Rolling Dog Farm Blog

She gave it everything she had … and then she let us know she was ready to go.  Our beautiful blind Rottie, Helen, died yesterday afternoon.  I took the photo in the morning, knowing this would be her last day.  As always, she had her little tongue sticking out while she slept.  She had battled cancer for a long time, having lost a rear leg to it a few years ago and then getting stricken with a different kind of cancer last year.  Helen was currently on a second course of chemotherapy for her fibrosarcoma.  In recent months she had been slowing down — a function of her age, hip dysplasia in her remaining rear leg, and no doubt the toll taken by the cancer and chemo.  We don't really know how old she was, but we'd had her for eight years and she was no youngster when she first arrived.  We guessed she was by now at least 12, if not older.

On Saturday morning she didn't want to get up, so we let her lie there on her bed in the dog room.  She would drink but not eat, and by Saturday evening she would turn her nose away from food.  We knew what all this meant.  She was done and wanted to go.  We sat with her for quite a while Saturday night, loving her up.  On Sunday morning, she was still lying there peacefully, and again would drink but not eat that day.  We kept the woodstove going all weekend in the dog room so she could be toasty warm on her bed, and she seemed very restful.  But on Monday morning when we got up we noticed her breathing was suddenly heavier than normal, so I called our vet clinic in Whitefield and scheduled an appointment for euthanasia.  We had hoped she would be able to pass away here at home, but only as long as she wasn't in any discomfort.  Seeing the difference in her breathing changed that.

Alayne and I bundled her in fleece blankets and put her on the stretcher, then carried her out and slid the stretcher into the back seat of the truck.  By the time I got to the clinic, I could sense Helen was slipping away.  While I waited for our vet to come out to the truck, I sat in the back seat with her.  I realized she was going, right then and there, and started to cry.  (I just don't do this well.)  When our vet, Dr. Chris Plumley, and vet tech Kim C., got to the truck, Chris asked, "Is she still with us?" 

I looked at Helen, and said, "No, I think we're losing her."  Then she raised her head slightly, took her final breaths … and she was gone. 

Helen was one tough girl, and had overcome so much — blindness at an early age, then losing a leg, then fighting more cancer.  Along the way she had more lumps and bumps removed than any dog I think we've ever had except blind Goldie. 

At the ranch in Montana, she staked out Alayne's office as her den, and that's where she lived — morning, noon and night.  Alayne said yesterday, "She was the best officemate ever."  We had Helen in our fall 2010 print newsletter as one of our "ranch originals."

When we were first asked to take her, I will admit we were nervous.  We were, like many people who don't know any better, intimidated by Rottweilers at the time.  But we agreed to take her, and were always glad we did.  As we've said many times, Helen was a perfect ambassador for the breed.  On visitor days at the ranch, people would often freeze when they saw this big, 100 lb Rottie with her odd-looking eyes come around the corner.  Helen was always a kisser, and there was no one she didn't like to smooch with.  We'd laugh and say, "Don't worry, she's only going to lick you to death, so get prepared."  Our visitors would relax, and here would come blind Helen, lumbering over to them, tongue at the ready.  She helped change many minds that way.

Goodbye, Helen.  We will always love you.

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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've posted before about how Bailey likes to go cruising, despite the obvious difficulty he has with his hind legs and back.  (Because he's still very mobile and not in any pain — not to mention loving his independence — he would not like to be in, nor would he benefit from, a wheelchair.)  In Montana he was always scooting around the yard, checking things out, and doing so with more energy than you'd expect from a little old feller (we think he must be 14 at least). 

Oddly, once we moved to New Hampshire his cruising seemed to diminish, and he spent more time on the front porch than in gallivanting about the yard.  This fall, however, he's returned to his usual pastime with a venegeance — as if the cool days have reminded him that winter is approaching and he'd better get going while the going's still good.

Both Alayne and I noticed he had picked up the pace, and every evening he now leaves the porch and heads out towards the fir tree (with blind Dusty in his den at the base).  Alayne got these photos the other day.  His course is never a straight line, because there are so many things to capture one's interest along the way, like this:

(That's our wireless weather station in the photo.)

Then he heads behind the tree and comes around the other side: 

Before turning west and heading to the fenceline, where he finds something else interesting to sniff:

Now he's on the move again:

But then stops to ask Alayne, "Who are you looking at?"

And finally, on the home stretch back to the porch:

As long as Bailey still likes to go cruising, we know he's doing just fine!

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Still 2nd place as of Sunday — but it's close!

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!

