Rolling Dog Farm Blog

This is Stevie's little sister, Helen, who is also blind and deaf.  Cute, isn't she?  It's funny how these photos make both of them look bigger than they really are — she's the size of a miniature Dachshund, and just a tad bigger than the smallest dog at the ranch, Daisy.  She's in constant motion, and as I write this, all I hear in the background is her tiny feet zooming all over the house.  These two adore each other, and whenever they find each other after having been separated … no matter how briefly … their tails just start a-waggin'. 

Now, that doesn't mean Stevie isn't above helping himself to her food, a not-so-brotherly trait that Phyllis had warned us about.  He's not mean or snarly about it, far from it — it's the passive approach of gradually moving in, then using his body to slowly push her away and block her from the bowl.  So we feed them separately to make sure she gets everything she needs.  But when there's no food involved, Stevie's the doting, loving brother!

Things will be relatively quiet, and then all of a sudden we'll hear a lot of skittering and sliding around on the floor — it's the two of them, roughhousing and playing with each other and spinning in circles.

Eventually they do finally run out of steam and take a nap:

Here's a close-up:

Thanks to everyone for the terrific name suggestions!  We'll make a decision soon and let you know which names we go with. 

—

Please vote
for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge — and you can
vote every day!  We're currently in third place, putting us on track to
win $3,000 for the animals.  Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state
postal code,
MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last
year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand
Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for
a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Here's one of the two little tykes who arrived on Friday evening from New Orleans … blind-and-deaf Stevie. He and his sister Helen came from to us from Phyllis F., who runs a small, private rescue group that saved them from euthanasia in a local shelter about a year ago.  Since then, Phyllis has tried to find someone to adopt them, but despite posting on PetFinder and elsewhere, she had no luck placing them.  So she finally contacted us, hoping we could provide a home for them at the ranch.

We will post Helen on tomorrow's blog — hey, when you have a 5-day-a-week blog to write, you need to stretch out your material as much as you can! — but suffice to say, she's even cuter than he is.  And together, they are an absolutely adorable little pair.  Their disabilities are most likely the result of double-dapple breeding, i.e., two dapple Dachshunds being bred together.

But, like all of our animals who were born with disabilities, these two don't know anything different … they don't know that the world isn't dark or that they are at any kind of a disadvantage.  So they are as outgoing and inquisitive and fearless as any dog.  They have spent the weekend exploring every inch of the house, and quite a bit of time wandering the yard, too.  Stevie really zooms — he is incredibly fast, and loves getting around:

Both of them have figured out — already! — how to find the door to the house.

Since we already have a Helen and a Stevie here (as in, exasperated wife saying to oblivious husband, "What are ya, blind and deaf?!?"), we will be renaming them.  Because they are deaf, this won't matter to them but will reduce potential confusion for the humans at the ranch.  ("Did you put Helen out already?"  "Um, which Helen?")

So … if you'd like to suggest a pair of names for these two, please post your suggestions on the blog comments section.  

Here's Stevie with blind-and-deaf Spinner on the chair behind him (why the green throw is off that chair is a subject for another post this week):

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Our other new arrival, Timmy, is doing just great.  Ella, who had her leg amputated in Shreveport last week, is scheduled to arrive this Friday evening.  That will be our foursome from Louisiana!

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Ah, the tractor seat post.  I had no idea that this would generate as many comments as it did.  One person invoked the memory of her dead uncle, who was run over by a tractor that didn't stop when he got out of the seat, and warned us not to take chances.  Others suggested ways — some clever, some funny — to inactivate the seat sensor so I wouldn't have to hop up and down like a gopher.  Okay … there are some very simple ways to disable the sensor.  The reason we don't do this is because it is a safety feature and is now standard on tractors because of too many farm accidents like the one that claimed the life of that person's uncle.  And with other people using our tractors besides us — like volunteers and employees — there are liability reasons why it wouldn't make sense to disable that feature … even if we wanted to take the risk, which we don't.  So for the one day a week when I'm restocking all the corrals with hay, I'm perfectly happy to be a hopping gopher!

—

Please vote
for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge — and you can
vote every day!  We're currently in third place, putting us on track to
win $3,000 for the animals.  Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state
postal code,
MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last
year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand
Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for
a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Alayne got these great photos of blind Austin roughhousing with his Aunt Libby the other morning.  Libby is one of our original "Seattle six-pack" of dogs who moved out with us to the ranch back in 2000.  She is not disabled, but was the victim of two separate animal cruelty cases.

An animal control officer in the Olympic Peninsula in Washington had rescued her from near-death as a puppy, nursed her back to health at the shelter, and then they inadvertently adopted her out to someone else who turned around and abused her all over again.  When a different animal control officer discovered her the second time, tied to a tree and motionless, she was so far gone the officer figured the only thing he could do was take her straight to a vet clinic to be euthanized — but he stopped at the shelter on the way to pick up some paperwork.  The other animal control officer went out to the van to look at the dog and recognized, to her dismay, that this was the same dog she had rescued as a puppy several months earlier.  Naturally, she and her colleagues were horrified that they had adopted her out to another abuser.  (This person had no known history, and was later prosecuted.) 

At that point they decided to try and save Libby at all costs, and she spent weeks in the local vet clinic.  When Libby finally recovered, they decided not to adopt her out to just anyone.  The animal control officer had heard about us because we had adopted a couple of "unadoptable" special-needs dogs from a private shelter in the Olympic Peninsula, so she called us in Seattle and asked if we'd be willing to take Libby.  She's been with us ever since, and the only hardship she's endured since then is, well, being placed on a diet.

One thing I love about these photos is they show how a blind dog can enjoy roughhousing just as much as any dog, and even a little disabled guy like Austin will go up against a bigger, sighted dog like Libby.  As we like to say, it has everything to do with personality, nothing to do with disability.

