Rolling Dog Farm Blog

You'd better get some Kleenex for this one.

The email subject line said: "Deaf/blind poodle pup in Sacramento has until 6pm tonight."  It was 5:16 p.m. Tuesday evening here in New Hampshire when it arrived in my inbox.  It was 2:16 p.m. on the West Coast.  The email came from a rescue coordinator for a Sacramento area shelter, and she wrote:  "…we have an approx. 4 month old poodle mix pup that came to us as a stray.  She is very thin and blind and deaf, per our veterinarians.  She is not a candidate for adoption here and rescues in California have not responded to our plea for her…. Please let me know if this is something you could do, no later than 6 pm (Pacific time) this evening."  Another sanctuary in California had recommended they contact us.

Alayne and I had just come in from afternoon chores and I'd gone up to the office to check on emails.  I read this one and asked Alayne to come upstairs to take a look.  The photo you see above is what came with the email.  We decided to say "yes," and given the time constraints, I emailed the shelter right back to say we'd take her.  They had wanted to find a foster for her, so I told them we could contact Ashley D., a wonderful lady who lives in the area, volunteers for another shelter there, and has sent us a number of disabled animals over the years.  (In December 2008, for example, Ashley had rescued Dexter from euthanasia and fostered him for a month while he recuperated from the emergency oral surgery he needed before we could fly him out to Montana.)

It turned out that the shelter staff knew Ashley, and the shelter vet had her number, so after a quick flurry of calls and emails, Ashley had graciously agreed to have them drop the puppy off at her house after work.

The shelter staff, including the shelter's vet, was delighted at how this little blind and deaf dog's fortunes had just changed in the space of an hour.  We received a number of emails from different people there that evening, thanking us and Ashley for stepping in so quickly.  In the course of all this, Alayne had decided to name the little girl Megan … Megan McDuff, to be precise, so I let Ashley and the shelter know that she now had a name.

At 11:33 p.m. our time, Ashley emailed an update on Megan and said "she is cuddled in bed to stay warm with me."

A few hours later, Megan was dead. 

Ashley was holding Megan in her arms when the end suddenly came.

Early on Wednesday morning, an email from Ashley popped into my inbox.  The subject line was simply "Megan."  I knew before I opened it that something had happened.  In her note telling me the sad news, Ashley wrote, "I'm so upset. She is just a baby and deserved so much more than this. I'm sorry that I was not able to save her."

I read Ashley's note in a state of shock.  Then I told Alayne, who was down in the kitchen.  She came running up the stairs to read it for herself.  We just sat there, staring at the email on the computer.  From a happy ending to a tragic one, just like that.  And we felt so awful for Ashley, too — to take in a dog and have her die in your bed the very night she arrived.

In my note back to Ashley yesterday morning, I said, "Thank you for giving her what was no doubt the most love she’s had in her short life.  We are so grateful to you for agreeing to take her in on such short notice and being with her on her last night.  She didn’t die alone and in a cage.  And she died having a name.  Thank you for being with her at the end."

We don't know why Megan died.  Ashley has asked the shelter's vet to do a necropsy to find out, and she dropped off Megan's body at the shelter on Wednesday morning. Whatever it was, this little girl had been through a lot in her brief four months of life.

Ashley had told us on Wednesday, "She was a sweetie, and as soon as she felt the warmth of a body, she crawled right into your lap." 

If she had to die so young, at least she was warm and cuddled and loved when her time came.  Sometimes that's all we can ask for.

I received these photos in the past 24 hours of three of our adoptees on the West Coast.  Jennifer M., who along with her husband Paul adopted Ella from us a couple of months ago, sent me that photo of their beautiful girl lounging on the couch.  This is a once-shy dog who clearly has no inhibitions now whatsoever!

Next is Charlie, who had come to us as a blind Beagle from Georgia and whose vision we were able to restore through surgery.  Julie S. and her husband Richard from Olympia, Washington, adopted Charlie from us just over a year ago:

The only thing wrong with that photo is you can't hear how loud he was snoring!

Finally, here's three-legged Molly, who was adopted this past August by Tia and Karl M. in Spokane, Washington:

There seems to be a distinct pattern to these images.  It's making me sleepy looking at them.

I'm going to take a blog break for the holidays and will resume posting the first week in January.  In the meantime, I thought I would leave you with these images for the Christmas season.  I took these two photos of blind Goldie and blind Widget a few minutes ago, sleeping in the chairs downstairs in the living room.  "'Twas the night before …" Well, okay, it was two nights before Christmas, but who's counting?

