed. The pain from glaucoma is so terrible, and so chronic, that enucleation brings almost immediate relief. The constant, grinding migraine headache — which is how humans with glaucoma describe the pain — he's suffered for years is finally gone. His new life begins.

Our other recent arrival, blind Louie, is also doing fine. I got this shot of Louie in the living room this afternoon:

That's blind Goldie — our Beagle/Cocker mix — on the adjoining bed. She's been with us for over 13 years since we lived in Seattle. Goldie's seen (well, maybe that's not exactly the right word) dozens and dozens of dogs come and go over the past decade, so she's become very used to the routine. She welcomes each arrival with a sniff and a casual "Oh, it's just another newbie" greeting and goes back to whatever she was doing. She does seem to prefer … for obvious reasons … Beagles and Cockers, followed by Dachshunds, in that order. Dachshunds make her list because they all just adore her for some reason.

—

I've been remiss in not posting this sooner, but a writer in Oregon named Kelly Walker contacted us because she's doing a book on disabled dogs and is looking for stories to include. In addition to some of our dogs, she's interested in hearing from any of our blog readers who may have disabled dogs of their own. There's more info on her book project, including her contact email, at http://brokendogs.blogspot.com/

Please do not contact me about this because we are not involved in the book project. Any submissions or story ideas need to go directly to Kelly. Thank you.

—

The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th. 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.

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this current 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!
Avery’s Surgery

May 12, 2011

I took our new arrival, blind Avery, over to Burlington, Vermont yesterday to see some specialists. First was a stop at our internist, Dr. Bryan Harnett, at Vermont Veterinary Internal Medicine, for a look at his heart, and then in the afternoon we saw our ophthalmologist, Dr. Sarah Hoy at Vermont Veterinary Eye Care. Although Avery had some mild right-side heart enlargement, Dr. Harnett thought he was actually in pretty good shape. But Dr. Hoy confirmed what I had suspected, that his left eye was very painful from severe glaucoma.

That's Dr. Hoy in the photo above, testing Avery's eye pressure with her Tono-Pen while her vet tech Amy holds our boy still. His intraocular pressure in that left eye was 45 mmHg (millimeters of mercury, the unit of measure); normal ranges from 15 to 25 mmHG, though lower than 20 is preferred. His right eye measured a very low 9 mmHG, a sign that glaucoma had essentially "killed" the eye and it was no longer producing fluid. So he has already suffered all the pain associated with runaway glaucoma in one eye, and now was going through it all over again in the second eye. His lens had detached in his right eye as well, and it barely had any tear function left.

Here's Dr. Hoy using her slit lamp to examine his eyes:

We made the difficult decision after Avery's exam to proceed with surgery to remove his eyes. I say "difficult" because of the risk from his heartworms; removing his eyes was the obvious choice in his case, but surgery was definitely risky. Yet we wouldn't have been able to significantly reduce the pain from his glaucoma with topical medications, given the high pressure in that eye, and waiting for months to complete his heartworm treatment before proceeding with the enucleation meant leaving him with the pain. He had already suffered enough, and we elected to have Dr. Hoy take him to surgery today.

We had a lot of specialists helping on this one: Dr. Harnett had a radiologist review the images of his heart and lungs, and Dr. Hoy consulted further with a cardiologist about the risks. All the consultations left us feeling as comfortable as we could that proceeding with surgery was the best course for Avery.

Nevertheless, last night Alayne and I worried ourselves sick, wondering if we had made the right decision … and wondering how we would be feeling if we lost him during surgery. This is the kind of stuff that just haunts us.

Dr. Hoy called this morning to let me know she was prepping him for surgery, and then we anxiously waited for the post-surgery "he's up and doing fine!" phone call. I had just gotten off the tractor and was talking with Kate when my cell phone rang at 12:22 p.m. today. I was so nervous I almost couldn't get the phone open in time. It was Dr. Hoy, and the news was fantastic — he had made it through surgery in great shape! In fact, she told me, "he did better with the anesthesia than any healthy 2-year old dog I''ve ever worked on!"

Whew.

Alayne is heading over to Burlington on Friday to pick up Avery and bring him home. I'll post an update on him for Monday.

—

The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th. 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.

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this current 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!
Please Welcome … Blind Avery!

