Rolling Dog Farm Blog

In our recent blog post about Wendy M. adopting Stoney and Baron, I had mentioned how Wendy said blind Stoney loved to jump in a nearby creek on their evening walks.  Well, Wendy emailed me these photos today, and I figured you’d enjoy seeing them.  Wendy wrote:

"Here are a couple of pictures I took this afternoon of Stoney in her creek.  Every day we walk a 1/2 mile to the creek where we follow our little routine: I let her off her leash, she follows her little path down to the water’s edge, jumps in, drinks half of it, jumps out, walks right back to me and stands by my side while I put her leash back on. I think she likes the comfort of feeling me at the end of the leash and knowing that I’m with her."

The next one in the sequence was:

And finally, happy water dog:

Blind Helen looks as if she’s prepared for some holiday boating, doesn’t she?  The blue thing around her neck is an inflatable ring that serves as a "soft" alternative to the hard plastic cones for post-operative wound protection.  A wonderful supporter of the sanctuary, Sue R. in Colorado, sent us an entire collection of these neck rings, ranging from Dachshund-size up to a Helen-size Rottie. 

Helen just had her right rear leg removed because of a fibrosarcoma, and unfortunately the only way to eliminate the cancer and make sure it didn’t spread was to take off her entire leg.  We brought her home last week, and I took the photo over the weekend.  This has been a more difficult transition for her than the typical dog who loses a leg, mostly because she’s totally blind.  Helen is also a big girl, about 100 pounds, so there’s a lot of exertion required in moving that body around on three legs.  She’s getting the hang of it, but it’s been slow going. 

The ramp leading up to the front door of our house is ideal for a dog like Helen coping on three legs, as well as for the Dachshunds with bad backs (like Daisy, who you see partially hidden behind Helen), or for the old ones who struggle with steps.  That’s new arrival blind Austin the Beagle on the ramp, and blind Callie waiting at the door.

As for Helen’s tongue … one of the funny things about this sweet girl is that she often falls asleep with her tongue sticking out, and after she wakes up, she doesn’t seem to realize it’s still sticking out.  We like to say that Helen is one of those really dangerous Rotties who will lick you to death if she gets a chance, so maybe she just likes to have her tongue out and ready in case you happen to be walking by!

You probably remember that our adorable blind Lab puppy from Mississippi, Creighton, was adopted in early May by a wonderful couple in Olympia, Washington, Peggy and Matt M.  They already have two blind chocolate Labs and thought Creighton would make a great addition to the family.  Peggy reports that Creighton — who they renamed Emmitt Creighton III — is enjoying his new life and new companions.  She just sent us these photos, which I thought you’d like to see.

In the photo above are Creighton and Bobby Lee, who Peggy calls "my two ‘no-eye dears.’"  Peggy wrote, "This photo looks like Bobby Lee is the dad – but maybe more grandfather-like.  There is an amazing resemblance in the ears and the head.  I’ve often thought that Emmitt, with his little white soul patch, could have been named Dizzy Gillespie.  He is prone to crooning (maybe more like baying) like I hear him doing right now outside."

And in this next photo, Emmitt Creighton III is playing tug-of-war with Peggy and Matt’s other blind chocolate Lab, Danni Rae:

Peggy wrote, "And yes, that’s Emmitt’s donut.  He loves that thing.  He’s torn it open and pulled out the stuffing at least half-a-dozen times, and I keep restuffing it and sewing it back up.  It’s kind of like a kid and his favorite ‘binky’."

Thank you Peggy and Matt for giving this little boy such a fabulous home!

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With the July 4th holiday coming up, I won’t be posting any new entries until Monday morning.  That’s it for this week!

This past Sunday it was blistering hot here … in the 90s … and so we pulled out the doggie swimming pools and set them up in the various dog yards.  At one point I came back out and saw blind Callie in the pool by the house, just lapping and lapping at the water.  It’s not unusual to see a dog take a drink from a pool, but Callie kept on drinking like she was trying to lower the water level.  (Yes, there were two water bowls just 10 feet from the pool.)  I finally went inside to get the video camera and when I returned, she was still drinking.  What you see in this clip is just the last 20 seconds of what must have been almost two minutes of constant lapping. 

Which brings to mind the question — just how many laps did she do in the pool?

This is Brynn, our little two-year old blind Arabian filly with the multiple medical problems.  Among her issues is a neck so short she can’t reach the ground with her mouth to graze without having to kneel down on her front legs … which is hard on horse joints!  So we like to take her to where the grass has grown so high she can graze comfortably without having to kneel down.  Thus on Sunday afternoon I took her for a walk along our drive where the grass is a couple of feet high, and she could grab big mouthfuls just standing there.  I looped the lead rope over back and took this photo. 

