Rolling Dog Farm Blog

One of the things we love seeing are two animals with totally different disabilities playing and roughhousing with each other as equals.  It just shows us how their innate desire to be happy and enjoy life triumphs over their handicaps.  Because of the mix of disabilities and sizes, we never quite know who's going to win any given event.  Is the 70-lb blind Lab going to prevail over the 50-lb wobbly Collie who can see? 

For example, a lunchtime ritual at the moment is blind Evelyn and wobbly Soba playing tug-of-war over a toy.  When we let them out of the cottages at lunch, Alayne often brings a long fleece "rope" with her … and that's enough to set them off.

In the photo at top, Evelyn has just managed to snatch it away from Soba.

This was the look Soba gave me a second later:

A few minutes earlier, the scene had looked like this:

And on occasion — and only in the interest of fair play — the referee needs to step in, reset the clock and start things going again:

You can tell Evelyn does not want to let go of that rope!

The first time I put this cone on blind Jake's head I thought it almost looked like an angel's halo.  Unfortunately, the reason he's now wearing a cone is because of decidedly unangelic behavior.  When Jake and Buddy arrived here back in November, they were terribly thin — and it took months for us to finally get weight on.  Now that both of them have filled out completely, they are in that "strutting their stuff" mode with the other dogs.  (Yes, they were neutered last year.)

Buddy has trouble getting along with other male dogs, and though he isn't what I would call aggressive, he's too much "in your face" with them.  So he is now with blind Patti during the day, and we've had to move her buddy, blind Cedar, to the main dog yard in front of Widget's House.  At first Buddy got along with Cedar, but then began pushing that easy-going boy around and we had to move him out. 

Jake, on the other hand, for some reason likes to get things started with just about anybody nearby — he isn't too choosy whether it's male or female.  It's not a constant problem, but in the past couple of weeks he's gotten into some spats with Trooper, blind Allie and others.

This isn't really a smart thing to do under any circumstance, but for a hound it's particularly stupid because you have these big, pendulous ears flapping around — and they are the first thing to get bitten.  Although it's hard to tell from this photo, he's got nice little wounds on both ears, and because he keeps pawing and scratching at them, they weren't able to respond to treatment.  Hence the cone. 

Any time you have the number of dogs we have — 40 — you inevitably have "issues" like what we're going through with Buddy and Jake.  Eventually we sort them out and find a solution or work-around.  It's no different than trying to manage 40 human relationships (actually, it's a lot easier!).  But my point here is that these animals still have their own individual personalities, and their disabilities don't keep them from expressing themselves in whatever way they choose.  Whether it's smart or stupid … good or bad.

But if you want to be a bad boy who does the occasionally stupid thing, you get to wear a cone on your head for a while.  So there.

Not to be outdone by Granny's concrete island-in-the-snow, here is our barn cat Rocky showing off his island.  This is the picnic table outside our welcome center, slowly beginning to emerge from the snow drifts.  I got the photo on Friday afternoon.

That's Lena's Barn in the background. You can see the 12-foot roof extension we put on it last year.  After 8 years of having to chip, dig and pry open those doors on the north side of the barn every winter, we finally had our contractors extend the roof to keep the snow and ice away from the doors.  We learned that lesson early — which is why, when we built Beauty's Barn in 2005, we had 12-foot roof overhangs placed above both the north and south doors.  No crowbars necessary to open those doors in the winter!

Rocky is just happy the picnic table is now clear of snow and ice for his afternoon sunning sessions.

Friday was a very sad day for us.  We had to say goodbye to Cindy, who had been with us since last May.  She was the best employee we've ever had at the ranch … by far.  Cindy could do everything — from fixing fence to grooming dogs.  She knew as much, and often more, about equipment and mechanical things than I did.  She was incredibly productive and efficient, and managed to get as much done in one day by herself as two "regular" people could.  Cindy has horses and a large pack of her own dogs (from a miniature Poodle to Irish Wolfhounds!), so she instinctively knew how to do the work.  And our animals just adored her.  She loved working here, and we loved having her.

Alas, her husband's current work situation had recently changed to seasonal employment and he had to find something permanent.  Cindy and her husband ended up finding an excellent opportunity managing a huge ranch near Dillon, Montana.  It's a ranch manager position for a working couple, and it's perfect for them.  

After our other employee, Amy, left last fall for family health reasons, we didn't replace her because of the economic downturn — we wanted to conserve as much cash as possible.  But because we are still quite concerned about the economy and the future impact on donations, Alayne and I have decided not to replace Cindy for the moment.  Although we're not looking forward to the additional work, we've done it all by ourselves before and can do it again if we need to.

To be honest, Cindy also spoiled us.  This is not an easy position to fill.  A lot of people have a very romantic idea of what working at an animal sanctuary is like — that it's all warm and fuzzy, that we spend a lot of time sitting around playing with the animals, and that it's kind of a "spiritual" experience.  No, not exactly.  So although we've done our best over the years to weed out potential candidates for our open positions by being brutally honest — we tell them, "Do you realize you may often start your work day at 8 a.m. on your hands and knees cleaning up poop in a dog crate?" and "Do you understand you will be outside feeding horses when it's 20 below zero?" — we still have struggled to find the right kind of person who truly understands the nature of the work, how hard it is, what the climate is like, and that this is a real job, not a "spiritual journey" at our expense.

Cindy understood all that, excelled at the work, and was the ideal employee in every sense.  She has now set the bar very, very high for anyone else who may follow.

