Rolling Dog Farm Blog

It wasn't only Goldie who got to enjoy the new soft squeaky toys that Gayle sent.  We handed some out to the usual suspects for their enjoyment, too.  In the photo above, Bailey is doing what he always does with a new toy — he rolls and rolls, back and forth, right up against it.  (See how he greeted Mr. Caterpillar in the earlier post.)  So that's how he welcomed Mr. Koala.

Then it was down to the serious business of chewing on it:

There were no glad-to-meet-you flourishes with Dexter … he just got to work right away:

 
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Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for the ranch every
day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
Thanks
to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the
animals in the previous contest earlier this year.  Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the
$20,000 grand prize in the current contest!  Enter
"Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana,
and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote.  Please ask
your family and friends to vote, too.  Thank you!

Blind Goldie got a head start on Christmas when Gayle C. kindly sent the gang here two boxes of soft squeaky toys.  As we posted before, Goldie always knows when there are soft squeaky toys in a box, and she never hesitates to go ahead and open the box herself.  She does this either by chewing a hole in the side or top corner of the box, or figuring out where the tape along the seam is weakest and diving in at that point.  I got these photos this weekend, and you can see in the one above that Widget is waiting for Goldie to do her thing.

Once she retrieved the first toy, she had to wave it around for everyone to see (that most of the passers-by are blind doesn't really matter):

Here she's letting Bailey and Widget get a close look:

But enough of the show-off stuff, it was time to retreat to the laundry basket for a quiet moment to rip the squeaker out of the toy (please note rear-end hanging off of the basket):

Oh … the second box of toys is going to wait for Christmas!

—

Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for the ranch every
day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
Thanks
to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the
animals in the previous contest earlier this year.  Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the
$20,000 grand prize in the current contest!  Enter
"Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana,
and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote.  Please ask
your family and friends to vote, too.  Thank you!

Long-time blog readers may remember Bailey's fascination with and love for Mr. Caterpillar, a giant pink-and-red stuffed toy who has survived endless insults and injuries inflicted by the Dachshund contingent over the years.  As you can see, Mr. Caterpillar is still very much with us, though a bit worse for the wear and tear.  Bailey was thrilled when Jon and Stephanie K. from Kansas sent a new Mr. Caterpillar to the ranch recently, and Alayne took this photo of Bailey meeting him for the first time yesterday. 

When the meet-and-greet festivities were over, Bailey did what he usually does with a new toy — use it as a chin rest for a nap: 

What's with Dachshunds and chin rests, anyway?

—

Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for the ranch every
day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
Thanks
to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the
animals in the previous contest earlier this year.  Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the
$20,000 grand prize in the current contest!  Enter
"Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana,
and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote.  Please ask
your family and friends to vote, too.  Thank you!

Although blind Widget is certainly a princess, I'm not sure she would actually feel a pea underneath her in this collection of beds.  There's something about a stack of bedding that always attracts the dogs — comfort hounds they are — even if it takes quite a bit of effort for short-legged royalty like Widget to climb up on top of them.  I watched her do this and was quite impressed she managed to make it to the top without knocking any of them over.  I was tempted to slip a pea in there somewhere after the fact, but I decided that was probably cheating a little when it came to testing the princess and the pea theory.

—

Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for the ranch every
day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
Thanks
to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the
animals in the previous contest earlier this year.  Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the
$20,000 grand prize in the current contest!  Enter
"Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana,
and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote.  Please ask
your family and friends to vote, too.  Thank you!

Alayne got this shot yesterday of me taking out the sutures from Samantha's surgery site.  As I mentioned on her homecoming day blog post, the growth our vets removed did turn out to be benign, so we dodged a bullet on that one.  We're not always that lucky, so we were very relieved.  Although Sam was a wee bit nervous about me poking around with the scissors, they're actually a special veterinary type designed for suture removal — so it's even less likely she'd get jabbed with an inadvertent move on my part!

The tub in the background is for bathing dogs; you don't actually soak them in it like a regular bathtub, but use a shower-type hose spray to get them wet and rinse them off.  The water drains out through a hose in the base.

Samantha was just glad she was only having sutures removed and not getting a bath as well!

—

Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for the ranch every
day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
Thanks
to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the
animals in the previous contest earlier this year.  Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the
$20,000 grand prize in the current contest!  Enter
"Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana,
and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote.  Please ask
your family and friends to vote, too.  Thank you!

When I took the blind Poodle sisters, Molly and Priscilla, to the groomers at PetsMart a couple of weeks ago, the gals there not only gussied up our girls as they usually do, but this time they also tied little blue ribbons onto their ear muffs.  Now, we're not really into dogs-as-accessory-items, or dogs wearing accessory items, but I have to admit, the ribbons gave Molly and Priscilla a little extra je-ne-sais-quoi in the cute department.