As you can tell, this is rich, thick, and very green grass … much to her liking!

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Speaking of Brynn, her third surgery didn’t fix her leaking problem either, so we are back at square one.  I’ll let you know once we figure out what Plan D is!

Last weekend Wendy M. from Missoula came out to visit with a few of our dogs she was thinking about adopting.  After taking them for walks and hanging out for a while with them, Wendy fell for not one but two of our disabled dogs — blind-and-deaf Baron and blind Stoney! 

Wendy said she wanted a cuddle-bug little dog who just wanted to curl up in your lap and snuggle, and she also wanted a dog she could take for hikes and long walks.  Well, Baron fit the first requirement perfectly and Stoney was the energetic, outdoorsy dog. 

So when she left the ranch last Saturday, Wendy said she wanted to buy some dog beds and other things to get her house ready (she already had a fenced yard), but that she would return at the end of the week to get the two dogs. 

When Wendy arrived back here Friday evening, we had Baron and Stoney waiting for their new Mom.  I took the photo of the three of them above just before they left for Missoula.  Wendy emailed today to say that both dogs had done really well over the weekend.  She reports that on their evening walks together, Stoney loves to jump into the nearby creek.  (She’s the original waterdog!)

As for the cuddle-bug dog … well, before Wendy had even started down the drive Friday evening, look who had made himself at home on her lap:

Now that the nights have warmed up, our blind-and-deaf Great Dane Blanca prefers to sleep outside much of the time.  There are cots on the Widget’s House porch with West Paw beds on top, and as soon as she’s had dinner, she’s ready to head back outside and stay there. 

So when I went over to Widget’s House early one day recently to let the dogs out, I found Blanca asleep in the morning sunshine.  She had pulled a West Paw bed off the cot and dragged it out to the gravel, and was now sleeping on it.  I walked into the building, picked up a digital camera we have stashed over there for moments like this, and came back out to get the photo.  Because she’s blind and deaf, she didn’t even realize I was present. 

It does look like she just wanted to take advantage of the early rays, and she took the bed out there so she could soak in some warmth.  Right?  I’d like to give her credit for that, except she does this in winter, too — pulls the bedding off the cots and drags it out into the snowy yard.  Some afternoons we’d come over and find every one of the West Paw beds strewn across the snow.  On occasion we’d find a bed all the way down by the gate, which is probably 50 yards from the porch.  (I have never managed to capture the bed heists on camera.)

Thus I am not exactly sure she pulled that bed over on purpose so she could soak in the sunshine while she slept … or whether she had already dragged it off a cot during the night and somehow found it again.  For whatever reason, though, this was clearly the place she wanted to be that morning!

You might remember that we recently had two of the sanctuary’s wonderful supporters, Shirley L. and James C. visiting from Portland, Oregon, and they brought blind Carmel out to us.  Well, Shirley emailed us some photos that James took while they were here, and I thought you’d enjoy seeing them too.  This photo at the top shows Shirley on the porch at Widget’s House, our main dog building.  I think she is being mauled by love.  That’s blind Babe on the left, blind-and-deaf Blanca, wobbly Allie in Shirley’s arms, blind Penny, and then blind (and mostly deaf) Bud on the right.

Here’s another one:

That’s Blanca checking out Shirley’s hairstyle while she gives blind Brody a belly rub.  Trooper, our "no-good Cajun," as I call him, is probably eyeing his girlfriend Priscilla on the porch.

For those of you who have been reading the blog comments, you may have noticed that Shirley has been encouraging blog readers to nominate us for Animal Planet’s Hero of the Year.  (Thank you, Shirley!)  You can click here to submit your nomination.

 

One of our fabulous volunteers, Laura B. from Helena, brought out a new cat tree last Saturday for the gang in the cat house, and it immediately became a big hit.  On Sunday morning we found little Tibby, the cat with the deformed back legs, upside down in the swing playing with cat toys.  I think that would make me a little light-headed but she was thoroughly enjoying herself.  That’s wobbly Claire next to her.

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On a more serious note, here are some medical updates:

— Dusty was able to get up and walk last night on his own, and was mobile this morning, so we are thrilled with that progress!

— Blind Helen, who was in the hospital a couple of weeks ago to have a fatty tumor removed, is back for more surgery.  It turns out the pathologists found a fibrosarcoma inside that fatty tumor, and it has spread through her leg.  After consulting with a cancer specialist at Colorado State University’s veterinary teaching hospital, our vet Brenda Culver learned that the only thing we could do to keep the fibrosarcoma from spreading further is to remove the leg.  This is not the first time we have found benign fatty tumors harboring real cancers inside them, which is why we routinely have biopsies sent in for evaluation.  Just in case.

