Rolling Dog Farm Blog

The director of Missoula Animal Control emailed me last week to ask if we could take an elderly, blind dog they had at the shelter.  Someone had seen a car pull up to the curb, the door open, and a tiny dog deposited on the sidewalk.  Then the car drove off.  Fortunately, the person who saw this happen called Animal Control, and they zoomed over to pick up the dog.

He's an itty bitty thing, weighing all of 6 pounds.  He's emaciated, with his bones sticking out all over his body.  And his hair was so matted the staff at Animal Control had to shave him down.  His mouth is awful, too — it's been a long time, if ever, since he's had any dental work done.  The shelter listed him as 12 years of age, which seems right to us.

Animal Control had him for a couple of weeks, and we've had him since last Tuesday evening, so he's had plenty of groceries recently, but this next shot will give you a better idea of how thin he still is:

You really can feel every bone in his body.  Literally.  Here's the top down view:

Every vertebrae in his spine sticks out.  His ribs feel like strings on a guitar.  I can only imagine what he looked like when Animal Control first found him.

Despite his condition, he is spunky and vocal and very bright.  In less than 24 hours he figured out where everything was.  At first I was calling him "Little Man," not being able to decide what to name him, but it finally came to me:  Teddy.

So if Teddy's been here since Tuesday, why did I wait until now to post him on the blog?  Well, Alayne's been on the road for the past several days, and I hadn't said a word to her about Teddy's arrival.  I wanted to see how long it would take her to notice a new minion in the pack.  You know, a "welcome home surprise."  (I'm allowed to make exactly two 'executive decisions' per year on my own … unless the first one goes badly.  In which case that's the only one I get for the year.)

When Alayne got home yesterday evening, there was the chorus of happy small dogs to greet her at the back door — Goldie, Daisy, Widget, Bailey, Dexter … and Teddy.  Alayne came through the door, got down to pet them, and it went like this:  "Hi, Goldie love!  Hi, Daisy!  Hey, Widgie!  Mister Bailey!  Hello, Dexter!  Oh, you guys, I'm so happy to see … [Pause] … well, hello there … who are you?" 

Elapsed time was about 7 seconds.

As she made her way through the throng to pet Teddy, she looked up at me and said, "Who's this?"

While I starting telling her Teddy's story, he was already making his way towards her, ears up, tail wagging.  Alayne began cooing over him.

[I could tell I was going to get an A+ for this particular executive decision.  Whew.  I've got one left!]

This little tyke moved right in from his first evening here.  He gets along great with everyone, seems pretty well house-trained, and is just a doll.  Teddy can be an insistent character, too, but only at meal time — he barks and barks when he knows I'm making his food.

I have a vet appointment for him in Helena on Tuesday — eye exam, blood work, dental, physical, etc.  He has a world-class set of cataracts, but I don't know if that's the primary cause of his blindness or secondary to something else.

Yesterday evening after dinner, Alayne and I were sitting in the living room catching up on things.  I was in the big wing-backed recliner when Teddy came over, stood up and put his front paws on the side of my chair.  I picked him up and put him on my lap, and within a few minutes, he was lying across my chest, sound asleep and as content as could be.

To all of you who support the ranch with your donations — well, that's why we can say 'yes' to a little blind guy like Teddy.  Thank you.

Teddy says, "You know, I've had a rough life but I think things are going to be just fine from now on!"

—

This is the last week for the contest — voting ends next Sunday, July 26th at midnight (PST).  Please enlist your family, friends and colleagues to join you in voting for the ranch as we count down to the finish line.  Remember, you can vote for us every day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.

With one week to go, we're still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Thanks for voting!

Wendy M., who adopted blind-and-deaf Baron and blind Stoney from us a year ago, just sent some new photos of her dynamic duo.  She took them on a family outing last weekend for a group camping adventure.  There was a dog costume show on Saturday morning with a new category called "Best Blind Dog."  Since there were only two present, the odds were pretty good that one of them was going to win … and it was Baron, wearing a butterfly costume.

Stoney was dressed up as Supergirl:

Finally, Wendy sent this entry for our "big dogs in little spaces" collection … Stoney trying to squeeeeeze into Wendy's chair:

Wendy said, "She insists on sitting as close to me as possible … even if that means she's really uncomfortable!"

