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Warm Giraffe Neck

January 26, 2010

I posted an item last fall about blind Bo's ability to grow a giraffe-like neck when it's time for his dewormer. Well, Bo is one of those horses who doesn't stay warm easily, and that includes his rather extensive neck. (It doesn't look as long in this photo because he's turned his head towards us.) In fact, once the temperature starts getting down around 40° (4° C), he'll begin shivering. Fortunately, someone had donated a thick, comfy winter blanket with a neck warmer a few years ago — and it happened to fit Bo perfectly. He looks a bit odd wearing it — Alayne says it kind of reminds her of the gear that knights in the Middle Ages put on their horses — but he's one happy and toasty warm boy in this outfit. There are some hoods you can use as well for complete nose-to-tail (literally) blanketing, but so far Bo does great with the neck gaiter and blanket combo.

I said to Bo, "No disrespect, but you just don't look like the warrior steed type." To which Bo replied, "Well, you don't exactly look like a knight in shining armor yourself." Ouch.

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Help Otis Win $10,000 For The Ranch

Amy S. in Minnesota has entered her deaf and mostly blind dog Otis in Bissell's Most Valuable Pet 2010 Photo Contest — and if Otis wins, the Grand Prize would be a $10,000 donation to the Rolling Dog Ranch! Voting in the current round of this online contest ends on Thursday, January 28th. You do have to login to vote, but it's a very simple and fast little form to register. Otis needs 1,000 votes to advance to the next stage.

Please vote for Otis here.

This contest is limited to residents of the U.S. — sorry to our international friends!

Thank you, Amy!

(Note: If you have any problems or questions about the voting on the Bissell site, we are unable to help. Please just consult the "Details" tab on that site for more info and FAQs.)

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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!
I Wonder What’s Going To Happen Next

January 26, 2010

Yes, this is a bit of a problem. That's the cat house roof with a thick, heavy sheet of snow and ice slowly sliding off and coming down on the cats' outdoor enclosure — and in the process, it's taking down the fencing material we had stretched across the top to keep The Resident Escape Artist, blind Herbie, from getting out.

After seeing this, I called up our maintenance manager, a Mr. Smith, and asked him what he was going to do about it. "Absolutely nothing, sir," he said. "I'm going to let nature take its course."

I mulled that over and came to agree. That stuff is too heavy and icy to knock loose so it can fall through the fencing — it's compacted like a glacier — so we may just have to wait for spring to re-hang the top of the enclosure. In the meantime, the cats don't seem to mind — they don't plan on venturing outside until late April anyway!

—

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!
Snow. Yum.

January 23, 2010

It turns out that blind Dusty isn't the only dog who likes to eat snow first thing in the morning. Alayne noticed that wobbly blind Briggs likes to do the same thing when there's fresh snow on the ground. She'll let him out of the cottage in the morning and he'll wobble off to go pee, then come back and start licking at a patch of new snow. For a boy from Georgia, it must be a new taste sensation of some sort.

—

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!
I Could Use A Hand, Please

January 21, 2010

This is blind and three-legged Helen, who ventured off yesterday morning in the yard and got stuck in snow that was too deep for her. This has never been a problem for her in the past, but she's really getting up there in age now and she's developed hip dysplasia in her remaining rear leg — and that makes maneuvering in deep snow a real challenge. This is the first winter she's had this problem, and we think she's finally beginning to figure out she isn't the athletic girl she once was … but she's still getting herself in a pickle every now and then.

And rather than struggle and flounder around in the snow and wear herself out, she patiently stands there and waits for us to notice she's stuck. Whenever we let her outside, we keep an eye out in case this happens and she needs a human tow-truck to come along. So we know, when we see her standing motionless, that she's ready for us to come and get her unstuck. This is what she looked like yesterday when she heard Alayne coming for her:

We hope that before this winter is over, she'll learn not to follow her nose into the deep snow but stay close to the house!

—

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!
One-Man Open Sleigh

January 20, 2010

Our first-thing-in-the-morning chore every day is scooping the poop in the dog yards after we let the bossy little dears out to do their business. We used to put the, um, "material" in trash cans and then haul it once a week to the compost yard in the Kubota utility vehicle. With the snow and ice we inevitably pick up along with frozen poop this time of year, those trash cans can get pretty heavy very quickly. And if we miss a week, they become very heavy. So Alayne started using a child's sleigh to haul her collection to the compost yard every day, rather than stockpiling it for a weekly move.

