Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Here's the sweet girl who arrived early on Sunday morning in the same transport that Snuggles left on … one Cocker in, one Cocker out!  This is Suzi, who came from a small foster-based rescue group in Michigan called Happy Homes Rescue.  Anne R., who runs the group, emailed me a few weeks ago to say:

"I rescued a blind, female Cocker Spaniel from a breeder in May 2010.  Suzi had juvenile cataracts as a puppy and at some point after that her pupils luxated. When I first saw Suzi, her eyes were bulging out of her head.  I rescued her and took her to a fabulous surgeon and had her eyes removed.  
 
Suzi is a beautiful dog and a very well behaved girl.  She is 5 years old and she has no other known medical conditions.  I have taken care of all of her veterinary needs.
 
I have been disappointed by the fact that since May, no one has had any interest, at all, in adopting her.  I've had her picture posted on petfinder.com and on our website. I haven't received any applications. When I have taken her to adoption events all that happens is that people want to have us take her out of the crate so they can see her, but they have no interest in adopting her.  They just want to look at the dog without eyes.  I get very upset because they treat her like she is some kind of freak show." 

Well, that last line really got to me.  I stopped reading her email for a second to let that sink in.  I knew exactly what Anne meant.  People can react very oddly to the sight of an animal with no eyes in his or her head; being blind is one thing, having no eyes is something else.

Anne continued, "To be honest, I've never had any problems adopting out any dogs and I never imagined that I would be in this position with Suzi. She's a beautiful, well behaved dog and I really thought she would get adopted."

I showed Anne's email to Alayne and she felt the same way I did:  Yes, we'll bring her out.

If Anne was the first angel in Suzi's life, a second one arrived shortly thereafter:  Lisa S., a friend of Anne's, graciously made a gift that paid for Suzi's transport to New Hampshire.

So on Sunday morning, we swapped Cockers … off to Colorado and a wonderful new home went the one-eyed, energetic, brash and bold Miss Snuggles, and here came blind, quiet and timid Miss Suzi.  In terms of personality, they are polar opposites.  Every morning Snuggles greeted the new day with a "Hello world, what are you going to do for me today?" kind of attitude.  Suzi is so shy and meek you hardly realize she's here. 

But somebody did realize she was here.  Blind Briggs, the original ladies' man from Georgia, was thrilled with the new girl in town.  That last new girl, Snuggles, was a bit too pushy for him — a number of times she even tried to hump the poor wobbly guy (and Fuzzy, too!) — with predictable effects:  "Hey, what are you doing?!?," followed by the sound of Beagle crashing to the ground.  Briggs likes to lead on the dance floor, so to speak, so Snuggles was not his type at all.

Suzi's demure "oh, it's just me" nature is perfect for him.  Here he is, finally getting a chance to meet her:

Briggs:  "Say, come here often?" 

We keep telling him he needs to work on his pick-up lines.

Well, we may roll our eyes at his introductions, but it seemed the blind Beagle and blind Cocker have hit it off, because a short while later here was the scene:

Suzi, honey, you've come to the right place.

Anne and Lisa, thank you for rescuing this girl and helping her get to us!

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American Dog Magazine is holding its 1st Annual Humanitarian Awards poll and is asking print and online readers to vote for various organizations and individuals in several animal welfare categories.  We are included in the very first category called "Exemplary Animal Shelter" and also in the third category, "Rescue Organization Saving Dogs."  You can vote in the poll here.

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Still 2nd place!

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!

This is a very happy ending we've been keeping under wraps for a while — and today we're thrilled to report the news!  The day after I posted Snuggles' arrival on the blog, I received an email from Ellen M., a long-time supporter of the ranch who happens to be a veterinary internal medicine specialist in Colorado.  Ellen had lost her old Cocker a few months ago and wanted to know if she could adopt Snuggles! 

As you can imagine, we were thrilled at the idea of Ellen adopting Snuggles — wow.  That took us about a nano-second to say "Yes!"  So why the delay in announcing it?  Well, we wanted Gale Lang of TLC Pet Transport to take Snuggles out to Colorado for us, and the soonest she could get here was today.  Shortly before 8 this morning, Snuggles left for her new home in the Rockies.  (Seems like we keep sending animals back out west.  Hmm.)  Snuggles was with us for just under a month.