May 10, 2011

Yes, another blind Beagle from Georgia! That's who was in the van with blind Louie on Friday. This is Avery — his name had been "Chopper," which no one here liked. Widget had always wanted to have a resident Beagle named Avery, so she got her choice and Chopper got a new name. This little guy has multiple medical issues, including painful eyes, a skin condition, constant scratching, bald spots, and he's heartworm positive — not to mention he's not neutered.

He's had a very rough life, and had clearly been beaten a lot. When he hears us come through a door or a gate into the dog yard, he instinctively cowers, turns his head away, and lowers his body to the ground. It's heartbreaking. Once he realizes he's not going to get hit, though, he quicky warms up and becomes very affectionate. He's so sweet that he stole our hearts immediately. He reminds us a lot of blind Briggs, who we lost earlier this year — both in his personality and in the variety of medical problems he has.

I took him to our clinic this morning for a medical exam and blood work … here's Dr. Chris Plumley drawing blood from Avery while his vet tech Callie holds him:

Judging from how his eyes look, at least one and perhaps both have glaucoma and the left eye in particular seems very painful. He often looks like this:

We started him on pain meds this weekend. I could not check his intraocular eye pressure (IOP) to determine for sure whether he has glaucoma because we ran out of the eye drops we need to administer prior to using the Tono-Pen. Dr. Plumley's clinic does not have a Tono-Pen and thus does not have the specific eye drops (Proparacaine) required for this purpose. As a result, we're going to loan our Tono-Pen to the clinic so they can have it on hand for glaucoma testing of all their patients, and therefore they'll keep Proparacaine in stock. (We had a similar arrangement with our equine clinic in Missoula, because they didn't have a Tono-Pen either.)

A complicating factor on whether to do any surgery is the fact that Avery is heartworm positive. After consulting with Dr. Plumley this morning, I was able to schedule two back-to-back specialist appointments tomorrow for Avery — with our internist, Dr. Bryan Harnett in the morning for an echocardiogram to assess heart function, and then with an ophthalmologist, Dr. Sarah Hoy, for the afternoon. Both are in Burlington, Vermont, about two hours from here.

In the meantime, we'd like to take a moment to thank all of you who make donations to the sanctuary, because that's the only reason we can take in dogs like Avery and give them the kind of medical care they need. Your gifts pay for everything that happens here. We are always so grateful we can do this for them.

—

Remember the Kuranda dog bed contest for April? Well, we came in first and won five extra-large Kuranda cots! Thanks to Cathy S. for entering us in the contest. However, on a very sad note, Cathy's beloved dog Casey — whose photo you saw in the contest — died just 10 days ago. Cathy only had Casey for two years, and he passed away from complications due to kidney disease. Our hearts go out to her.

—

The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th. 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.

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this current 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!
Introducing … Blind Louie!

May 8, 2011

This handsome fellow arrived on Friday afternoon, brought to us by Gale Lang's TLC Pet Transport. We had originally been asked to take him back in early March when he was in Louisville, Kentucky. He had been dumped in a lady's yard, and though she liked him, her own dogs were aggressive towards him, and so she was going to take him to a local shelter. As the rescue group told us at the time, "shelters in KY offer little hope for a Beagle, let alone a blind senior." Unfortunately, we had to decline at the time because of space constraints — we hadn't had any adoptions since last fall and were holding the line on numbers, one of the most painful but necessary things we have to do. As luck would have it, Morgan at Atlanta Beagle Rescue — who has sent us numerous blind Beagles over the years — was able to take him in the interim. She named him Louie, for … yes, Louisville. It fits him!

So when space opened up here, thanks to our recent adoptions, we said, "Go ahead and send that boy up north!"

Morgan took him to an ophthalmologist in Atlanta, who determined Louie was blind from a combination of PRA (progressive retinal atrophy) and cataracts. Though completely blind, his eyes are comfortable and need no further medical attention.

Louie is adorably sweet, personable, loves attention, and gets along great with everyone. (Did I mention handsome?) It's funny, when I get the camera out, it's almost as if he knows because he starts posing like in that shot above … and in this next one:

But wait … it seems there was another dog in Gale's van who also arrived on Friday. Hmm. Well, I guess that one will have to wait until the next blog post!

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$1,000 Weekly Winner in the Shelter Challenge!

Somehow we entirely missed this, but we were the weekly winner for week 3 in the current round of the Shelter Challenge — and got the $1,000 prize! I picked up the mail at the post office yesterday and there was the check from the PetFinder Foundation (which is who actually makes the grants for the Shelter Challenge). Now that was a nice surprise! Then when I got home I looked at the local paper that was in our Post Office box, the Great Northwoods Journal, and there on the front page was a story headlined, "Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary wins $1,000 prize." Well, at least they knew! (The Animal Rescue Site sends out press releases to the local papers for shelters that win prizes.)

