Rolling Dog Farm

Lush. Green. Nice.

I took this photo a couple of days ago of blind Bo and blind Rosie enjoying life on a bright green pasture.  It was late afternoon, and Alayne and I were heading out to start bringing the horses in.  It's still hard for us to believe how green the grass is, especially in late August.  In Montana, the grass turned brown in July and stayed that way until the snow came.  Our actual "green-up" was from May, when the grass was still too short to graze, only to mid-July -- and that's if we had decent spring rains.  That was the duration of the green season.  From then on, the grass was brown and dry.  So this late summer green here is a feast for our eyes.

You can tell these two horses have had plenty to eat because neither one is grazing ... just hanging out.  But Bo has us concerned, because he isn't holding his weight, no matter how much he eats.  Bo has always been very lean -- unlike his rather plump girlfriend! -- but we don't like what we're seeing.  So our equine vet, Dr. Steve Levine, is scheduled to come out this week to look at Bo's teeth, do bloodwork, and figure out what the problem is.

But meanwhile, they and the rest of the herd are happy to be grazing on this kind of grass in late summer!

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Speaking of horses:  Every few days, someone somewhere emails us the story about "Molly the Amazing Pony" -- the one with the prosthetic leg.  While we've known about her for years, I've often wondered about the follow-up.  The story that has been floating around the Internet and that everyone keeps sending us was written soon after she was fitted with the prosthetic.  How did she do a year or two later?  Well, the Washington Post has a photo essay about Molly today and you can read it here.  (Please note ... if the photo gallery doesn't launch for you, I can't troubleshoot it for you.)

Molly Gets Adopted!

In what will be a family reunion of sorts, three-legged Molly is now on her way to her new home in Spokane, Washington -- where she will be reunited with our own three-legged Bunny.  Yes, the same wonderful folks who adopted Bunny from us two years ago this month, Tia and Karl M., asked if they could adopt Molly as well.  We were thrilled they wanted to add Molly to their family, and delighted to know that Molly will have Bunny as a companion again!

On Friday, a ground pet transportation company, We Move Pets, came by to pick up Molly and take her back out west.  (Gale Lang of TLC Pet Transport, who we used to bring the animals out from Montana, wasn't able to take Molly.)

I took the photo of Molly on Thursday in the new cat room on the second floor of the barn.  We had just moved them in there the day before, after the flooring was put in.  It's not quite finished ... you can see we don't have the molding in at the edge of the floor yet, but it will match the pine trim around the windows and should be completed on Monday.  Also going in this week will be baseboard heaters.

(Molly said, "What, I just moved in here and now I'm leaving?")

Tia and Karl, thank you for adopting this beautiful girl!

Excuse Me. I Want This Chair.

Long-time blog readers may recall a post from more than two years ago, when I pointed out how blind Widget "looms" over other dogs who just happen to be in a chair she wants.  Sometimes this works -- they can't stand the pressure of her sitting right there, looming over them, and they quickly surrender the desired spot to her.  Other times it doesn't work, and they ignore her. 

Time moves on, but looming endures.  The other evening I was sitting in the living room and noticed Widget nosing around at the base of the chair Dexter was sleeping in.  I knew what was coming next.  She slowly and methodically climbed into the chair, and "the loom" began. 

Alas, Dexter was not only completely unruffled, but he studiously ignored her.  I noticed his eyes were open, too, so it wasn't like he was sound asleep and unaware of what she was doing.  But this was the first time I'd seen Widget do the loom with Dexter, and I didn't know how this one would end. 

As the minutes ticked by, she became more focused in her stare:

(Bet you didn't think blind dogs could stare, huh?)

Well, this stand-off, like the one with deaf Stuart in the earlier post, climaxed the same way:  Not by conclusive victory, but by distraction -- yes, Alayne walked by and Dexter climbed down to go after her.

Widget doesn't care how these stand-offs end, only that they end ... with her getting what she wants.

Happiness Is A Good Roll

Blind Widget rolling ... if a picture is worth a thousand words, here are three thousand:

(Note:  As for the brown spots in the grass -- yes, we know about "urine neutralizer" supplements; no, we're not going to spend the money to keep nearly 40 dogs on them.)