Alayne and I would like to thank all of you for your gifts that make it possible to provide this special place for animals like Goldie, Widget and their many disabled friends.  If you haven't already made a tax-deductible gift this year for the animals, we hope you'll consider doing so over the holidays.  It's quick and easy to do on our secure online donations page here.  We simply couldn't do this without donations from kind and compassionate people.  For 2010, our vet bills alone will be about $30,000 — and this was a pretty "quiet" year medically for us!

On behalf of all of us at the Rolling Dog Ranch, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

And on that note, here's the door to the dog wing:

Alayne got this shot of me carrying blind Fuzzy and blind Clyde out to the front yard first thing this morning.  A few of our more "vocal" guests spend the night in the recently built "Dog Wing Annex" on the second floor of the barn.  This group of guests include Miss Party Hearty herself, Widget, as well as Dexter … and the two fluff-balls I'm holding in that photo.  The only problem with the "let's-bring-'em-all-under-one-roof" model was the handful of dogs who prefer midnight revelry (defined by Merriam-Webster's as "noisy partying or merrymaking" — yes indeed) to quiet slumber.  For them, there is the 15' x 20' (4.5 m x 6 m) room in the barn, well insulated as much for noise as for heat.  

Fuzzy is also now known as Wally "Fuzzy" McDuff, along with his newly arrived cousin, Clyde McDuff. 

Speaking of Widget, Clyde tried to express his romantic intentions with her yesterday afternoon.  Let us just say it didn't go over too well.  Not well at all.  "Vocal" hardly begins to describe her reaction to his affections.  Clyde was, you could say, a rebuffed McDuff.

Finally, please note the artful color coodination between the two terriers, the jacket, and the man's beard.

This little tyke arrived shortly after 9 a.m. this morning from Louisiana.  Rebecca Y., who runs the Shreveport rescue group Becky's Bridge, took him in from another shelter in the state.  In her email to me a couple of weeks ago, she wrote, "Is there any chance of you taking a blind, senior yorkie?  He is coming to me today from a shelter about 1 1/2 hours away.  I am squeezing him in because I can't stand the thought of him being put down.  If you can't I understand, but I had to ask."  His name was Clyde. 

Gale Lang's TLC Pet Transport was booked up on their last trip before the holidays, so we arranged with We Move Pets, another ground pet transport company that we've used before as well, to pick up Clyde.  It was a brisk 16° (-8° C) when the driver, Bob, handed him to me in the bright morning sunshine.  Clyde was shivering a bit — fortunately he had a sweater on — but when we set him down on the ground, he went off and did his business.  And then he was very ready to go inside.  He seemed to say, "Okay, now where is that wood stove I heard about?"

Inside the house he was a bit nervous at first and trembled, so I sat in a chair and held him on my lap for a while so he could take in all the new sounds and smells.  After a few minutes of that, he started trying to climb down, so I picked him up and set him on the floor.  Off he went to explore!  Every dog he met — except one — he greeted happily, and his tiny bob of a tail would go up in the air and wag back and forth. 

The only wary greeting he had was with, believe it or not, Fuzzy — the only other intact male in the place.  (Fuzzy was positive for heartworms and his neutering is pending completion of treatment.)  Clyde has to be neutered, too, but we need to have him tested for heartworms first.  Fuzzy tips the scales at 12 pounds (5.4 kg) and Clyde at all of 7 pounds (3 kg), but the testosterone has them both convinced they are 120 pounds and 70 pounds, respectively.  So there was a bit of strutting going on this morning between the two of them when they first met.  Things settled down pretty quickly once the referees stepped in and threw some penalty flags.

Dexter, who is the chairman of our Welcome Committee, went over to give Clyde a special hello:

You can see just how tiny Clyde is compared to Dexter, who's a miniature Dachshund.  We don't have any other history on Clyde, but the vet in Shreveport who did his health certificate for us thought he was about 8 years old.  He is very skinny, has dental disease, and is blind from cataracts (though he might have had retinal or other issues before the cataracts developed).  Needless to say, he will have more vet appointments in his future!

As I write this, shortly before noon on Sunday, Clyde is snoozing on a dog bed in the living room, just a few feet from that woodstove he'd heard about.

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[Every time we write about transporting pets, we get the inevitable emails and blog comments asking if we know about Pilots 'n Paws and similar groups.  Yes, we do.  These volunteer pilot networks prefer to do transports that are 400 miles or less; beyond that, it usually requires multiple pilots and planes, and things get complicated.  A short trip like Snuggles had, coming from Buffalo to Lancaster, is ideal for these groups.  Cross-country trips are a different story.]

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*This Is The Last Day To Vote — Contest Ends At Midnight PST Sunday!*

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.