At this point Libby is beginning to get worn down from the repeated assaults by the blind munchkin:

And she finally decides to flee, only to be pursued by Austin:

Libby says, "He may be blind but I'm old enough to be his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother!  Good grief, he never quits!"

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I spoke to the vet in Shreveport this morning and Ella is on the mend.  She lost more blood than the vet expected so they are going to keep her at the clinic for a few more days so can be monitored while she rebuilds her red blood cells.  Because Rebecca's group just had some more dogs come in, we're going to board Ella at the clinic until she's ready to fly out. 

—

Please vote
for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge — and you can
vote every day!  We're currently in third place, putting us on track to
win $3,000 for the animals.  Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state
postal code,
MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last
year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand
Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for
a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

This is Ella, the other disabled dog in Shreveport who was scheduled to fly out to us on Friday.  We've been working with Rebecca Y. from Animal Welfare, Inc., a rescue group in Shreveport that tries to save animals at risk in the local municipal shelter.  (Rebecca had been the one who sent us Timmy and, a few years ago, Trooper.)  Ella had just arrived earlier this week at the shelter, along with three puppies.  The shelter was not going put her up for adoption, given her disability, though they are going to make her puppies available for adoption. 

Well, the shelter staff told Rebecca on Tuesday afternoon that Ella's crippled front leg was sore, infected and appeared very painful.  This is a photo taken at the shelter on Monday:

Here's another view:

So when Rebecca called me late Tuesday with the news, we decided to pull Ella out of the shelter immediately and get her to a vet clinic in Shreveport.  Yesterday morning, Rebecca picked up Ella and took her to a local vet.  I gave the clinic our credit card information to pay for whatever care she needed.

And what she needs, the vet determined after examining her leg, is to have it amputated — and quickly.  The nub of her leg is infected and swollen, and has a raw, open wound.  In the photo at the top of this post, which Rebecca took at the vet clinic, you can see what the end of her leg looks like.  Here's a close-up of the open sore:

The vet thinks her leg is most likely a birth defect, born with a missing foot — though there appears to be some kind of paw pad or dew claw near the nub.  She's been dragging the stump on the ground and banging it around, and the chronic trauma to the end of the stump has allowed infection to take hold.  The vet did not want to operate on her leg until he brought the infection under control, so the surgery is now scheduled for Friday. 

I spoke to one of the clinic staff members today, and Ella is doing okay.  She's on pain medications and antibiotics, and is now comfortable.  She will stay in the hospital over the weekend, and then Rebecca will be taking her home to recuperate for a week or two before sending her on to us.

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One of our blog readers posted a comment about another volunteer air transport group, Animal Rescue Flights.  Yes, we know about them, too.  From their Web site:  "Long transports present special challenges.
Transports of over 500 miles require special planning and may require
ground transportation for intermediate stops. Many times, the best way
to transport an animal is by a combination of ground and air."  Again, there are reasons we use commercial airlines.  500 miles from Shreveport would have gotten Timmy to … Kansas.

—

Please vote for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge — and you can
vote every day!  We're currently in third place, putting us on track to win $3,000 for the animals.  Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code,
MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last
year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand
Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for
a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Here's the little guy we flew in yesterday evening from Louisiana.  Because of his size and his crippled leg, the rescue group in Shreveport who pulled him from the local shelter had named him Tiny Tim, or Timmy.  His flight arrived right on schedule, just about 7 p.m.  We had flown him on Delta from Shreveport to Atlanta to Minneapolis and on to Missoula. 

He weighs all of 30 pounds, if that, and seems to be a Shepherd mix of some sort but mostly "mix" … and I'm not sure where all those spots came from, either!  He's a sweet boy with plenty of energy.  We think he's probably only about a year old, maybe a bit more.

It's hard to tell what's wrong with his leg.  It reminds us of Jasper, who had a contracted biceps tendon.  But it seems different, too — less flexible, and it appears to get in his way.  Jasper at least could pull his leg up and out of the way to go sprinting off; Timmy can't seem to do that, and so it kind of hangs down and bangs on the ground as he walks or tries to run.  Thus I don't know if it's a birth defect or a condition caused by an injury of some sort.  Here's a close-up:

So we'll have a full work-up done at our vet clinic and make decisions on treatment then.

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It seems like every time we mention we flew an animal in on a commercial airline, someone always asks whether we know about the Pilots 'N Paws group.  Yes, we do.  But their focus is generally on shorter-haul transports.  From their Web site: "A good rule of thumb is approximately a 3 hour flight.  This equates to
approximately 400 miles.  Anything beyond that would have to be
coordinated with a second pilot and plane.  This is not impossible but
can be difficult due to varying weather conditions in different areas." 

We've found it's a lot easier, faster and more convenient to fly animals in commercially, given our location and the distances we're usually working with.  And it's cost-effective, too:  Timmy's airfare was only $320, and the whole trip was done in one quick day.

The airlines still seem to get a bad rap about flying pets, but we've been doing this for 10 years and have never had a bad experience.  In fact, we have been very impressed with the attention these animals get along the way.  For example, a Delta employee in Minneapolis had cleaned out Timmy's crate, carefully wrapped the soiled bedding in a plastic bag and taped it to the top of the crate, and gave him clean, fresh bedding for the final leg of his trip.  A few years ago we had flown another dog, Cody, through Minneapolis as well.  An airline employee who takes care of the animals in the pet cargo area had noticed some drops of blood in his crate; she pulled Cody out, examined him, couldn't find any wound, but called us to see if we wanted her to take him to a vet before sending him on.  How's that for personalized attention?

—

Please vote for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge — and you can
vote every day!  Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code,
MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last
year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand
Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for
a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!