Please Welcome ... Blind Lucy!

The Dachshund ranks expanded yet again, with the arrival of blind Lucy on Friday.  She came to us from Riverside Rescue in Vermont, the same local shelter that had asked if we could take Roo, the Chihuahua born without front legs.  Lucy came from a puppy mill situation and was born with microphthalmia, which means her eyes never fully developed.  While she can hear, Lucy seems to have trouble determining the direction of sound and can't quite get a fix on where it's coming from unless she's very close to the source.  (This is different than the deafness problem we've reported Dexter having, which is CSH, or canine selective hearingitis.)  So she will often run around in circles trying to get a fix on the sound.

As you can imagine, given their recent close encounter with a too-adorable Chihuahua, the Dachshund contingent was delighted to see another of their kind arrive.  

Lucy is a pistol -- full of energy, always in motion, and quite the intrepid explorer.  The only time she seems to be still is when you pick her up ... she loves to be held and cuddled.  But when she's not in your arms, she's scooting around.  In fact, we almost named her Scooter because she has this endearing habit of tucking her butt underneath her and then scooting forward at 100 mph.  (Her name was ... yes, Stevie.  Been there, done that.  We named her Lucy.)

She gets along great with everyone, and although she's a bit timid around the other dogs, she's fine letting them check her out, sniff her, and be around her.  But I have a feeling it won't be long before she's romping and roughhousing with some of the other little tykes. 

Sharon at Riverside thought Lucy might be a piebald Dachshund, though I'm not so sure she isn't the product of a double dapple breeding, which would explain her disability ... and there's even such a thing as a dapple piebald.  (For much more detail on colors and patterns in the Dachshund world than you might want to know, see this site and this one.) 

On Saturday afternoon, Alayne and I were in our offices on the second floor of the people wing when Lucy suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs.  We hadn't thought about closing the gate to the stairs because we didn't think she'd take her exploring that far that fast, but there she was ... as proud as she could be that she found new territory.  (The gate now stays closed.)  That's her nature:  Inquisitive, fearless, energetic.  

The Beagles are wringing their paws over the arrival of yet another Dachshund, which brings the total to eight.  Oh my!

Fence Sitting

Alayne got this shot yesterday morning through the window of our Chief Barn Cat, Smoke, sitting on a fencepost above the pond.  He had walked across the rail and then parked himself on top of the post to look for any small munchables in the tall grass below.  That's part of the old cedar split-rail fence that our fence crew was supposed to take down and haul away earlier this spring, but they didn't get to it ... and apparently that's a good thing, as it serves as a useful observation tower for feline hunters.

Dusty's Den

I mentioned in the previous post how many of the dogs in the front yard have taken to "denning" under the ramps.  Blind Dusty, on the other hand, picked a totally different spot for his den -- the base of the big fir at the other end of the front yard.  He loves this spot and hangs out there all day long ... literally.  After we let him out in the morning and he drinks, attends to his business, and stops to smell the roses along the way, he heads to this spot under the tree.  He will stay there the entire day until we call him back to the house late in the evening. 

Rooting around in the dirt does a number on his white coat, of course, and some evenings when he comes back inside he looks like the canine equivalent of a coal miner.  I haven't seen him do this yet, but given how covered he is in dirt some days, he must like to roll around upside down in his den too. 

One thing I'd like to get on video one day is his evening routine, so people can see how a blind dog uses his "mental map" to navigate.  We'll get everyone else inside, and then I'll go out on the ramp and call for Dusty.  He always has to be the last one in, so he's waiting for me to do this -- it's like his curtain call.  His spot at the base of the tree is about 30 yards (27 m) away from the front door.  He'll climb out of his den, walk out to the grass, lift a leg, then head right for the ramp.  Dusty is usually within a foot of either side of the ramp by the time he gets there, if he doesn't make it straight in on the first try; if he's off-course, he knows it instantly and quickly readjusts to get on the ramp and head towards the door.  I'll hold the door open for him and he bolts through, then follows me by voice command down the hallway, into the dog room, and right into his crate.  Elapsed time is under a minute.  I never touch him or do any guiding other than with voice.  

