Rolling Dog Farm

It's For Me, Right?

A wonderful friend and supporter of the ranch, Margaret N. from Seattle, has been sending big boxes of fleece blankets for the animals for a number of years now, and her latest shipment just arrived.  I took these photos yesterday afternoon of blind Goldie inspecting the goods.  Rather than let Goldie "open" the box herself with her jaws, I thought it would be better to open it myself.  But you can see the expression she gave me above.

Then came the sniff test:

Followed by the "I'm-on-top-of-the-situation" personal inspection:

Finally here came the "Yep-it's-for-me-just-as-I-expected" stance -- what better way to claim it for yourself than by lying down on top of it?

Please Don't Wake Me

One of our blog readers asked for an update on blind-and-deaf Duchess, better known as Granny, our resident breadaholic.  I asked Cindy to take a photo of me with Granny today, except I hadn't allowed for the fact that she (Granny, not Cindy) might be in the middle of an afternoon nap in the sun.  As you can see, she continued her nap in my arms.

Granny is doing just fine.  Two weeks ago she had her regular dental cleaning, and her pre-anesthetic bloodwork looked great.  Despite her 14+ years, her teeth were in fabulous shape and none needed to be pulled. 

You can sleep really well when you're deaf, and when you're blind and deaf, you can sleep really, really well, but she did manage to finally come awake ... sort of:

I think Granny sprang to life in this second photo only because she thought she smelled a dog cookie in Cindy's pockets.  If she had smelled bread, I wouldn't have been able to hold onto her.

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Unfortunately, the news on our other little old girl, Lady, is very different and quite sad.  We had to euthanize Lady a couple of weeks ago.  Our vet, Brenda Culver, came out to the ranch on a Saturday afternoon to let her go.  Ironically, we had managed to stay on top of Lady's heart condition and Cushing's, but she developed doggie Alzheimer's in the meantime.  She started getting everything backwards, and her wiring was shorting out, in effect.  Lady seemed "lost" -- she began wandering in circles constantly -- and we realized she no longer was able to enjoy life.  She died peacefully and with dignity, surrounded by people who had loved her in her final months of life.

Up Where We Belong

I had just finished dragging a pasture this weekend and was heading back to the house on the tractor when I looked over at the hay barn.  Something had caught my eye.  Yep, there they were -- Rocky and Joshua, two of our barn cats, way up high on the hay stack.  These two boys live in Beauty's Barn, which is across the drive from the hay barn, but they spend a good part of the day hanging out like this. 

Rocky is the orange cat who arrived here about two years ago.  He belonged to a couple in the Swan Valley of Montana who have been very generous friends of the animals at the ranch.  Rocky had shown up at their place as a stray one day but had not gotten along with their own cat.  Every time they tried to place him with friends, Rocky would wander off and show back up at their home ... often miles and miles away from the family he had left.  Finally, they asked us if we could use another barn cat.  As it turned out, we had just built Beauty's Barn the year before and had one lonely barn cat there -- Joshua -- and thus a companion for him would be nice to have.

Though they warned us about Rocky's history of wandering off -- and they were skeptical he would stay here -- I had always enjoyed good luck "homing" newly arrived barn cats.  My method is to put them in a giant dog crate with a bed, litter box, and food and water, and then I let them stay in the crate for a week or so in the barn that will become their new home.  That way they get used to all the comings and goings in that barn, the sights and the smells, and familiar with all the people and animals.  After a week of watching the activity and becoming comfortable in this new environment, they identify with it as their own place.  When we let them out of the crate on the big day, they stick around ... because now they're home.

Joshua had belonged to a young lady who worked here a few years ago, and though she loved this cat, he had developed an annoying habit:  He peed on her bed and couch.  And only on her bed and couch.  (Weird, huh?)  Otherwise, Joshua had impeccable potty habits.  When she moved to a new rental to be able to work at the ranch, she was beside herself as to what to do with Joshua.  We offered to let him come live in Beauty's Barn, and thus he took up residence. 

Joshua was apparently not as lonely as we presumed, and it took him and Rocky months to work things out.  There were no real fights, but a lot of hissing and posturing.  Somewhere along the way they decided they really did like each other, and now they're the best of friends.

Rocky's favorite spot on the hay stack is to be on the very top.  Joshua prefers to be on one of the bales that stick out from the front of the stack, as if he's on the bow of a ship.  And yes, it's safe there -- those bales are wedged in tightly and are configured like that by the hay wagon that picks up and stacks the bales originally.

Here's a closer shot so you can see the boys better:

It's That Time of Year

This weekend I hauled our chain harrow out of the vehicle shed and began the fall ritual of dragging the pastures.  The harrow has tines that point down and into the ground, and as you pull the harrow along behind the tractor, the tines break up the horse manure clumps and scatter them across the field.  Shredded and spread around, the manure becomes fertilizer for the grass.