Ellen is in private practice now but was on the faculty of the Colorado State Unversity College of Veterinary Medicine for a decade, and two of her students then were … Brenda and Britt Culver, who had been our fabulous veterinary team in Helena for the past ten years!  Small world, huh?

As it turned out, Gale also brought us another disabled animal — just as cute and adorable as Snuggles.  But, we're going to keep that arrival under wraps until the next blog post for Wednesday!

Ellen, thank you so much for adopting this wonderful little girl!

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Still 2nd place!

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 was sitting in the living room Sunday night reading when I looked down to see this sight on the floor just in front of my chair.  That's blind and wobbly Briggs the Beagle with his face pressed under blind Madison's head.  Both were sleeping soundly.  When I saw this, the expression "cheek by jowl" came immediately to mind.  Then I thought, what an odd expression that actually is.  So I looked it up here and also noticed that Merriam-Webster says the first known use of the idiom was in 1577.

And that's not an optical illusion in the photo above.  Briggs really does have his entire face buried under Madison's head — this was the actual view from my chair:

It occurred to me that "snout by cheek" might be a more appropriate expression.  First known use of this idiom:  2010.

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Still 2nd place!

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!

First Helen, now Callie.

Well, we had hoped to have more time with Callie than this.  Just about 18 months after she developed a brain tumor and then had successful radiation treatment for it, we had to say goodbye to our plump little Dachshund yesterday.   

A couple of months ago Callie started having seizures again, but we had been able to keep them at bay with phenobarbitol and prednisone.  She had been doing so well on this protocol that this past weekend our biggest concern for her was taking an inventory of our phenobarbitol supply to make sure we could order more in time if we needed it. 

But on Tuesday morning when we got up, we found Callie was breathing hard; not gasping, but it took a lot of effort, and her sides were going in and out as she breathed.  So I drove her to our vet clinic in Whitefield that morning, and X-rays told us what was going on:  Callie was in congestive heart failure, and her chest had filled with fluid.  Our vet, Dr. Chris Plumley, also saw on the X-rays a very large mass in her abdomen that looked like the size of a golf ball — a new tumor.

Before Callie had her initial CT scan and then the MRI of her brain, our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, had done a complete ultrasound scan of her abdomen and other organs, and Callie otherwise had a clean bill of health.  (I always loved the photo of her in that blog post — that was quintessential Callie!)  So all of this has developed in the past year. 

When Chris showed me Callie's X-rays, I was floored to see just how enlarged her heart had become … and I could see all the fluid built up in her chest.  Chris pointed out how the volume had even pushed her trachea out of place.  Chris said that animals can be going along seemingly just fine with congestive heart failure until they reach a tipping point, and then all of a sudden you reach a crisis point.  I looked over at Callie in the cage behind us, head bobbing up and down and sides going in and out with every breath, and realized what this meant. 

Chris gave her an injection of Lasix to try and pull some of the fluid out so she could be more comfortable overnight, but we didn't have much time.  I knew we wanted at least one more day with her, so I bundled her up and brought her home.  I called Alayne on the way with the news so she could be prepared.

On Tuesday night after dinner, we sat in the living room by the woodstove while Alayne held Callie on her lap and caressed her.  Callie had always adored Alayne more than anything or anybody in the world, and the two of them had a very special bond.  Nothing could make Callie happier than to be held by Alayne.  The next most special thing for her was eating, and third was grooming other dogs. 

But Tuesday evening, Callie hadn't wanted to eat … and that was the first time we'd ever seen her refuse a meal.  Her breathing continued to be labored.

On Wednesday morning, before we headed outside to start the daily chores, we put Callie on her bed in front of the wood stove in the dog room.  That's when I took the photo above.  This would be her last morning.  Early in the afternoon, Alayne drove Callie back to the vet clinic and was holding her when our vet, Dr. Nancy Lefavour, helped her slip away peacefully.  Callie came to us when she was 9 years of age, and we'd had her just one month shy of 5 years.

