Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary

Cone Independence Day. Yawn.

Our vet Dr. Brenda Culver gave us the official word today -- it was cone independence day for blind Briggs.  For almost two entire months, this little Beagle has had to wear a cone on his head following his eye surgery.  At first, he hated the dang thing and couldn't get used to it.  He caught it on everything -- doors, the ground, food bowls, other dogs.  Jeez, it's hard enough being blind, but add the cone and it's really difficult to navigate!  But bless his heart, he figured it out, and pretty soon he got used to it.  Yet every day he'd roll around on a dog bed like he was trying to shake it off.

So today, at precisely 4:19 p.m. Mountain time, I removed the cone.  I took the photo above just beforehand.  I fully expected him to get up and do a little jig, then roll around in sheer ecstasy enjoying his newfound freedom.  But, alas, there was no perfect-for-the-camera moment ... no bounding around the house, no exultation.  He just wanted me to leave him alone for his afternoon nap.  (Did I mention this Beagle sleeps as much as a cat?)

Here he is at 4:20 p.m., freed from the confounded cone:

I know he'll thank me for this later.

We're In Perfect Horse Magazine

The May issue of John Lyons' Perfect Horse magazine carries a fabulous six-page article on two blind horses, a dressage horse named Valiant and our own filly Nikki.  The article focuses on how both horses were trained to do what few considered possible.  In Valiant's case, his owner Jeanette Sassoon trained him for competition-level dressage after he went blind at the age of six.  (Valiant is one of the two "blind horse inspirations" we listed on our BlindHorses.org Web site.)  In Nikki's case, the article highlights how we took this little filly who was born blind and were able to train her for riding.  The story includes photos of our trainer Nichole Zupan riding Nikki, and also has a sidebar article on the blind foals that come to the ranch and how we raise them.

The headline on the cover of the magazine says "Training Insights:  How blind horses can lead the way."

On the front page of the article, the title says "Navigating A Dark World:  Two blind horses adapt to a sightless life with the help of dedicated trainers who didn't give up on them.  Their methods work on sighted horses, too."

Unfortunately, like most horse magazines, the content of the article is not available online.  You can find the magazine at Barnes & Noble and most other major booksellers.

That's Enough Now

After three splendid days of warm, sunny weather in the 50s, winter makes a return visit tonight.  Here's the Snow and Blowing Snow Advisory that the National Weather Service office in Missoula posted for us this afternoon:

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BUTTE/BLACKFOOT REGION-
236 PM MDT TUE APR 29 2008

A SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 AM MDT WEDNESDAY.

3 TO 6 INCHES OF SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS WITH LOCAL AMOUNTS UP TO 8 INCHES NEAR GEORGETOWN LAKE ARE EXPECTED FROM THIS EVENING THROUGH EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING. AREAS IMPACTED INCLUDE...PHILIPSBURG AND ANACONDA. BUTTE CAN EXPECT 1 TO 3 INCHES. IN ADDITION TO THE SNOWFALL...GUSTY WEST WINDS WILL CREATE BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW OVER THE HIGHER TERRAIN.

A SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW ADVISORY MEANS THAT VISIBILITIES WILL BE LIMITED DUE TO A COMBINATION OF FALLING AND BLOWING SNOW. USE CAUTION WHEN TRAVELING...ESPECIALLY IN OPEN AREAS.

--

We were really getting into that spring thing for a while. 

Thanks For The Drink

This is blind Laddie, our handsome, sweet Arabian, drinking out of his automatic waterer this afternoon.  We received a grant last summer to put in these automatic waterers throughout our extensive corral system, and it has saved us an incredible amount of labor and significantly reduced our electricity consumption.

We used to provide an individual 150-gallon or 300-gallon Rubbermaid water tank in each corral, with each tank equipped with its own 1500-watt heater to prevent them from freezing in winter.  Come October, when we plugged those heaters in, our power bill would jump immediately to over $1,000 a month and stay there until spring.  These Ritchie automatic waterers are well-insulated, designed for cold-climate use, and take advantage of ground heat through a thermal tube to keep the water from freezing.  They use only a 250-watt heater, and we found we only needed to turn them on when the temperature dropped to the single-digits.  Now that's insulated!