The email subject line was "Very sweet Cocker in need!," and it came from Patty R. at the SPCA serving Erie County in western New York.  The Cocker's name was Snuggles, and she had a terrible case of glaucoma, bad dental disease, and nasty "Cocker ears."  She was 10 years old, and had been surrendered by her owner. 

That was a good thing, because the intraocular pressure (IOP) in Snuggles' right eye was a whopping 51 mmHg (milimeters of mercury, which is how the pressure is measured) — and she needed medical care right away to remove that blind and painful eye.  With all the bad glaucoma cases we have seen over the years, I can recall only one (blind Briggs the wobbly Beagle) with an IOP higher than that.  Humans with glaucoma report that it is like living with a permanent migraine headache, but dogs can have IOPs much higher than humans, which is why veterinary ophthalmologists believe that "For this reason, glaucoma in pets is usually much more painful than glaucoma in humans." (See this for excellent info on glaucoma in pets.)  Snuggles' head must have throbbed so much it felt like it was coming apart.

So last Monday, the SPCA's vet removed Snuggles' eye and did a thorough dental and ear cleaning.  (The shaved leg in the photo above is from the catheter for surgery.)  Meanwhile, Patty had arranged for volunteer pilots with Pilots 'n Paws to fly Snuggles out to us at the Mount Washington Regional Airport in Whitefield.  This is the kind of short haul that Pilots 'n Paws is designed for — generally, 400-mile trips or under.  On Tuesday night, I drove out to the airfield (um, when it is unstaffed and unlit at night and you can drive right up to the runway, it's more like an airfield than airport!) and waited for pilots Paul and Luke to arrive. 

I sat in the truck facing the runway, with only red lights at either end of the airstrip telling me I was in the right place.  No one else was around, and the entire place was pitch black except for those two red lights.  Suddenly, there was an eruption of blue and yellow lights along both sides of the runway — pilots can turn them on remotely from the aircraft on approach — and off to the west I saw the lights of a small plane descending.

When Paul and Luke pulled up to the truck, I could hear a small dog barking from inside the plane even before they had shut off the engine.  Paul let Snuggles out of the crate and I took her for a brief walk before putting her in the truck.  Then I drove the truck around to light up the fuel shed so Paul and Luke could find the hoses to refuel the plane — yes, it was that dark!  This is what that scene looked like:

Though Snuggles has elevated pressure in her remaining eye, she can still see with it — but the risk is very high that she will go blind from glaucoma in that eye in due course, too.  I will be taking her to see an ophthalmologist shortly for an eye exam and treatment plan. 

On Wednesday morning, Snuggles was a different dog than the one the SPCA had seen.  I emailed Patty that day to say, "I wanted to let you know that Snuggles is a complete character and one very happy girl … she’s running around the house, jumping up and down, barking, throwing herself on her back on a dog bed and rolling and rolling around and then barking as she rolls.  She follows us everywhere.  You can just tell she feels so much better now that the pain is gone.  Taking an eye out after runaway glaucoma is such an enormous relief for them.  It’s almost like she can’t believe the pain is gone."

Here are more photos that Alayne took this morning of her:

And:

Thanks to the compassionate people at the SPCA, and to the two wonderful pilots, Paul and Luke, Miss Snuggles has got a great new start in life!

Alayne says that between Fuzzy and Snuggles, we have "a serious case of cutesville going on!"

—

Still 2nd place as of Sunday — but just barely!

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!

On Tuesday one of our vets from the Whitefield Animal Hospital, Dr. Nancy Lefavour, came out to do the annual exams and vaccinations on all the dogs and cats.  In the large animal world, when a vet comes out to your place it's called a "farm call," but everyone seems to use this term whether you've got a ranch or a farm or are doing a bunch of small animals or a herd of horses.  Our small animal vet in Montana, Dr. Brenda Culver, made these annual visits as well, and our clinic in Whitefield is carrying on the practice. We were set up in the dog wing for it, and Alayne would bring in each dog while I would hold them for Nancy.

When she wasn't shuttling dogs, Alayne was taking some photos during a few of the exams.  In the one above, Nancy is checking out blind Samantha. 

Here is blind and deaf Spencer getting a vaccination:

In this next shot I'm showing Nancy blind and deaf Spinner's eyes … she has an extremely rare condition called restrictive strabismus, something most vets have never seen before:

It's an eye muscle disease, and at the time we got Spinner, there was only one study in the veterinary literature on it — of a potential surgical fix for the condition.  This was several years ago, and we tracked down one of the specialists who had participated in the study — a board-certified ophthalmologist and board-certified surgeon in San Diego, one of only two in the world then with the dual certifications.  He agreed to try the experimental surgery on Spinner, and I flew her down to San Diego.  Unfortunately, it didn't work, and she remains blind and deaf to this day, but she is still one happy girl.

