Rolling Dog Farm

Just The Right Height

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!

A Double Adoption!

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:

Blanca's Bed

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!

Group Hug

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.

 

Let Me Show You How I Do This

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!

Blind Dusty's Spinal Stroke

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.

Video: Copper Kid -- Before And After

You may recall that last summer our young Quarter Horse named Copper Kid, a wobbler with a neurological condition called cervical vertebral instability, went down in the pasture late one Friday afternoon.  We managed to get him up on his feet and into the horse trailer, and rushed him to Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital in Missoula.  Dr. Erin Taylor was waiting for us when I finally pulled up to the clinic at 6:30 p.m.  Erin took great care of Copper over the next few days and has been our equine vet ever since. 

After consulting with other specialists in equine neurology, Erin referred us to Washington State University's veterinary teaching hospital for a myelogram and then surgery on his spine.  As it turned out, the myelogram did not reveal the lesions on his spine -- this happens in a small percentage of these cases -- and thus the equine neurosurgeon was not able to operate.  After three weeks at WSU (the myelogram temporarily made his condition even worse, which we expected) we brought him back to the ranch.

After reviewing the images of Copper's vertebrae, the equine neurosurgeon had concluded that Copper would not get better without surgery, and that was certainly our view, too.  Yet we had no choice but to simply put him on stall rest, administer plenty of steroids to reduce spinal inflammation, and see if time would help. 

Did it ever!

Copper has confounded us and the experts, too.  His recovery has been dramatic.  This morning we shot some video of Copper when we turned him out to pasture, and you'll see what we mean.  The only thing we are doing differently for him now is keeping him in a paddock by himself, since we think he injured himself last year by goofing around with the other sighted horses.  He hasn't had steroids in many months, and only gets a vitamin E supplement with his grain.

Before you watch the video from this morning, take a look at this clip from when he left the hospital last August:

Now, here's how he is today:

What a difference, huh?

Brynn's Surgery -- Third Time A Charm?

As long-time blog readers know, our blind filly Brynn was born with multiple health problems, but her only real quality of life issue is urine leaking from screwed-up internal plumbing.  Her ureter -- the tube that takes urine from the kidney to the bladder -- instead is hooked up to her vagina, so the urine pools there and then dribbles out almost constantly.  (I say 'ureter' singular because she has only one working kidney.) 

We have to bathe her every day and apply Desitin to her legs to try and prevent urine scalds from developing.  But now that summer is upon us and the days are getting warm, the combination of the heat, her own sweat and the urine makes for a very corrosive brew ... and even daily baths don't completely prevent the urine scalds this time of year.

When she was younger, we took her to Washington State University's veterinary teaching hospital twice for surgeries to correct this problem, but both operations -- called a urethral extension -- failed to fix it.  The anatomy of her 'private parts' is not exactly normal in shape or location, which makes this a very challenging procedure to perform on her.

So we waited a year for her to grow bigger before attempting another operation.  The more room there is inside her makes it a bit easier for the surgeon to work back there.  Our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, is also a board-certified veterinary surgeon who has done this procedure before on mares with normal anatomy, and she offered to try on Brynn.

Thus this morning I drove Brynn to Erin's clinic in Missoula, Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital.  I took the photo above of Erin doing some exploratory work to figure out the best approach.  The green plastic jacket she's wearing is her "pee protection suit," since Brynn can squirt urine quite a ways.  Or, as Erin referred to Brynn today, it's about the princess and the pee.

What we found is the scar tissue from the previous surgeries, and it became clear that trying the same urethral extension would most likely fail again.  At the most critical place where the sutures have to hold the extension together -- deep inside her -- the tissue is too thin and weak to sustain the pressure.  This is why the extensions broke down before, and unfortunately, a year of growth has not altered her internal landscape. 

As a result, Erin tried a different technique, which involved cutting around the end of the ureter to "release" it so urine could flow back towards her bladder.  This is really hard to explain -- I just don't have the anatomical vocabulary, and without you seeing what it looks like, I'm not sure a verbal explanation would make much sense any way.  But her ureter enters the vagina just past a ridge of tissue, and it is this ridge that allows the urine to flow forward into the vagina and prevents the urine from flowing back down to the bladder ... which lies behind that ridge.  The purpose of the procedure today was to re-direct the ureter's flow of urine around the ridge and towards the bladder.  Almost like a dam bypass channel.