Of course, it would be nice if he'd shower every evening before coming in, but then again I can't ask for everything.

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Blog readers keep asking how the animals are adjusting.  I thought these blog posts would show how they're adjusting -- in a word, just fine!  They're all settled in, developing new routines, and finding their niches.  I haven't posted anything on the cats because we have been building a cat room on the second floor of the barn and they've been in temporary quarters here.  The room should be finished by next week, we hope.  The horses are doing great and I will get a photo of them up in the next week or so.  

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Neuton

I have always disliked mowing grass. It seems such an incredible waste of time and effort, especially when grass is the perfect food for so many animals.  Grass should be grazed, not mowed. 

Back in Montana, we couldn't grow much of a lawn anyway around the house and dog cottages, so rough pasture grass was what we had.  This was easy to deal with, because all I'd have to do was hook up the rotary brush cutter to the tractor, make one run, knock it all down, and be done.  With the climate there, the grass rarely ever grew back enough that I'd have to mow it a second time.  Although this meant we had to carefully manage the pastures to ensure enough grass for grazing animals, for mowing humans, it kept things pretty simple and made mowing only an annual chore.

Welcome to New Hampshire. 

Now, one of the big attractions for us of moving here, as blog readers know, is the lush grass and a climate that keeps grass growing all summer long -- great for livestock. 

The downside, of course, is that growing means mowing.  When I got back here in mid-May to stay, I marveled at how green and rich the grass was around the house.  I'd stand on the porch and look out over the lawns, loving the greenness of it all.  After the second week I noticed, um, how fast it was growing.  By the third week I finally realized, holy cow, I'm going to have to do something about this grass -- it's getting really, really tall!  That's when it dawned on me that we didn't even have a lawn mower.  Oops.

The yards around the house are too small to use a tractor, and a tractor would have been too heavy and rough on these lawns anyway -- especially for weekly mowings.  And while I do detest mowing grass and believe nature intended it to be grazed, I wasn't about to bring our horses into the dog yards in the evenings to do my work for me.  The last thing we need is a whole lot of dogs rolling in horse poop and eating it when they're not rolling in it.  (That's not why we called it the Rolling Dog Ranch, by the way.)  The two goats wouldn't eat enough to make a difference, so that wasn't an answer either.

No, I finally admitted that we needed a ... gasp! ... lawn mower. 

What I detested even more than mowing lawns was lawn mowers themselves.  Noisy, stinky things, always requiring maintenance when they weren't leaving you smelling like gas. 

So after doing some research -- quickly, because by then I swear the grass was growing an inch a day here -- I decided to buy a battery-powered mower called the Neuton.  (I considered an old-fashioned reel mower, but exercise is one thing we don't lack around here.  If I could have a battery cut the grass while I pushed the mower, that was a good compromise.)

I was skeptical at first that a mower running on a rechargeable battery could really mow a lawn, but Alayne and I are now fans of this green machine.  It really does work incredibly well.  It's amazingly quiet, is completely clean and odor-free, and requires no maintenance other than plugging in the battery.  On a full charge, and if the grass isn't out of control, we can do all four dog yards on one battery.  I think that's probably close to, or maybe a bit more, than the 1/3 acre (.13 hectare) the company suggests you can get on one charge.  If we've let the grass get too tall, we'll need to swap out for a fresh battery to get everything finished.  The Neuton is also very light, so it's easy to push around. 

It's so quiet, in fact, that the dogs pay no attention to it at all.  If you click on the photo for a larger image, you can see blind Molly snoozing under the ramp.  The dogs keep right on napping wherever they are, even as we push the mower around.

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Those ramps, by the way, have become the favorite place to nap these days.  When I took that photo of the Neuton mower, there were at least four dogs under those ramps -- Molly, Priscilla, Cedar and Spinner.  Cedar is at the far left of the ramp in back -- you can kind of make out the dark shape underneath.  Two more dogs were under the other ramp you can't see in this photo, the one coming off the people wing.  Originally we were going to put up lattice-work to finish off the ramps (like you see under the existing porch), but the dogs clearly enjoy "denning" underneath them so much we haven't done it.  There are usually more dogs sleeping under the ramps now than there are on the bright, green lawn or on the beds on the front porch!