— Blind Carmel the Beagle is also back in the hospital this week for eye surgery.  After further consultations with our veterinary ophthalmologist in Spokane and with ophthalmology specialists at Colorado State, Brenda found that our only real option to eliminate Carmel’s chronic and terrible ocular pain was to remove her eyes.  Because it was a corneal dystrophy, we couldn’t do the intrasclera implants — like we did with blind Briggs — since the cornea needs to be healthy for that procedure.  It’s what holds the implant in place. 

I had dropped both Helen and Carmel off yesterday morning when I took Dusty in.  For right now, Dusty’s the bright spot in the picture!

It seems we never run out of opportunities around here to get acquainted with new and interesting diseases.  This year we’ve learned about HGE, or hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, which struck blind Widget and blind Penny.  Just last week we learned about corneal dystrophies because of blind Carmel.  And last night we encountered FCE, or … ready? … fibrocartilaginous embolism.  It’s basically a spinal stroke — not a brain stroke.  More on that in a minute.

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday) Alayne and I were taking a group of visitors over to see the dogs at Widget’s House, and in the distance I saw blind Dusty struggle to get up and out of a hole in the gravel he had been dozing in.  He had dug this shallow hole next to the Widget’s House porch, and he seemed to have trouble rising to his feet.  (Dusty is very shy around people and will move out into the yard when groups show up.)  Although he did manage to get up and start walking, it was clear he had some kind of problem, so I made a mental note to check him out when our visitors left.

Alayne told me later that while we were over there with our visitors, she had noticed Dusty slinking down on his hindquarters a bit, definitely not looking normal.  Yet he was walking, if stiffly.

Our visitors had just left and I was heading back over to see Dusty when my phone rang.  It was our employee Cindy, who had just arrived over at Widget’s House to feed the dogs.  She said, "There’s something really wrong with Dusty.  He’s scooting around on his back legs and can’t get up."  I told her we knew something was going on with him and I would be there in a second.

Dusty was on the porch, sitting on his hind legs and unable to rise.  I lifted him up and he walked into the building, which gave us hope.  Once inside, Cindy held Dusty up so I could palpate his legs and spine, but he didn’t seem painful at all.  With enough coaxing, he could get up on his own, but it was clearly difficult.  And as soon as he was upright, he wanted to sit down again.

I started him on some prednisone, fed him dinner, and left him in his crate instead of putting him back outside.  We’ve been around the track enough times now that I knew prednisone would be the first thing our vets would put Dusty on, and I figured I’d see a response soon enough if it was a steroid-responsive issue.   

But a few hours later, Dusty was no better, and he dragged his feet coming out of his crate.  Hmm.  At that point I called the emergency number for our vet clinic in Helena, Montana Veterinary Specialists.  A few minutes later Dr. Britt Culver, Brenda’s husband and a board-certified internal medicine specialist, was calling.  I described Dusty’s symptoms, told Britt the pred dose I had already given him, and asked what he thought.

Britt told me it was most likely one of two things — either Type 2 intervertebral disk disease or FCE, which he then rattled off as fibrocartilaginous embolism.  I said, "Fibro what?"

Essentially, it’s when a tiny piece of disk material somehow gets into the blood vessels in the spinal cord and causes an obstruction, or clot, that chokes off the blood supply to that part of the spinal cord.  In effect, it’s a spinal stroke.  It only effects that particular part of the spinal cord, so where it occurs will determine how many limbs are affected and the degree of severity.  For a great write-up on this condition, see this PDF.

Britt thought it likely, based on how I described Dusty’s symptoms, that it was FCE.  This was a good thing, he said, because FCE is typically not progressive and the animals can often regain use of their limbs.  What you see in the first 24 hours is all you’re going to see.  It just takes time for the spinal cord to learn how to re-route the blood supply and nerves.

Britt wanted me to increase the dose of prednisone for Dusty overnight and then see how he was in the morning.  Well, this morning Dusty was about like he was last night, which I was actually happy to see.  Our biggest fear was that he would get worse, because that was a bad sign and would mean it wasn’t FCE.

So I gave Dusty another dose of prednisone with his breakfast and then Alayne helped me load him in the truck for the trip to Helena.  I took the photo above of Britt doing a neuro exam on Dusty at the clinic this morning, and then he took X-rays of his spine:

The X-rays confirmed Britt’s view that it was FCE, because Dusty’s spine was healthy and showed no disk disease.  Britt was confident that Dusty would recover from this spinal stroke, but that it would take some time.  Dusty will continue to get prednisone on a tapering dose over the course of the next couple of weeks, and then we’ll see how he’s doing. 

Dusty was very relieved after all the poking and prodding to get back in the truck and head home to the ranch!

So there you have it — fibrocartilaginous embolism.  I had no idea the spinal cord could have a stroke.