Most of the units we installed are doubles, like the one Laddie is drinking from, so we could put one side in one corral and the other side in the adjoining corral.  Because of our corral configuration, we were able to replace nine Rubbermaid tanks with six of these automatic waterers.

We ended up decreasing our energy load from 13,500 watts running full-time throughout the winter to 1,500 watts during only really cold weather.  In effect, we now use as much power to heat all six of the automatic waterers as it took us to heat a single Rubbermaid tank.   

It would take on average about 4 hours to clean and fill all the water tanks, usually at least twice a week, and that meant we were dragging hoses around in sub-zero weather, having to keep the water running as we went from tank to tank or the hoses would instantly freeze up.  It was without a doubt the coldest, most physically uncomfortable, most time-consuming job on the ranch.

These waterers are filled through a pressure tank system, and each unit has a float valve so they always remain filled to the right level.  (Yep, just like a toilet.)  There's a plastic "bubble" the horses push down with their mouths and then the water comes up for them to drink.  We weren't sure at first how the blind horses would do with this, since they couldn't see how it worked.  But we didn't need to worry.  All we had to do was walk each horse up to a waterer, push the bubble down and splash our hand in the water, and they figured it out.

Yesterday, a shut-off valve broke on the water supply line to Laddie's waterer -- a brass fitting that's never supposed to break, of course, but will on a Sunday morning!  Yes, it's the shut-off valve that broke, so we had to shut down the entire system to keep Laddie's unit from flooding out.  We'd turn it on periodically to refill the other waterers, and meanwhile Laddie and his pal blind Shasta had access to water buckets in their stalls.  But we'd never seen so many horses interested in their automatic waterers until we had to shut them off yesterday!  We'd know it was time to turn the system on briefly to refill because we could hear the horses knocking their bubbles around.

So when our contractors got Laddie's water supply line fixed this afternoon, we had some grateful horses.  Here's Laddie after drinking his fill:

 

Another Blind Beagle from Georgia!

I drove out to Great Falls on Friday to pick up a blind Beagle puppy we flew in from Atlanta.  This little guy, who we named Austin, came to us from the same lady, Morgan S., who sent us blind Widget, blind Willie and blind Briggs.  Morgan was living in New York when she rescued Widget years ago, and has since moved to Georgia where she runs Atlanta Beagle Rescue.

An animal control shelter had picked up Austin as a stray, but no one claimed him and the shelter couldn't find anyone to adopt him.  Just as his time was running out, a private rescuer noticed Austin in the shelter and called another rescuer, who knew Morgan and asked her for help in getting the blind Beagle to safety.

We think he may be only about 9 months old or so.  His eyes are clear but appear a little odd ... a tad undersized, perhaps, but not what would be considered microphthalmia.  They don't really track anything, so even if Austin knows you're there and he's "looking" at you, his eyes don't necessarily point in your direction.  In other words, his head is facing you but his eyes sometimes wander.  Most blind dogs will still train their eyes on you if they know where you are from sound, smell or touch.

He's an itty bitty guy, underweight for sure but also just very small.  He's as cute as can be, sweet and affectionate.  Briggs knows there's someone new in the isolation yard, so he goes up and down the solid wood fence, cone attached to his head, trying to figure out who the new arrival is.  He's heard there's another blind Beagle from Georgia on the other side, but he wants to check it out for himself:

She's Got A Good Heart

Yes, that's Dr. Dave Bostwick, our small animal internal medicine specialist in Missoula, working on something that is decidedly not a small animal -- our blind mare Lena.  Our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, had asked Dave if he would do echocardiograms on two horses today, Lena and a 2-year old colt with a heart murmur who belonged to another client.  Dave has a state-of-the-art color Doppler ultrasound machine that is ideal for doing echocardiograms, and it can "penetrate" even the deep chest of a horse and provide excellent images of the heart.  Dave graciously agreed to do the diagnostics, and he brought his equipment over to Erin's clinic this morning.