The first question that came to my mind — being a practical sort — was exactly how long these ribbons would last.  Given that the girls are ranch Poodles and not New York 5th Avenue Poodles, if you know what I mean, I didn't give the ribbons much of a chance of surviving.  Well, as you can see from the photo I took this afternoon, Molly's ribbons so far have lasted exactly two weeks as of tomorrow.  As for Priscilla, her ribbons lasted through yesterday, almost making two weeks.  That was much longer than I expected.  I figured Molly and Priscilla's no-good hound dog boyfriend, Trooper, would have eaten both sets of ribbons within the first few days.

—

Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for the ranch every
day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
Thanks
to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the
animals in the previous contest earlier this year.  Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the
$20,000 grand prize in the current contest!  Enter
"Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana,
and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote.  Please ask
your family and friends to vote, too.  Thank you!

Yes, indeed, blind Helen's chemotherapy has been going very well.  So much so, in fact, that the latest radiographs we took revealed that the tumor in her lungs has significantly reduced in size.  This is not a "cure," but it is buying her time — and for that we are very grateful.  So far Helen has had four rounds of the IV-administered chemo drug adriamycin, given every three weeks, and she has tolerated it far better than we ever expected.  In fact, she's had no side effects at all.

Our oncologist at Washington State University veterinary teaching hospital, Dr. Janean Fidel, had recommended the four-dose protocol as the initial course of treatment to our vet in Helena, Dr. Jennifer Rockwell.  With that regimen completed, Jennifer consulted with Dr. Fidel last week on the next stage of Helen's treatment.  Dr. Fidel recommended now switching to a daily low-dose of a chemo drug called Lomustine, then rechecking Helen's bloodwork after a month.

The only catch was that for the specific dose Helen needed, we'd have to physically divide up a 10 mg "normal" size capsule of the drug into 2.7 mg daily doses (realistically, 2.5 mg) … and Jennifer didn't think we should be handling a chemotherapeutic agent every day like that, gloves or no gloves.  So she's having a compounding pharmacy make us a batch of capsules with the exact dose.  We'll start Helen on this new drug next week.

In the meantime, we're just as pleased as we can be with how she's responded to her chemotherapy.  Alayne took the photo of Helen this afternoon (yes, it's been snowing most of the day).  From looking at her, and watching her daily activities, you'd have no idea she's going through her second round of cancer.  

—

Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for the ranch every
day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
Thanks
to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the
animals in the previous contest.  Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the
$20,000 grand prize!  Enter
"Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana,
and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote.  Please ask
your family and friends to vote, too.  Thank you!

This is blind Mitch, a handsome Husky who came to us a year ago.  You haven't heard much about him since then because, to be quite honest, for a while there we weren't sure what we were going to do with him.  He arrived with an alpha personality and a dominant "don't mess with me" attitude, and as long as he got his way, he was sweet and playful.  But when he didn't get his way, we could have a problem on our hands.  

So we enrolled him in Camp Rolling Dog's "attitude adjustment program" — think Marine boot camp for wayward canines.  He had to learn quickly exactly who was the boss around here, and who was the pipsqueak, no-account, mush-for-brains Husky who had to ask permission before he could lift a leg on the nearest fencepost.

What we learned in working with him was that 99% of the time, he's a wonderful dog.  It's that other 1% we had to focus on.  As a result of his dominance issues, he is in a yard by himself during the day because he has the kind of disposition that is unpredictable with other dogs.  He likes to race around with them and play, but he plays rough — and if another dog growls to tell him "Mitch, back off, that's too much," he'll whip around and pounce on the other dog.  So, Mitch has to be in a dog yard by himself, though he has the other dogs all around him in the adjoining yards.

He's a highly strung alpha who had to learn to accept that his person is the real alpha — and for that to happen, his person needs to be a bossy, dominant alpha.  [Alayne says: "Well, guess who had no problem filling that role!"]  As a result of working with Mitch, we haven't had any problems with him in a long time … and now he shows a deferential and respectful attitude towards us.  But his social skills with other dogs remain a challenging "work-in-progress."

This just goes to show you that a disability like blindness doesn't prevent an animal's true personality from flourishing — but nor did his blindness contribute to, or worsen, his dominance issues.  It's just who he is.

I originally was going to title this post "Turbocharger," because that's how much energy he has — this boy is in constant motion:

I would give anything to have 10% of his energy level!

—

Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for the ranch every
day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
Thanks
to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the
animals in the previous contest.  Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the
$20,000 grand prize!  Enter
"Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana,
and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote.  Please ask
your family and friends to vote, too.  Thank you!