Outtakes Again

I've been working on our fall print newsletter, and we recently did the photo shoot for the photo of Alayne and me that goes on page 2 of each issue.  Earlier this year I posted the outtakes of the photo shoot for the spring/summer newsletter, so I thought you might enjoy seeing some from this latest session.  Our new admin assistant, Judy L., was pressed into service as the photographer.  Alayne had already warned her what this would be like ... i.e., taking direction from a fussy "tyrant photographer" (can you believe she calls me that?), having to take dozens and dozens of photos until Mr. I'll-Know-It-When-I-See-It is finally satisfied, and making sure that all three subjects are posing just-so for the camera. 

Our co-subject this time was blind and wobbly Briggs, who alternately wouldn't stay still or, worse, would suddenly go limp in my arms and look like he'd just died.  That first shot above gives you an idea of the challenge that day.

Then Mr. I'll-Know-It-When-I-See-It stepped out of the shot to take another look through the camera, and this is what he saw:

Stepping back into the shot, a few frames later and someone is still having a problem managing a small, wobbly Beagle:

We then changed sides and things quickly fell apart, though Miss Marker seems unaware that I have lost complete control at this point and is still staring at the camera:

Canine control problems continue, and Miss Marker now appears not nearly as cheery as a few moments before:

But, somewhere along the way to taking 67 photos, we get the right framing, have the dog cooperating, and Judy gets the photo Mr. I'll-Know-It-When-I-See-It wants:

Whew!

The Girls See A New Specialist

I took this photo yesterday of blind Widget and three-legged Ella with Dr. Bryan Harnett, a board-certified internal medicine specialist at Vermont Veterinary Internal Medicine in Burlington.  While our small animal primary care vets are nearby, the specialists are in larger cities in southern New Hampshire or in Vermont. 

Burlington, which is a two-hour drive from here (about the same distance as Helena to Missoula), also has a Costco, where we get a lot of our supplies.  The nearest (and only) Costco in New Hampshire is in Nashua, near the border with Massachusetts; that's a much longer drive, and there are no specialists in Nashua.  And since we are all about maximizing our time and fuel usage by packing as much into one trip as possible, it made sense to use Burlington as our "medical and supply hub," as it were.

We were looking for an internal medicine specialist because Ella needed heartworm treatment.  We knew she was heartworm positive when we she first came, but because of the timing of her other medical procedures (her amputation in Louisiana) and the impending move to New Hampshire, we needed to wait until she got settled here to begin the lengthy treatment.  Although some primary care vets will do the treatment, our local vets at the Whitefield Animal Hospital were more comfortable referring us to a specialist for it.  It can be very tricky, and while remote, there is the risk of death from pulmonary embolism.  (For more detail on this subject, see the American Heartworm Society.) 

Ella still needs to be spayed, too -- but we can't afford the risk of anesthesia for that procedure until she has the heartworms taken care of.  Her amputation in Shreveport was emergency surgery because of her infected stump of a leg; we had hoped the vet could spay her while she was under the anesthesia then, but the operation took longer than the vet expected and he didn't want to keep her under any longer than absolutely necessary.  

So first things first -- heartworm treatment!  Ella had the initial injection yesterday, and then I will take her back in a month for a two-injection series over two days.  

And since we were seeing an internal medicine specialist, I took Widget along for an ultrasound of her organs.  We do this on a lot of our geriatric dogs as "insurance" -- we've had too many cases in the past where routine blood work looked fine but we lost them to an unsuspected tumor of some sort.  (My own beloved Dolly was one of those.)  The only thing Dr. Harnett noticed were some mild changes in Widget's kidneys.  Nothing to suggest renal failure, but enough that we need to start her on a lower-protein diet and then re-check in six months for any further changes.

With more than 1,000 pounds (453 kg) of supplies in the back of the truck, I loaded up the two girls, said goodbye to Dr. Harnett and his wonderful staff, and headed back to New Hampshire.