Finally, here are Dexter and Widget outside the doctor's "office":

For a while it looked like they were comparing notes on what the doctor said about their respective conditions … "Say, what did the doctor say about you?"  As we've reported before, Dexter has a serious case of CSH, a progressive ailment otherwise known as Canine Selective Hearingitis, while Widget has something as rare as Spinner's — BTIDB Syndrome, or Beagle-Trapped-In-Dachshund-Body Syndrome.  Sadly, there is no known cure for either problem.

—

Still 2nd place as of Thursday — but just barely!

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!

Alayne got these shots Saturday evening right after we had finished with the afternoon chores.  That's blind Allie the Lab in the middle of a wrestling match with blind Austin the Beagle.  They had already gone at least one round by the time Alayne saw them and got the camera; there was a momentary pause and then this round began. 

The interesting thing, Alayne pointed out when she showed me these photos, is that Allie is not really very social.  She's perfectly happy to play with a kong by herself, throwing it around and then hunting it down, or doing the same with a tennis ball.  She doesn't usually hang out with the other animals, and isn't that playful.  Allie has on occasion roughhoused with other animals, but generally she's kind of a solo girl and seems to prefer it that way.  Yet Austin has this amazing ability to get just about every dog we have to play with him — and he seems to like taking on bigger dogs especially.  Yesterday's session with Allie was more proof of it.  And there's nothing we like more than to see two (or more!) of our disabled animals play with each other.

So here's the ensuing sequence of action shots:

Here I think Allie may be thinking about whether to grab the little punk by the neck and pin him to the ground:

But then, inexplicably, courtesy enters the scene and they bow to each other:

Followed immediately by the double-paw sock-'em to the muzzle:

When you're really small, especially compared to your opponent, it's best to try and stand as tall as you can:

But, as often happens in the blind vs. blind battles, they lose sight of each other (so to speak) and things momentarily break off:

Allie's now thinking, "Uh oh, where'd he go?":

Before the munchkin suddenly seems to come out of nowhere and lands at her feet again:

And then it's true paw-to-paw combat:

Before Austin tries one more of his left-hooks just as the bell rings:

And that was the Lab vs. Beagle match for Saturday, October 9th.

—

Still 2nd place as of Sunday!

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 was the scene yesterday morning, about 30 minutes after we let the dogs out.  At first they run around, do their business, sniff, and wander about … then, just like clockwork on these cool fall mornings, most of them eventually head for this dog house and pile up with and on top of each other.  Blind and wobbly Briggs the Beagle is lying down in the very back; you can sort of see his head below blind Willie, the other Beagle there on the left.  In front is Belvie the Dachshund; in the center is blind and deaf Spencer and behind him is his sister, blind and deaf Katie, who is busy grooming Libby, our non-disabled Shepherd mix.  (Katie has turned into quite the groomer.)  On the right is blind Austin the Beagle. 

As I stood by the back door to the dog wing taking these photos, the milling continued, and here you can see Austin decided to burrow into the pile:

We have a few other dogs in this particular yard — blind Allie the Lab, who wandered over to lie next to the shelter (she's not big on sharing her space), is one of them.  But the ones you see in the dog house are the "usual suspects."  They kind of remind us of the old fellas in small towns who meet every morning at the local cafe for coffee and conversation.  Thank heavens dogs don't drink coffee, or I could see Alayne and me having to head out every morning with a fresh pot to keep this crew happy.

—

Still 2nd place as of Thursday — and we won the $1,000 weekly winner grant for Week 2 — thank you!

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 took this photo of blind Molly at the front door a couple of days ago.  The screen was recently peeled back by Holly, one of our two non-disabled dogs who was just a bit impatient (apparently!) about waiting for us to come and let her in.  Or maybe she knew we were just about to replace the screen with the glass storm door anyway and decided to help expedite the project. 

In any case, Molly had walked up to the front door and wanted to come in, but she wasn't sure if she should come through the (unauthorized) opening on her own, or patiently — Holly, please note the example — wait for us to open it for her (otherwise known as "authorized entry"). Molly knew we were inside, so she just kept cocking her head back and forth, as if to say, "Can't you see me here?" … followed by … "You know, I could just come through this hole in the screen…."

Well, after taking the photo, I opened the door, praised her for being the nice, patient un-Holly, and let her in. 

Yes, I know there have been a lot of Poodle blogs recently, but when you have an every-other-day blog to do, you have to work with whatever material you have on hand!

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Still 2nd place as of Tuesday!

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!