Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Today our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor of Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital in Missoula, came out for the spring vaccinations … except the weather had suddenly turned wintry this morning.  In the photo I took this afternoon, Alayne is holding blind Lena while Erin gives Lena her shots.  We always get a lot of help from blind Cash (on the left) and blind Nikki, who are fascinated by the whole thing until it's their turn.

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A month ago, I posted a photo of one of the foxes who lives on the property.  To show you just how comfortable they are here, yesterday afternoon one came right up in front of our house, outside our living room window:

As if that's not comfortable enough, then she sat down for a bit:

(Notice what the weather looked like yesterday?)

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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.  We won
$1,000 in this online contest last year because of your help and would
like to win it again this year.  Thank you!

I received these photos yesterday evening from Jen K., the 4th-year vet student at WSU's veterinary teaching hospital who is blind Callie's day-to-day case manager while she's there.  Jen has been with Callie from when I first brought her, and kindly calls me with daily updates.  In a word, Callie is doing great!  She is getting her radiation dose every day and will for a full three weeks. 

In the photos Jen sent, you see radiation vet techs Betsy W. and Rob H.  They're the ones who actually administer the radiation.  Jen says the entire process takes only about 10 to 15 minutes, and the radiation itself happens in less than 5 minutes. 

Here is Betsy "masking" Callie with the anesthesia:

In this shot they're putting in her "bite block," which helps hold her head in the right position:

Next up, Betsy and Rob are positioning Callie under the linear accelerator, which is the machine that produces the radiation:

(Please, no comments on the rather broad posterior in that photo above.  I'm sure it was just the camera angle!)

Here's the straight-on view with the bite block (the writing on it says "Callie Smith, 4/14/09," which is the date she started her radiation):

Another view of Callie under the linear accelerator:

And finally, Betsy is holding Callie while she recovers from the anesthesia:

They're using a very light anesthesia, Jen says, and by the time they have Callie back to her cage down the hall, she is awake and alert and ready to eat!

Jen told me this past weekend that Callie had been pretty quiet the first week but that on Saturday, she started howling from her cage.  Jen thought that meant Callie really needed to go potty in a hurry, so she scooped her up and rushed her outside to the lawn … where Callie promptly turned herself upside down and rolled around in the grass on her back.  No, she didn't need to pee, she just wanted a good roll in the grass.  I told Jen, "Well, she's got you trained now!"

In her email last night with the photos, Jen wrote, "Also, Callie is doing fantastic today.  Currently, she is howling up a storm because she 'urgently' needs to go outside for a roll in the grass!"

On a more serious note, the radiation oncologist at WSU, Dr. Janean Fidel, had told me last week that without the radiation therapy, Callie would only have had months to live.  So THANK YOU again to everyone who made a gift for Callie's treatment!

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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.  We won
$1,000 in this online contest last year because of your help and would
like to win it again this year.  Thank you!

Here are some photos I got over the weekend of blind Molly and her wonderfully soft and fluffy "ear muffs."  At first I was just trying to take some stand-off photos of the "whole dog," but she kept following me everywhere and walking right up to me, so all I ended up with were close-ups.  And those amazing ear muffs are a distinguishing feature!

This is the all-important side view with the slightly wind-blown look:

(That's blind Samantha appearing to come out of Molly's hind-quarters.)

This is the "electrified" look, as if she just stepped on a live wire and the volts have nowhere to go except her ears:

And finally, the view from down below, taken on the porch of Widget's House:

Oh, wait, one more .. but this is more tongue than ears:

I had been trying to hold her back so I could get a very close straight-on shot from her nose to show you how narrow her face is — thin like a pencil! — but every time I'd put my hand up to position her head for the photo and keep her from advancing too close, out would come the tongue and she'd start licking my hand.  So I didn't get the shot I wanted, but look at that pink tongue!

Late last week we were wrapping up the photos for our next print newsletter.  Our friend Cindy J. was taking the photos of the two of us for the "ranch letter" we write for each issue.  Now, this is always the hardest photo to get because we include an animal in it.  Not only is it difficult enough getting the animal to look at the camera, you have to get both people looking "just right" at that one particular moment when the animal is deciding to cooperate.  And yes, cats are less likely to cooperate than dogs!

This is why it generally takes, oh, on average 60 to 80 shots to get the one I like.  (I'm fussy in the photo department.)  In this case, with Alayne and me and Tibby the cat, Cindy shot 73 photos before I finally said "I'm sure we've got something there."  For some reason I could hear an audible sigh of relief from Alayne, Cindy and Tibby, all at the same time.  (What's up with that?)

Once I uploaded all the photos to the Mac, I saw this image above where Tibby is definitely letting us know she'd rather be back in the cat house.  Actually, she was pretty good for most of the photo shoot, but occasionally she'd let us know she had other plans for her morning.  (Click on photo for larger version.)

We're combining the spring and summer newsletters into one edition to save money on printing and postage.  It should go to the printer later this week and be in the mail in early May.  This photo will not be the one you see in the newsletter!

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One note on yesterday's blog post:  Some folks thought they saw clouds in the water.  Nope, that was ice still to be melted.

—

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.  We won $1,000 in this online contest last year because of your help and would like to win it again this year.  Thank you!

With the snow melting rapidly in recent days, the ground is getting saturated … and in this one low spot in front of Widget's House, we now have a nice little lake.  The dogs love tracking right through it, and that's happy Cedar standing in the water.  I took these photos yesterday afternoon.  The fluff bob in the foreground is the tip of Priscilla's tail, with blind Dusty in the background.