It took me a while to catch on (why are men always so slow to realize that women are smarter than they are?), but I finally realized she was on to something with this new transportation approach … and I adopted the same practice. So now I put my morning collection from the Widget's House yards in a bucket, load it on the sleigh, and pull it down to our house where the other dog cottages are … then Alayne adds her collection to the sleigh, and off we go to the compost yard. She got this photo of me pulling the sleigh down the drive in the ice-fog this morning. Low-tech but very effective!

—

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!
Wobble And Roll

January 19, 2010

The other evening I heard all this rolling back and forth outside my office door, and turned around at my desk to see blind and wobbly Briggs just having the time of his life. He had woken from a nap and felt so good he just wanted to roll around on his back … and roll he did. This is one of the remarkable things about this boy — despite the double whammy of his wobbliness and his blindness, he is just one of the happiest, most joyful little characters we have.

—

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!
Hi. It’s Me.

January 18, 2010

I saw blind Cash goofing around this afternoon, sticking his head through the corral panels in various ways. When I came back with the camera, he apparently decided he didn't want to look goofy for the blog but young and handsome instead. So this was the shot I got. That's blind Hawk on the left, Cash's "life skills coach," who's made a lot of progress teaching our youngster the art of how to be a successful equine in the 21st century.

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The new contest started today, and yes, we are still eligible for the Grand Prize again. An organization can't win it twice in the same calendar year, which is why Best Friends wasn't able to compete for first place in the fall round last year. So we will be up against Best Friends in this new round … no illusions about who will win No. 1! … but we'd be thrilled to win one of the $3,000 grants for second, third or fourth place finishes.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state code, MT, for Montana, to bring up our listing and cast your vote. Remember, you can vote every day.

Thank you!
What, You’re Having Lunch Without Me?

January 17, 2010

I got this shot on Saturday, when I looked over from the dining table and saw Daisy staring at us with this earnest expression … possibly bordering on dismay. She was in the living room and we were safely in the dining room, behind the "Barbarian's Gate" we put up last year to allow ourselves some meals without being pestered for handouts. Yes, we were having lunch and she was not. Hence the problem as far as she was concerned.

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Yes, it's starting all over again! The latest round of the Shelter Challenge begins Monday, January 18th. We just received last Wednesday the $20,000 check for the Grand Prize from the previous contest that ended in December — wow, what a treat that was to get! Looks like they have changed the prize amounts for this round … but plenty of money to help the animals!

Click here to vote starting on Monday.

Just like last time, enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state code, MT, for Montana, to bring up our listing.

Thank you!
Say, How Did Your Radiation Therapy Go?

January 14, 2010

I noticed our two radiation therapy patients, blind Callie and blind Gabe, lying on a cot together yesterday evening in the living room. As soon as I started taking photos, Callie sprang to life and gave me this funny nose-up-ears-out look. (Gabe's ears, on the other hand, are always up-and-out.) Both Callie and Gabe had spent weeks last year at Washington State University's teaching hospital for cancer treatment, Callie for a brain tumor and Gabe for a nasal tumor. I wondered if they had been trading stories about their time at WSU.

I had just mentioned to Alayne the day before that the hair on Gabe's face was really beginning to grow back. After his surgery and then radiation, he had lost all of his hair in that area, his skin pigmentation eventually turned black, and we worried for months that the hair wouldn't grow back. But all of a sudden, little hairs started growing around the edges of the radiation field … and then more and more, they began filling it in. You can still see the outlines on Gabe's face, but not too long ago, that was pretty much bald and black.

Because of the location of her tumor and how the radiation was directed at it, Callie never really lost any hair … though she did kind of lose her bearings for a while after the treatment. But fortunately, both dogs are doing just great now.
Frosty Pony

January 13, 2010

Alayne got this shot of a frosty blind Lena this morning having breakfast. I probably should have titled this post, "Leave Me Alone — I'm Eating," because that's kind of the expression she has on her face. (That's blind Nikki next to Lena.) The past few days we've had an ice fog that coats everything in frost, and then it stays that way until the sun finally burns through. For the horses, the frost gives them white eyelashes, the tips of their ears and the top of their mane, as you can see on Lena. (Click on photo for larger image.)

Here's what it looked like around Beauty's Barn this morning … the sun was trying to get through the fog but it would be another couple of hours before it succeeded :