As of mid-day Sunday, we were still No. 2 behind Best Friends, but please vote today if you haven't already.  We need every vote we can get to make sure we hold that spot — and win $5,000 for the animals!

The Shelter Challenge winners will be announced Wednesday, December 22, so we'll await the official word before popping any champagne corks — but until then, thank you for all your votes in this round of the contest!

Dexter was in one of his "needy" moods yesterday (hey, anyone know a Dachshund who isn't needy?), and this translated into him taking every opportunity to snuggle next to blind Goldie — who was in one of her favorite spots, the laundry basket bed in the living room.  Dexter loves the laundry basket as much as she does, so when he's feeling particularly needy, the absolute best place to be is in the basket snuggled up tight with Goldie.  They spent most of yesterday, off and on, in that basket in one form or another.  They started off the day like this — I took the photo above shortly after breakfast — and they ended the day like this, in a photo I took late that evening:

Now hold on a minute, that Dachshund is not fat.  I have no idea why he looks so plump in the photo there.  He's needy, not fat!

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On The Homestretch — Contest Ends Sunday, December 19th!

$5,000 In Sight … But It's Still Too Close For Comfort … We Need Every Vote!

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge — the votes are adding up!  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.

It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Here's another set of pre-snow photos that Alayne took recently, these of wobbly Soba playing with a kong.  Soba was born with cerebellar hypoplasia, which makes her wobble and "dance" when she walks.  With this condition, the more an animal like Soba tries to concentrate on a fine motor skill-type task, i.e., trying to pick up an object with her mouth, the more her head will tremor.  As the article I just linked to on cerebellar hypoplasia says, these are known as "intention tremors."

It's hard to tell from that photo above, but her left paw is actually hovering over the kong.  (Click on photo for bigger image.)  She was batting at it, trying to bring it closer to her.  It worked:

Here she's looking inside, hoping we might have stuffed a treat inside (no such luck):

Then she's back to pawing at it and rolling it around:

Ultimately she decided it's time to give it a good chewing … but now she has to really focus on it, and this is when we're most likely to see the intention tremors set in.  Appearing at first almost like she's having a petit mal seizure, the tremors make it harder to grasp the object, but she will persist:

Until she gets it:

And that makes for a happy girl:

Another odd thing we've noticed in Soba but not all the cerebellar hypoplasia animals we've had over the years is this:  When we pick her up to carry her into the house, her body often goes rigid and her eyes dart back and forth in rapid nystagmus — but otherwise she's just fine.  When we set her down inside, she takes a few seconds to come out of it … whatever "it" is … and is then perfectly normal again.  Usually animals with this condition become limp and relaxed when you pick them up.  Not sure why Soba is different in that regard. 

(I thought I had mentioned this in an addendum to a blog post months ago but maybe not …  we lost Soba's sister Noodle last year.  She became increasingly compromised and finally lost her quality of life.  She just looked defeated, and we decided to let her go.  Soba, fortunately, has continued on much like before.)

One more thing that's odd about Soba:  She can move much faster backwards than forwards — and we've never figured out why!

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Final Week — Contest Ends Sunday, December 19th

$5,000 In Sight … But It's Still Too Close For Comfort … We Need Every Vote!

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge — the votes are adding up!  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.

It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

I thought you'd enjoy seeing these photos of Suzi in her new home with Marcia.  Beckie, Marcia's daughter, sent the photos to me and said, "Suzi is the sweetest girl, we all love her to pieces!"  In the one above, that's Marcia with Suzi and two of her Labs.  

In an email to me a couple of days after adopting Suzi, Marcia wrote, "She is absolutely wonderful.  My other dogs greeted her so gently, as if they knew she was special.  She is finding her way away around so quickly and has a good appetite, sleeps all night and chose the big dog bed.  One of my big labs curls up in the little cocker bed I bought for her.  She is very affectionate and she and I just love to cuddle.  She slept on my lap wrapped in a Christmas blanket all the way home.  It really was 'love at first sight.'"

Here is Suzi with two of Marcia's granddaughters:

I loved this next shot in particular:

Here's Suzi checking things out with one of her Lab friends:

This shot had an artistic flair to it:

In an email to me this morning, Marcia said, "I'm just lovin' Suzi and my crew of labs and we're all getting along fine. Thanks again for such a wonderful gift and blessing at the right time in my life."

Thank YOU, Marcia, for giving this special girl such a wonderful, loving home and a family of her own!

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Still 2nd place — but it's too close for comfort!  Contest ends December 19th!

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge — the votes are adding up!  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.

 It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!