I know this is a sad post, and not the way we want to end the week … yours or ours.  But this video I took of Callie back in Montana is how we will always remember her — pretending not to hear us when it was time to go out for the last potty trip of the night.  After 225,000 views on YouTube, Callie has made plenty of people smile and laugh over this:

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Still 2nd place!

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!

About 30 minutes after we let the dogs out on Saturday morning, I was walking down the hallway between the two wings and looked outside to see Spinner apparently trying on a new costume for Halloween.  I guess when you're pure white, the best disguise is to simply smear mud on yourself … but on both sides, perfectly matched:

Was this a "commando-on-a-night-mission" costume?  A coal miner? 

The two photos above don't really show just how dark or heavy her costume coloring was … here's a better indication:

Or, maybe since we had a skiff of snow overnight, she was concerned we might not see her in the white stuff and thought a little earth-tone make-up might help her stand out?

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Still 2nd place!

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!

A few days ago Daisy developed a swollen right ear, with fluid forming under the skin.  It looked like her ear had swallowed a small balloon.  So Alayne took her to our vet clinic in Whitefield, where they lanced it, put a drain in, and sewed up the incision.  When Alayne went back to pick her up, one of the clinic staff brought Daisy out and referred to her very stylish headwrap as a "babushka." 

Now, long-time blog readers may recall that many moons ago, when I was younger and more foolish, I had once mentioned in a blog post Alayne's habit of wrapping a scarf around her head when doing outside chores in winter and that I called her Mrs. Babushka because of this.

So when Alayne came home with Daisy and told me they had referred to Daisy's headwrap as a babushka, I asked, "Did you tell them that I call you Mrs. Babushka?"

She gave me the mildly annoyed/mildly amused look I always get when I call her that, then said, "No, I didn't say a word."  But, she added, "I did think it was pretty ironic!"

Of course, this would have been a better photo if I could have persuaded you-know-who to put on her own headscarf, but since she knew what I was going to be doing with the photo, that was not going to happen.  Oh, well.

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Still 2nd place!

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!

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First, Alayne and I wanted to thank everyone who posted such wonderful comments on the blog about losing dear Helen.  We appreciated your sentiments more than you can realize.  Thank you.

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On a cheerier note, here's an update on two of our happy endings — a good way to wrap up the week, don't you think?

Paul M. and Jennifer J., who adopted blind and deaf Gabe from us back in May, and then three-legged Ella last month, recently sent us these photos of their two special dogs. 

Soon after Ella arrived, Paul emailed to say, "As for Ella, her personality just continues to grow. Everyday she is doing something that makes us smile. She is the perfect combination of sweet, loving, and playful with just enough brat to keep us on our toes and make us smile! We have found that she has acquired a liking for the couch, and even more so the past two nights, our bed! She stared at the stairs for a long time, then one night she decided she wanted to be everywhere I was! She waited till all the lights went out, then in a few minutes I heard this strange thumping next to the bed. She snuck up to our room and was sitting next to the bed with her head up near mine, and the thumping was her tail on the carpet!"

Paul added, "As you stated before, Ella has the ability to change from a dog to a shoehorn in micro seconds! We think she has picked me, and anytime one of the other dogs gets near, she jumps up and shoehorns her way in between so that she can have all the attention! I guess what I am getting at is she has so much personality, and I have fallen hard for this girl. She is wonderful, and I take her everywhere with me. Both Ella and Gabe are perfect fits for our family, and we are thrilled to have them!"

Along with this next photo of Gabe wrestling with Paul, Paul wrote, "He loves to play, and he will take my arm in his mouth (never biting down) and just sit there with his nub going at a record pace! Very cute!":

Seeing a blind and deaf dog like Gabe joyfully wrestling with Paul is just another wonderful example of how these animals — even those with a double disability — can have a terrific quality of life … if they're just given a chance.  That's really all we want for them.

Notice who's in the background, keeping an eye on the situation to make sure she can shoehorn her way in the minute it changes from wrestling to petting?

Thank you, Paul and Jenny!

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Still 2nd place!

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!