As I walked over early this morning to let the dogs out of Widget's House, I looked up and saw the snowy top of Ovando Mountain bathed in bright pink from the sun that was just beginning to crest the ridge to the east of us. By the time I got back to our house and picked up the camera, most of the mountain was glowing in the sunrise. This is what it looked like.
The deadline to vote in this online contest is this Sunday, December 14th — and we are still the top-ranked shelter in Montana. If we hold that position until the end, the ranch will win $1,000 as the winner in our state. Here's the recap from our earlier post:
The Animal Rescue Site and PetFinder have launched an online contest
called the "$100,000 Shelter+ Challenge," with prizes as follows:
Grand Prize: One $25,000 grant
Runner Up: One $10,000 grant
State Winners: Fifty-four $1,000 state grants
Weekly Winners: Eleven $1,000 weekly grants
Voting began on September 29th and ends at midnight (PST) on December 14th, 2008.
You can vote every day, but "only" one vote per person per day. Our Canadian and other international friends can vote, too! Note that the state code for Montana is MT.
For more on the contest and to cast your vote for the sanctuary, click here.
I got these photos the other day of our new arrival, blind and elderly Samantha. We initially had her over with us at Kelly's Cottage next to our house, but she didn't like having all the small blind dogs running around underneath her and into her. After a couple of grumpy episodes, we realized she would do better at Widget's House.
Now, this has nothing to do with her blindness — there are lots of sighted dogs who don't like having munchkins swirling around underneath them!
And she has thrived at Widget's House, where most of our larger blind dogs live. I call her "Smilin' Sam" because she always seems to have a smile on her face, as you can see from these photos. Despite all that gray, she sure doesn't act like an old lady — she loves to cruise all around the one-acre front yard (0.4 hec) of Widget's House.
Here are some more photos I took the same day:
What a bright, beautiful face! From those clear-as-can-be eyes, you'd never know she was totally blind. Here's another shot:
And finally, I think I caught her at the beginning of a sneeze in this photo:
Maybe for that one we'll just call her "Sneezin' Sam."
A month ago, I posted an item on some groundbreaking veterinary research about blindness in standard Poodles. The research uncovered a type of blindness that may be unique to this particular breed called Early-Onset Photoreceptor Dystrophy. It begins as day blindness with reduced night vision,
but then progresses to total blindness within one year of age.
After learning about this from our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver at Montana Veterinary Specialists in Helena, I contacted one of the researchers, Dr. Kristina Narfstrom, to let her know about our blind Poodle sisters, Molly and Priscilla. Dr. Narfstrom is a Professor of Veterinary Ophthalmology at the University of Missouri, and I thought she might be interested in having additional subjects for the study, since the initial group numbered fewer than 10 dogs.
Dr. Narfstrom told me that they would be delighted to include Molly and Priscilla, and asked me to have our clinic send blood samples from the girls to the Animal Molecular Genetics Laboratory at the university. She wrote, "Actually, we suspect that there are many more of these congenitally visually impaired standard Poodles around and that we might not really know the real prevalence of the condition."
So I had scheduled a trip to Helena today for their blood draws and to get the studded snow tires put on the truck and horse trailer. Also along for the trip was blind Widget, who was getting her blood drawn for a recheck on her liver enzymes as a follow-up to her frightening xylitol episode over Thanksgiving.
In the photo at top vet tech Heather A. is pulling blood from Molly while vet tech Lynn M. holds her still. Here they are with Priscilla:
And not to be outdone, here's Widget getting her blood drawn:
Widget wasn't too sure why she was back in the vet clinic, and she protested that she had sworn off sugarless gum for the rest of her life. But then she started trying to lick Heather in the face, and it occurred to all of us that Widget seemed unusually interested in the gum Heather happened to be chewing. Hmm.
Cindy got this photo of blind Allie playing with blind Buddy, the new arrival, the other day. Buddy is a very sweet dog but we learned he's an alpha character — yet only with male dogs. (Yes, he's been neutered.) Thus he likes to challenge our males, although he is not at all aggressive. In other words, he doesn't really want to get into a fight, but only to get the others to acknowledge he's the alpha with some strutting, dominant behavior. (As we always tell people, disabilities do not change personalities!)
He's lucky we have a nice, easy-going group of dogs, but there's no sense in tempting fate or forcing the others to put up with this.
So we re-arranged things and now have him in a yard with two of our females, blind Allie and wobbly Allie, and he has developed quite a friendship with blind Allie. This is an interesting development because Allie hasn't been that playful with other dogs in a while — she's been more of a loner type who is more content to chew on her kongs all day long. But something about Buddy has brought out a different side in her, and now they roughhouse and romp when they're together:
I was over at Widget's House this evening feeding the dogs when it dawned on me that I hadn't blogged yet. Somehow I completely forgot. I usually post something on Sunday afternoon for the "Monday blog," but instead I had spent the afternoon doing accounting — and that shows you what accounting can do to your brain. In any case, I remembered I had some photos of the blind Poodle sisters I took last week, when they were sunning themselves on the porch at Widget's House.