Lena has been having periodic episodes of pitting edema, in which fluid builds up under the skin.  There are many potential causes of edema, from viruses to heart problems and many other things, and it can be difficult to isolate the specific trigger.  Lena's most recent case was just three weeks ago, when a 2-inch thick layer of edema built up on her abdomen.  Erin had us treat her with steroid therapy, and by today, her edema was gone again.  But I was concerned that there could be something wrong with her heart, since her blood work looks good, she is otherwise healthy and had never appeared sick. 

Erin believed a virus was a much more probable cause of Lena's edema, and she thought it unlikely Lena's heart could be causing it.  But she also knew how worried we were by Lena's repeated episodes.  Given our spate of unpleasant medical surprises and deaths so far this year, we are a bit on edge and, quite honestly, expecting the worst.  She wanted to put my mind at ease by ruling out the heart problem I was most concerned about.

What did the echocardiogram reveal?  Lena has a beautiful heart, just like the rest of her.  Everything was normal.  Whew.

After Dave finished, Erin went nose-to-nose with Lena.  With a mischievous grin, Erin said to Lena, "Now, are you going to tell your Dad that I told you so?"

Turning to me, Erin asked, "So, what are you going to post on the blog tonight?"

I said, "Well, I'm ... um ... I'm going to confess that you were right and I was, um, wrong on this heart thing."

Of course, I have never minded being so wrong -- I'm happy to know our Lena has a healthy heart!

Now I can go back to worrying about viruses.  Oh, well.  C'est la vie.

Lend Me Your Ear

Stuart the deaf Beagle is really into grooming ... not himself, but other dogs.  His specialty is ears, and he offers a free ear wash to any dog willing to sit still for him.  If given a chance, he loves to do a complete head bath, too.  I was working in my office the other evening responding to emails when Alayne walked in, trailing minions behind her.  Stuart is a quasi-minion, so he followed along behind the Dachshunds.  As Alayne and I were talking, he began grooming Belvie, and since the camera was on the desk, I turned around and started taking photos of the session.  (The big black case in the background contains our BlindHorses.org exhibit display that we take to the equine vet convention each year.)

Here he's really working that right ear, and Belvie loves it.  Daisy isn't so sure:

Now Stuart's doing a little light chewing, which is the sign that this side is nearly done:

Next comes the left side of Belvie's face.  Stuart will work his way up to that ear, which Belvie has already helpfully flipped back for easier access:

Then comes the top-of-head bath:

And finally, as a bonus, Stuart offers a free neck wash, too:

At the end, there's one very clean Dachshund and one very satisfied Beagle. 

I'll Have A Side Order of Fluids

Our blind cat Bobby has been undergoing treatment for a recurring urinary tract infection, and the week before last he had a relapse -- straining and peeing bright red blood again.  He had only been home from the hospital a short while.  After talking with Dr. Jennifer Rockwell, our vet who had been treating Bobby, she had me start him on a daily injection of Baytril.  That seemed to work, but then last Thursday the infection came roaring back.  Jennifer was off that day, so Dr. Brenda Culver at the clinic had me continue with the Baytril but begin giving him subcutaneous fluids.

It turns out that the type of urinary tract infection Bobby has can have new episodes triggered by stress, and we think we know what happened.  Popeye the blind cat has increasingly become a bit of a bully in the cat house, and in particular he has been picking on Bobby.  (Just because you're disabled doesn't mean you can't be obnoxious.)  Alayne was putting dogs up in the cottage one evening last week and heard a cat screaming from the outdoor enclosure off the cat house.  She went running over and found Popeye had Bobby turned upside down and was flailing on him.  She broke it up, but that was the final straw -- Popeye was voted off the island. 

We'd never seen Popeye do that before, but we don't want to ever see it again.  Popeye is now living in the isolation cottage until we can figure out a better answer for him.  There were a lot of cats doing high fives with their paws when I moved Popeye out that evening.

One thing we will not tolerate around here is  that kind of behavior.  We have an incredibly well-behaved, gentle, and social bunch of animals, but if we see a pattern like this developing, we have to do something about it.  Jennifer suspects that the incident with Popeye was indeed the "stressor" that caused the latest flare-up. 

So now Bobby gets a daily dose of fluids, about 200 mls under the skin, and will for the next few days.  Alayne took the photo of Bobby getting his fluids this afternoon.  He is getting better, and the cat house is back to being a mellow feline social club.