A minute later, Cedar is out of the water, blind Samantha is in it, and Priscilla's flying ear puffs show you just how windy it was yesterday:

I took this photo today when I was in the cat house cleaning the litterboxes.  You think that would be a straightforward enough task, except for the fact that blind Herbie loves to climb up my legs when I'm doing this.  He swirls around my ankles, then stands on his hind legs and reaches up with his paws to … yes, pull himself up my pants and hopefully — this is the end goal — to eventually reach my shoulders.

"Excuse me," I say to him, "those are my legs, young man!"

This makes the essential task of cleaning litterboxes a wee bit difficult.  I have tried to shoo him away, fend him off, and otherwise discourage Herbie's affections in this department, but ultimately the only thing that works is to put him in one of the medical cages. 

Thus he sits there meowing from behind bars, protesting the injustice and indignity of it all, while I go about the business of cleaning.  The Herbie lock-up doesn't last long, he is soon freed, and I quickly skedaddle from the cat house before I end up going out the door dragging a cat holding onto my ankles.

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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.  The site has been very slow in the past couple of days so their servers may be overloaded on occasion, so you may need to keep trying.

I was over at Widget's House this morning, scooping after letting the dogs out, and noticed blind Brody standing on bare ground.  I thought, wow, it's been a long time coming.  Brody seemed to be enjoying the change.  Just in the past couple of days the last few inches of snow and crusty ice have finally melted away to reveal the brown grass and dirt underneath.  You can see we still have some ribbons of snow and ice in the yard, and out beyond, too.  But most of the front yard at Widget's House is now bare and, well, muddy from all the snowmelt.

Callie had her MRI this morning at WSU's veterinary teaching hospital, followed by a spinal tap for analysis of her cerebrospinal fluid.  I took this photo of Dr. Fidel, the oncologist, holding Callie after she had recovered from the anesthesia.  You can tell she is still pretty much out of it, bless her little heart.  The back of her neck was shaved for the spinal tap.

Before Dr. Fidel had brought Callie out so I could see her, Dr. Fred Wininger — a neurologist we know well from previous cases we've taken to WSU — showed me Callie's MRI images:

Dr. Wininger explained that based on the MRI, both he and Dr. Chen as neurologists and Dr. Fidel as an oncologist were all pretty confident that Callie did indeed have a menigioma tumor.  (For this and other reasons, it didn't make sense for her to participate in the clinical trial I had mentioned in yesterday's post.)  He said we could take one of two approaches:  a combination of surgery to physically excise the tumor and then radiation to ensure no regrowth, or radiation alone.  The surgery entailed higher risks because it would, in fact, be brain surgery, but it would give her probably 3 to 4 years — so the "returns" would be higher, too.  This was the "go all in" course.  It would also probably double the total cost.  The other option was to do the three-week course of radiation alone, which Dr. Fidel estimated would give Callie 2 to 3 years.

Given her age (we think about 12) and the prospect of putting her through brain surgery, and then looking at the extra benefit as being perhaps only an additional year of life when she would already be 14 or 15 … well, we didn't think that was worth it. 

So after sitting down and talking through this at length with Dr. Wininger and Dr. Fidel, we decided to pursue the radiation-only option.  That was the original game plan all along, but of course it depended on the MRI and any other additional findings, and we always want all the options put on the table so we can make a fully informed decision.

Thus Callie's first radiation treatment will be tomorrow, and I said goodbye to her this afternoon and made the 5-hour drive back to the ranch.  I know I left her in good hands:

Callie and I left the ranch early this morning and headed to Pullman, Washington, to see specialists at the WSU veterinary teaching hospital for her brain tumor.  In the photo above, veterinary oncologist Dr. Janean Fidel is listening to Callie's heart during the initial exam, along with 4th year vet student Jen K.  Dr. Fidel later brought in Dr. Annie Chen, a neurologist, for Callie's consultation.

Callie will have an MRI tomorrow morning, along with a spinal tap, to give Dr. Fidel and Dr. Chen a better idea of the precise location and size of the growth.  The MRI gives them a three-dimensional view, while the original CT scan is only two-dimensional, so the image will provide a lot more information about the nature of what's growing in her brain.  Dr. Fidel said that although it may well be a tumor, it could also be a non-infectious inflammation of some sort, or even an infectious bacteria causing the growth.

Depending on what we find out tomorrow, Callie may also be a candidate for a clinical trial that Dr. Chen is leading for a minimally invasive way to take a biopsy of brain tumors to get a definitive diagnosis.

Watching Callie mill around on the floor of the exam room, you'd never have any idea anything was wrong with her.  At one point she found the trash can under the sink and tried to knock it over to see if there was anything edible inside.  <sigh>  In the truck today, she did sleep on a Miss Piggy fleece blanket for the entire ride, which seemed appropriate.

I'll post an update tomorrow on Callie's second day at the teaching hospital.  Until then, another huge "thank you!" to everyone who made gifts for Callie's medical fund!

The Animal Rescue Site is holding another Shelter Challenge online contest with prizes worth $100,000.  Last year, because of your votes, we won the contest for the state of Montana and a $1,000 grant.  We need your help to do it again!

And remember, this is the contest where you can vote every day!  The voting began today and runs until July 26th.  All you have to do is 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.  The Shelter Challenge contest page is here.

Thank you for voting early and voting often!