Anyway, a big "Thank You!" to everyone who's been so dedicated in voting for us every day in the contest! It really pays off for the animals here!

Our friends at the New Hampshire SPCA are no doubt happy we won the weekly prize again, because that means they'll be able to win the $1,000 state prize since we're no longer eligible for it. We are still in the running for the Grand Prize, though it looks like we are currently well behind the No. 1 and No. 2 groups.

—

The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th. 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.

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this current 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!
Spring/Summer Newsletter Online

May 5, 2011

I meant to mention this a week or so ago, but we have posted our spring/summer 2011 newsletter on the website as a PDF. It went out in the mail in mid-April to our donors, and as nonprofit bulk rate mailings go, it can take the Post Office up to three weeks to deliver them. Some people get them within a few days, others take much longer. It's never been clear to me why the Post Office has such variable delivery times.

Now, invevitably when we send out a print newsletter, we get suggestions to just do "online" newsletters, "save a tree," etc. That would be great, except we would lose most of our donations. The fact is that while more and more people are giving online, i.e., making credit card donations online, the print newsletter remains far and away the key communication piece that motivates people to give. We do send out a monthly email newsletter, but the actual giving response is very, very low compared to the print newsletter. This is true across the board for nonprofits in general. Our monthly email newsletters bring in a fraction of the gifts that our three print newsletters do.

One thing we don't do is direct mail, i.e., buy mailing lists of donors who've given to other animal welfare groups and send solicitations to them. You know, those envelopes with the animal photo on the cover with some kind of tagline that's supposed to get you to open the piece. Most people would be shocked to know how many of the animal welfare nonprofits (well, most big nonprofits) sell their lists of donors so they can make more money. Want to see how this works? Here's where you'd buy a list of donors to the ASPCA, the HSUS, PETA and North Shore Animal League.

This is "standard" nonprofit practice — it's not unique to animal welfare charities at all — but it just seems to us that there's a violation of trust with your donors to turn around and sell their names, addresses and giving history to a mailing list firm, just to make some additional, marginal revenue. At the very least, you should have your donor's permission to sell his or her name to someone else. Which, of course, isn't going to happen, and thus why the typical donor isn't asked for permission.

We only send our print newsletter to people who've made a donation or who've asked to receive it. This keeps us much smaller in terms of donors than we would otherwise have been, and makes us rely on media coverage, word of mouth, web searches and other "free" ways for people to find out about us. But overall, we're much more comfortable doing it this way.

—

In the spring/summer newsletter, you'll see a P.S. at the bottom of our letter on page 2, mentioning that we are changing our name to Rolling Dog Farm. Yes, indeed. After living here for a year now, we realized that being a "ranch" just doesn't work in New England — we get funny looks when we say "Rolling Dog Ranch," and everyone calls us a farm anyway. In fact, any property with acreage is a "farm" in this part of the country. We know some people will want us to stick with our heritage, but the name change is as much about the future as it is the present or the past. Five years from now, people will really wonder why we’re called a ranch, since the move from Montana and our beginnings on the Ovando ranch will have receded into distant memory. So this was as much about shaping our future identity as a sanctuary based in New England and acknowledging it in our name. We will be rolling out an updated website with the new name in a couple of weeks, and making other changes as we go. It will be gradual, so don't expect everything to be changed all at once.

—

The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th. 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.

Because of your votes, we won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the Shelter Challenge that ended in March. 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!
Back In The Hole I Go

May 3, 2011

Last August, I mentioned that the dogs were all finding their favorite spots at the new location here in Lancaster, and that blind Dusty had discovered a hole under the fir tree in the front yard to use as his personal den. Well, he waited all spring to get back in his hole. First, the snow wouldn't melt. Then it melted, but the hole was filled with water. He'd patiently lie on the ground under the tree, a few feet from his hole, waiting for it to dry out so he could start denning again. Finally, it was time, and a week or so ago Dusty was back in his hole. I took this shot the other evening. He couldn't be happier. Just as he did last year, he spends all day there, not coming out until we call him into the house. Actually, I think he could be happier if we took the backhoe and dug him a hole four feet underground. Now that, he would say, is a real den. (No, we're not going to.)

—

The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th. 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.

Because of your votes, we won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the Shelter Challenge that ended in March. 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!