Yes, I know it's yet another photo of me on the blog, but I am really not competing with Widget for blog appearances.  In my defense, let me point out that a) in this case, Alayne is allergic to cats (having Bobby in the house for five minutes is about all she can take) and b) getting my better half to appear on camera isn't always easy because, well, she needs time to prepare.  (I think this is a gender thing, but I'm not sure.)

Another Day At The Spa

One of our wonderful supporters asked me the other day on the phone how blind Brynn was doing, and that made me realize it's been a long time since I've posted an update on her.  Well, she's just about to turn two years old in early June, and that will be quite a milestone.  Brynn has defied the odds, and no one -- not our vets, not us -- really expected to her to make it this far.

Just to recap her long list of medical problems:  her neck is so short from malformed vertebrae she can't reach the ground with her mouth to eat; she has a hole in her heart; she only has one kidney; and she has an ectopic ureter, in which the tube that takes urine from her one working kidney to her bladder is dumping it instead into her vagina, causing constant leaking.  Oh, and yes, she's blind, too.  (Although we don't really count that as a 'medical problem' around this place!)

When we agreed to take her at the age of 5 days, we only knew she was born blind.  All these other problems we found out after her first week here. 

Now, you might well question how an animal with all those medical issues can have a good quality of life, but all you'd have to do is watch this little thing in the course of a day.  She is happy, affectionate, adores people, loves to eat (and eat and eat), and even likes to try some bucking and kicking in her corral like a rodeo star when she's feeling her oats.  (Given her neck constraints, these are very mild displays of bucking and kicking!)  For eating, she has elevated feeders, which suit her just fine.  We can't leave her out to graze in summer for extended periods because she bends her front legs over to reach the ground, which puts too much stress on them.  Yet she's perfectly content to hang out at the barn with her hay and grain.

Her only real quality of life issue is the urine leaking out of her vulva and down her legs.  She's had two surgeries at Washington State University's veterinary teaching hospital to fix the ectopic ureter, and both failed.  Our own equine vet, a board-certified veterinary surgeon herself -- Dr. Erin Taylor -- is going to try the surgery on Brynn this spring.

In the meantime, we continue to bathe her every day to prevent urine scalding on her back legs.  We wash her rear-end, thighs and legs with a sponge, and then apply ointments to her skin.  If we stay on top of it, we can prevent the urine scalds from developing.  Alayne took the photo above of me bathing Brynn this afternoon.  She's still a very small girl, for which we are grateful; it's as if nature recognized that with all of her physical limitations, the last thing she needed was to grow into a full-size horse and put additional strain on her heart and vertebrae and remaining kidney.  So she's really not much bigger than a small yearling.

Nothing's quite "right" about Brynn, including her overall appearance -- she looks more like a small moose than a two-year old Arabian, which is why I call her Moosie!

Staple Removal

Little Creighton, the blind chocolate Lab puppy who came to us three weeks ago with bulging, painful eyes, is completely healed up from his eye surgery.  Our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, was unable to save his eyeballs by using the intrasclera implants (like we did with Briggs the blind Beagle).  This is because there was too much internal damage in his eyes.  Both eyes were filled with blood, in fact.  So Brenda had to enucleate, or remove, them.  As part of this process she inserted a small marble-like ball inside the eye socket to keep the eyelids from sinking in.

Today I removed the staples Brenda had used to close up the incisions.  Alayne took the photo above as I was just about finished, with only one staple left.  I'm using a simple instrument that's designed to remove surgical staples.  It's fast, easy and painless, and I was done in under a minute.

His face will look better in a few more weeks, when his hair grows back over his eyelids.  They will also become less puffy.  I will admit we miss his endearing, bug-eyed look with those big eyes he once had, but he is now pain-free for probably the first time in his short-life.

After a while, we get so used to seeing these animals without eyes  -- we have 13 at the moment ... 7 dogs, 5 horses and 1 cat -- that we forget what they once looked like.  They just look normal to us!  And they don't care what they look like, they just know the pain is gone and they can go back to being happy, healthy, joyful animals.