It's too soon to know whether this will work.  I brought Brynn home from the clinic this evening.  Erin thought it might take a week or more before we'll know for sure whether this helped her or not, depending on how the surgery site heals.

Brynn also had blood in her urine today, which we had not seen in several months.  This means she may have another kidney infection developing.  We'll have her blood work back tomorrow and will know then what her kidney values are.

At this point all we can do is keep our fingers crossed.

    

Shep Gets Checked Out

Yesterday I had to take several animals in to our vet clinic in Helena, and it was a full truck.  Blind Lady needed a repeat of her Cushing's test to see if her new medication is working; blind Carmel was in for a follow-up eye exam; and blind Evelyn needed a skin biopsy for a recurring skin condition.  Also along for the trip was blind Shep, our new arrival from Afghanistan.

In the photo at the top our vet Dr. Brenda Culver is listening to Shep's heart after doing his eye exam.  You can see in the photo how his eyes have that green glow.  Brenda found that he has only the faintest of blood vessels in his retina -- when they're like this she said they're called 'ghost vessels'.  It's not from progressive retinal atrophy, but more likely from a birth defect that caused the vessels to be deformed.  And his optic nerve is barely present.  So with his pupils wide open, the light bounces right back off the retina.

Brenda showed me that when you look close-up with her slit-lamp, you can see what appear to be hundreds of tiny bright speckles reflecting in the fluid in his eye.  It was, oddly, incredibly beautiful to see these little green stars shimmering in the light -- if you stop thinking that this is an eye that can't see.

Here's another view of Shep during the eye exam:

There isn't anything we can do to restore Shep's vision, but his eyes are comfortable and don't cause him any problems.  Shep stayed at the clinic for neutering and for a neurological/orthopedic evaluation -- I've watched him walk and it just seems to me that something is not quite right about his gait with his rear legs.  It's so subtle I can't put my finger on it, but I wanted Brenda and her husband Britt, a board-certified internal medicine specialist, to examine him and see what they think.  It could be simply a conformation issue because of chronic malnutrition as a puppy before he was brought to the shelter in Kabul.

We don't have any results on Lady or Evelyn yet, but on Carmel, we are probably going to be taking her to see a veterinary ophthalmologist to determine our next steps for her.  Brenda is working out those arrangements today.

$3,065 From The Quilt Raffle -- And A Winner!

We were astonished when Barbara and Scott Edwards came out to the ranch today for the 3rd annual quilt raffle drawing and handed over a check for a whopping $3,065!  That was three times the planned ticket sales.  We knew the quilt had drawn a lot of interest but we didn't quite realize how many people had bought raffle tickets from Barbara ... and how many people had bought lots of tickets.  Holy cow.  Thank you to all of you who made this raffle such an incredible success and blessing for the animals! 

Alayne, with blind Austin the Beagle assisting and Barbara holding the basket, set about to draw the winning ticket.  And the winner is ... (drum roll, please) ... Peggy S. of Tallahassee, Florida!  Peggy is a regular blog reader who, it turns out, is also a quilter herself.  When Alayne called Peggy this afternoon to tell her she had won the raffle, Peggy said she knew how much hard work Barbara had put into making a quilt like this.  Peggy said not only was the quilt truly gorgeous, but she thought it was just wonderful that Barbara does this quilt raffle for the animals every year.

And Barbara asked us to thank everyone who had sent her such lovely notes and cards with their raffle ticket checks.  She said she was really touched by the sentiments people had expressed.

Finally, our immense thanks and gratitude to Barbara for doing this phenomenal quilt -- what an amazing way to help the animals at the ranch.

Thank you all!

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One of our blog readers asked why we didn't let blind Callie into the cat house.  I should have anticipated that question when I wrote the blog post!  The reason is because some of the cats would react to an overly friendly and inquisitive Callie by slashing at her face with their claws.  We wouldn't want her to get her eyes scratched or otherwise hurt.  The cats in the cat house are not used to dogs milling about, unlike our barn cats.  Blind Cinder, for one, actually attacks dogs.  Now that's fearless!