—

In my brief post yesterday on Twitter, I said you'd need to sign up with Twitter to view our page.  Egads, I was mistaken.  Somehow I recalled being prompted to sign up before I could view someone else's Twitter page.  But Kate commented on that post:  "Steve — People
don't have to sign up to follow you. They can either go to the web page
and read what you are saying or they can sign up with using a news
reader (RSS).  If someone wants to message you through Twitter, they do have to sign up."

She's right.  Sorry to have misled you on that subject!

—

We're on the final stretch — voting ends Sunday, July 26th — so
please keeping voting for us every day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Thanks for voting!

I've posted before about the frequent rainbows we get out here, but this is something else we see quite a bit:  double rainbows.  I got this shot the other evening when I was over at Widget's House putting the dogs up.  Beautiful, isn't it?

We've had a few days of cool, wet weather — we desperately needed the moisture — but the temperature is climbing again and we're forecast to be 94° (34° C) on Saturday.  Not what we need at all.  So this photo is a nice reminder of the weather we just had … and wishing it will return soon!

—

I held out as long as I could, but … we're now on Twitter.  I started "tweeting" on Sunday to get a feel for it.  I have no idea what I'm going to tweet about every day, so read at your own peril!  You can find our Twitter page here.

—

We're on the final stretch — voting ends Sunday, July 26th — so
please keeping voting for us every day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Thanks for voting!

I saw blind Molly standing on the gravel pad outside Widget's House the other evening and noticed how the entire scene seemed to be a study in gray.  Except, of course, for that pesky tuft of green grass that's managed to come up through the gravel.  Well, and the part of Molly that's white. 

—

We're on the final stretch — voting ends Sunday, July 26th — so
please keeping voting for us every day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Thanks for voting!

I got this shot yesterday of blind Madison in the RTV when I took her with me to do some pasture chores.  She loves going for a ride in this vehicle!  I took her with me one day a few weeks ago, and that got her hooked.  Now, whenever she hears me driving by Widget's House, she runs to the gate and then races back and forth along the fence, trying to get my attention — "Hey, over here!  Take me with you!"  So I stopped Sunday afternoon, picked her up and plopped her on the seat, and headed off again. 

Madison sits up like this while I'm driving (I hold on to her collar with one hand), and I can see her sniffing the air and her nose twitching at different smells.  If you didn't know she was blind, you'd think she was looking around as we drove. 

When I got out to the pasture to do some fence work, I lifted her out, put her on the ground, and hooked her up to the vehicle so she'd have some shade.  She quietly laid down on the grass and stayed there until I finished, then I drove her back to Widget's House.  Her tail was wagging as I led her through the gate, and I could tell she was quite happy with her little drive across the ranch.

—-

We're on the final stretch — voting ends Sunday, July 26th — so
please keeping voting for us every day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Thanks for voting!

After years of washing 40 dog food bowls by hand every day — about 20 at our house and 20 at Widget's House — we finally got smart and realized it would be far more efficient in terms of labor and energy usage to install dishwashers in both buildings.  We hadn't put one in our own kitchen because of a lack of storage space, but when we redid the kitchen cabinets recently we added some more storage, which freed up enough room for a dishwasher.  So now we have dishwashers in each location.  My, what a difference.  This was one of those slap-yourself-on-the-forehead "why didn't we do this 9 years ago?!" moments.

Anyway, moving on … even though we installed virtually identical dishwashers — the one in our house has a 'quiet mode' the other unit doesn't have, but it's essentially the same machine — the dishwasher in our kitchen sometimes doesn't do as good a job of washing the dog dishes as the one in Widget's House.  We'll pull the dishes out and occasionally find small flecks of dog food on them. 

The answer to this problem was bringing in a dishwasher of another sort — Dexter.  When he first arrived back in January, Dexter was a little too eager to start cleaning the other dogs' food bowls before they were done eating.  "Here, let me help clean that up for you…"  We had to teach him appropriate table manners in a pack environment, which he's learned well. 

So we decided to put Dexter's penchant for cleaning bowls to work by letting him do the 'pre-wash' for us.  As the dogs finish eating, one by one, we'll pick up their bowls and bring them into the kitchen, then set them on the floor for Dexter.  He's quick, thorough and determined to leave no fleck behind.  By the time he's done, they're spotless … and ready for the dishwasher.