We had recently taken them to the groomers, so they were looking much more like they belonged walking down Fifth Avenue in New York City than sniffing around sagebrush on a ranch in Montana. That's Priscilla on the left, and Molly on the right. The green fluff on the floor to the left and the brown fabric under Molly's cot are remnants of the West Paw beds that manage to get chewed up pretty well by this bunch.
And for the record, Widget does not live at Widget's House, as longtime blog readers probably realize. When we started raising the money to build Widget's House back in late 2003 and 2004, we had decided to name the building for Widget because she was such an inspiration and a great ambassador for disabled animals. And while she has never lived in Widget's House, she does think we should be charging rent for all those other dogs to live there, with the proceeds being used for her benefit (anything involving food).
For blind Callie's bed time story last night, we thought it would help motivate our plump girl to stay on her current (i.e., continual) diet to read her the article from the latest issue of Dog Fancy (see post below) titled "Your Easy Guide To A Lean, Fit Dog."
But it proved to be too much. Listening to all that stuff about dogs going hiking, chasing tennis balls and catching Frisbees just wore her out. The only thing in the article that appealed to her was the part about the dog riding happily in the cart behind the bicycle, while the human gets all the exercise pedaling. That, Callie believes, is what nature intended.
The January issue of Dog Fancy has a wonderful article on dog sanctuaries and features the ranch along with two others — ARF House in Texas and Best Friends in Utah. The January issue began arriving in mailboxes for subscribers the week before last, but is now finally out on newsstands. The article is titled, "All Dogs Welcome: Inside Sanctuaries That Give Dogs Hope."
When I first saw this issue at our vet clinic and opened it up, my initial reaction was that the article turned out to be only about the ranch — all the photos on the first two pages were ours! This is what those pages look like:
Clockwise from upper left, that's us with Patti, then Penny, Emmy Lou rolling, Widget (of course!) and Dusty.
Here's the next set of pages, with Soba and Noodle, Creighton, and us with Daisy on the opposite page (the smaller inset photos in the middle are from ARF House):
And finally, the third set of pages, with Spinner, Briggs rolling, another ARF House dog, Kenai with the ball, Briggs again, and on the facing page, an ARF House dog at the top and Emmy Lou again at the bottom:
Apparently, Best Friends never sent them any photos to use with the article.
(If you click on the images they will open in a larger, pop-up window. You may have to close the window before opening the next one.)
We were delighted to see Dog Fancy do a story on sanctuaries, and especially to give our disabled animals such prominent coverage. The quote under the photo of Soba and Noodle is from my interview with the writer, and it says:
"We don't think of these animals as disabled … they do all the things that healthy animals will do, and there's not one of them that gets up not wanting a happy day. They love every day they get."
A near blizzard today brought an abrupt end to our grazing season. We had rain overnight, and then this morning the wind moved in, the temperature dropped and the snow started falling. Actually, the snow was coming in horizontally rather than "falling."
That's really the worst possible combination for the horses — first to get wet, then have the wind come up, followed by freezing temperatures and snow. They're already soaking wet and just get thoroughly chilled. So our employee Cindy and I headed out today to bring in the last of the horses still out on pasture. She got the above photo of me earlier in the day, leading blind Marie and blind Hawk in to the barns from our east pastures.
The snow and wind really picked up this afternoon, and all the horses are very snug and happy to be in their stalls for the night.
This weather system is bringing even lower temperatures with it … while tonight we're going to be a respectable 17 degrees F (-8 C), for the next two nights our
forecast low is 3 degrees F (-16 C),
rising to a balmy 11 degrees (-11 C) by Friday night.
Winter may have arrived.
Julie from Love of Dog Bakery in Maryland emailed last week to tell us they have selected the ranch as their 'Charity of the Month' for December — for the second year in a row! This means Julie and her husband Rob will donate 5% of their retail sales in December for the animals at the ranch. In her note to us, Julie wrote:
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Congratulations! We have selected Rolling Dog Ranch as our Charity of the Month for December 2008! Better yet, you are the ONLY charity we have ever selected for a second time. There are more wonderful animal rescue groups out there than we could possibly honor, but we find the work you do for animals to be so incredibly awe inspiring that we would like to make you our Charity of the Month once per calendar year. Rolling Dog Ranch is one of three organizations that we anticipate doing this with. You are the very proof for the sentiment that each one of us can make a difference. THANK YOU!
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Thank YOU, Julie and Rob!
My only question in looking at the wholesome, all-natural treats they offer for sale on their Web site is … are these only for dogs? They look delicious!
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 