But for now, it will just be Alayne and me again.  If we're not quite as fast to return phone calls or respond to emails — or if I miss a blog post every now and then — I hope you'll understand why!

So on Friday we had a very tearful goodbye with Cindy — all three of us were in tears as she drove off down the drive for the last time.  We'll miss you, Cindy!

(Yes, she did give me permission to use that photo of her.  I took it while we were cleaning Hawk's sheath.  Well, while I was cleaning his sheath.  That's why she was smiling.)

Good heavens, here we went almost an entire week without another sleeping Dachshund photo.  Fortunately, I remembered I had one "in the can," so to speak.  This is blind Callie, sleeping off her dinner the other evening.  She just loves laying upside down like this. 

Here's the top-down view:

It always makes us smile when we see her like this.  Total relaxation in one odd shape. 

Now, if you're new to the blog:  Yes, we know she's fat; diagnostic tests have ruled out medical causes; and yes, she is on a diet.  But after years of dieting, we have concluded that nature has decreed Callie's normal body condition to be one of certifiable plumpness.  And that she is.  If only we could swap some of her DNA for Evelyn's, we'd have both dogs just where we want them!

It was supposed to be 12 below zero (-24 C) last night.  When we got up this morning, it was really 18 below zero (-27 C).  Well, actually minus 18.7 — but who's counting?  And it was still 18 below when Alayne and I headed out for barn chores.

Fortunately, as you can see from our weather station readings, there was no wind … a welcome 0.0 on the wind meter.  But since we just had the change to Daylight Savings Time last Sunday, the sun is no longer up in the morning when we're out doing chores.  It's "light" but the sun hasn't risen over the mountain range to the east of us yet, so it still has the cold pre-dawn feel to it.  A little early morning sunshine goes a long way to making subzero temperatures more comfortable!

We hear spring is coming, but….

I've been trying to get this shot for weeks now, ever since I first saw our barn cat Joshua drinking from the snowmelt coming off the tractor-mounted snowblower.  We call Joshua the "hydrologist" because he loves drinking from running or dripping water … from whatever the source.  In Beauty's Barn, for instance, he would hop into the sink in the medical stall as soon as we turned off the faucet so he could catch the final drips of water with his tongue.

And then Joshua discovered, just recently, that there is a fine source of dripping water coming from the snowblower.  I had used the machine yesterday after another night of blowing snow, and today the remaining chunks of snow were starting to melt in the afternoon sun.  My previous attempts to photograph him doing this failed because he would hear me coming and then venture out to greet me.  Today he stayed focused on the dripping snowblower.

For the first time, this afternoon I also saw his buddy Rocky doing the same thing as I walked away after getting the shot of Joshua.  Having watched Joshua do this repeatedly, Rocky must have thought, "Hmm, he must know something I don't.  Apparently this is better than the heated water bowl inside the barn.  I'll try drinking from this thing, too!"

There's just about nothing harder to photograph than a black dog on white snow, but Alayne managed to get these shots of blind Evelyn rolling around in the white stuff.  Evelyn loves to roll, whether it's on grass, dirt, mud or … snow.  Anything will do just fine, thank you.

Back in late January I posted on the blog about Evelyn's recent weight loss problem.  Like Ellie May's, the diagnostics turned up nothing to explain it.  That left us with dramatically increasing her calorie load to almost 3,000 a day (normal would be about 1,500-2,000 calories), and that is making a difference.  I'm happy to report she is now gaining weight, so we are thrilled with this turn of events!  We're not sure what it is about her metabolism that now requires such a big increase, but it's working and we aren't messing with it.

As you can see, she's one happy girl:

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A big 'thank you' to everyone who posted such wonderful sentiments about losing little Ellie May.  We appreciate it so much!

Our little sun-worshipper, blind-and-deaf Granny (the elderly Jack Russell terrier formerly known as Duchess), managed to find the one spot in the yard the other day that didn't have any snow.  The "island" she found is actually the concrete access cover for our septic system.  Not only was it snow-free, but it was also the warmest spot because of the heat absorbed by the concrete lid.  Alayne saw her standing on it, soaking in the sun, and got these photos.  In that first shot above she almost looks like a lawn ornament, doesn't she?

This view will show you just how small her island is in the larger scheme of things:

Finally, here's a close-up of the sun lady:

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I have very sad news to report on our other elderly blind-and-deaf girl, my little minion Ellie May.  We had to say goodbye to her a week ago.  For the past year Ellie May had battled intestinal problems, and I had posted on the blog in January 2008 about the colonoscopy and other diagnostic tests we had done on her.  After ruling out cancer, growths in her intestine, and other problems, our internal medicine specialist in Missoula could not find an underlying cause.  For a while she improved and we got our hopes up, but then she began deteriorating again.  She struggled with weight loss and chronic bowel issues, and no dietary changes or medications made a difference.  Towards the end we think she was also developing doggie Alzheimer's, because she started wandering off and losing her bearings.  For a dog with an incredible nose who could smell me at 100 yards, to see her unaware of her surroundings was really sad.  She continued to waste away physically, and we finally had Dr. Bostwick put her to sleep.  Still puzzled over her medical problems, Dave did a necropsy (an autopsy) but even now could not find any sign of what caused her intestinal issues.  Bless her heart, we didn't have her long but she sure was a joy to have in our lives. 

I'm going to take a "blog break" this week and will resume posting on Sunday, March 8.  Until then, I hope you'll enjoy the Collie sisters' antics in the post below!