"Dear Maytag:

If only your dishwasher was as good as our Dachshund…."

—-

We're on the final stretch — voting ends Sunday, July 26th — so
please keeping voting for us every day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Thanks for voting!

If the Merriam-Webster Dictionary's definition of the expression hangdog is "sad, dejected," we've got the poster child for it.  This is blind Moose, who can give us the saddest, most dejected look imaginable with that big, sweet face of his.  And yet, he is one of the happiest dogs we've ever known!

Even with the look you see in this photo I took yesterday afternoon, his tail was happily thumping away on the step.  We've begun to wonder whether he didn't learn a long time ago that appearing this way was guaranteed to get him an extra load of attention and petting, in which case — clever boy!  Our alternate theory is that his head is just so big and massive that he's found it's just easier to let it droop down rather than hold it up.  But when it's time for dinner, that head is high in the air and we've got 100 pounds of bouncing, jumping, whirling Labrador on our hands!

—

We're on the final stretch — voting ends Sunday, July 26th — so
please keeping voting for us every day in The Animal Rescue
Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Thanks for voting!

I saw blind Callie grooming Dexter in the kitchen — yes, in the exact same spot that Daisy and Dexter were in for yesterday's post — and got this photo.  I don't know if Callie started grooming him and that prompted Dexter to begin grooming himself, or vice versa.  A number of people have been asking in their blog comments how Callie was doing, so here you go!  We were very pleased to see Callie doing this because she has really not been herself in recent weeks, and it's been rare to see her grooming her various clients.  The phenobarbital has really knocked her for a loop.  So we've been adjusting the dosage to try and find that right balance between a therapeutic level (i.e., where it's effective) and not having her so doped up she's checked out.  Her circling from the inner ear problem has diminished a lot, and she acts "lost" much less.

But to be honest, she still is far from her original pre-tumor self — but how much of that is due to the tumor and resulting radiation treatment, the inner ear rupture during her hospital stay at WSU, or her medications, we just don't know.  Suffice to say, when we see the "old" Callie back in action like this, we're very happy!

—

We're on the final stretch — voting ends Sunday, July 26th — so please keeping voting for us every day in The Animal Rescue Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Thanks for voting!

We recently put in new kitchen cabinets, and as anyone who has done this knows, there is a wide array of finishes to choose from — oak, maple, hickory, birch, cherry, etc.  In our case, however, as you can see from this photo, we used a different color palette to choose from, called Dachshund Coordinates.  We were fortunate to have as many available choices as traditional wood cabinet selections — the colors included Bailey, Callie, Dexter, Belvie, Daisy, etc., all with matching trim.  Some of the differences between them were subtle, others not, but in the end … well, it was hard to choose, but we went with the Daisy.  We almost chose the Dexter, but ultimately we decided it was just a bit too dark for kitchen cabinets.  A little too … cherry, perhaps.

—

Don't forget, you can vote every day for us in The Animal Rescue Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Please keep voting — thank you!

Alayne saw blind Austin digging a hole in the gravel so he could bury a soft chew toy shaped like a bone.  She went to get the camera, but as soon as he heard Alayne walk up near him, he pulled the toy bone out of the hole and took off.  She followed him around the yard, bone in his mouth, as he sought a new spot to hide the bone in.  (Apparently he thought Alayne might try to steal his bone, for reasons still unclear to us.) 

At one point, thinking he had thrown her off his trail, he stopped to bury the bone in the tall grass underneath a cottonwood sapling:

But then he heard Alayne again — "Dang, I just can't shake this woman!" — so he grabbed the bone and headed out across the yard again:

Finally — perhaps thinking that if he showed he didn't care about the bone any longer, maybe she wouldn't want it — he laid the bone down and wandered off nonchalantly.

Alayne picked it up and carefully put it back in the hole Austin had originally started digging for his bone when she first saw him:

That evening we held a refresher class in our popular "Burying Bones 101" course, with special emphasis on the first module — Choosing The Right Bone For The Job.

—

Don't forget, you can vote every day for us in The Animal Rescue Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
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.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3, and that means a $3,000 grant if we can hold that spot!  Please keep voting — thank you!