You can see some manure piles in the foreground of the photo above.  I took that shot today of our employee Cindy dragging while I went back to office work.

This time of year it's always a bit tricky deciding when to start dragging.  We want to leave the horses out on pasture as long as possible -- we usually start bringing them back into the corrals around November 1st, weather depending -- and we don't want to drag a pasture until the horses are out of it.  But if we wait too late, we can get caught out by the weather and end up buried under a mid-November snowstorm ... and we can't drag the pastures then. 

It's a slow process, because we're pulling the 1,000-pound (453 kg) harrow with the tractor going about 4 mph (6.4 kph), and with 140 acres (56 hectares) of our 160 acres in grazing ground, there's a lot of territory to cover ... slowly.  Yes, that thing weighs 1,000 pounds but it isn't quite heavy enough, so on Saturday I added a 6x6 pressure treated post to weigh down the front end and today I put two tires on the back end.  It was riding a little too light before and now it seems to have the right weight on it.

At the moment we are dragging the pastures we had already rotated horses out of earlier in the fall.  If Mother Nature cooperates, we'll get them all done before the serious snow arrives.

Who Will She Choose -- Me or Him?

I mentioned in a post last week that we had someone coming out this weekend to meet three-legged Honey Girl for a possible adoption.  Well, Keithi W. from Missoula arrived on Saturday as scheduled, and Honey Girl was everything she usually is ... sweet, affectionate and full of antics as Keithi loved her up.  It seemed like a perfect match.  That's when I took this photo of Keithi with Honey Girl:

But then blind Herbie got in the way.  Did he ever.  He wanted Keithi to notice him, too, and he kept pawing at her for attention.  Despite being blind, Herbie knows exactly (well, within a few inches) where you are, and he leans forward with his paws out to get some loving.  "Hey, what about me?  I'm adorable!"  It is an irresistible sight, this beautiful little blind cat pawing at you and meowing for affection.  He looks right at you, as if he can see.  Then he climbs onto you, and you melt.

Keithi wavered.

The more she petted Herbie, the more antics Honey Girl performed to draw Keithi's attention back to her.  When Keithi stopped to pet Honey Girl, Herbie would start up again, pawing and meowing at her.

Keithi said, "Oh no, I'm not sure now."

I fully understood, because both of these cats are real dolls and it would be difficult for me to choose between them. 

I told her she was in luck, that this weekend only we were having our 2-for-1 special on cats.  I offered her an extra crate, since she had only brought one.  "The crate's free with the second cat," I said.  (I was joking, but only sort of!) 

Herbie pawed.  She wavered some more.

She held Herbie, and I took this photo of them:

Keithi said, "This is really hard.  I came here fully expecting to adopt Honey Girl and now I'm torn.  I mean, look at him," she said, pointing to Herbie who was back on the cat tree, pawing at her again.

I told her that we would be delighted if she wanted to adopt either cat, but also reminded her about our one-time only 2-for-1 special on cats, including the free bonus crate.

At this point Honey Girl, not one to let Herbie outshine her, climbed back on the cat tree, too:

Meanwhile, during all of this our cat Fibby continued to chew on Keithi's shoelaces.  Whenever she tried to walk around in the cat house, Fibby would use his paws to hold onto her foot so he could still nibble on her shoelaces.

Finally, Honey Girl decided to take matters into her own hands.  She climbed down, walked over to Keithi's cat carrier, and got inside.  She sat in there and looked up at Keithi with an expression that seemed to say, "I decided.  I'm going home with you."

Keithi looked down at Honey Girl in the crate and said, "Well, I guess that settles it."

Brrr ... 14 Degrees.

The National Weather Service had forecast a low for us last night of 21 degrees, but I could tell when I was putting the dogs up at 9:30 p.m. that we would get colder than that.  Sure enough, when we got up this morning it was 13.6 degrees (-10.2 C).  The photo above is what Widget's House looked like at dawn, and here is Beauty's Barn:

By the time I photographed our wireless weather station, it had warmed up .2 degrees to 13.8.  Not much, but going in the right direction!

 

Once morning chores were done, we had our photo shoot for the winter newsletter -- this for the photo of Alayne and me that accompanies the "ranch letter" on page 2 of each issue.  If it seems a bit early to be working on it -- our fall issue just went in the mail a couple of weeks ago, miraculously timed to arrive just as the stock market plunged -- our winter issue actually goes to print the first week of November, so I've already started on it.  Besides, with a morning this cold, it seemed appropriate to be taking photos for the winter edition!  (Note:  The fall issue is also posted as a PDF on our main Web site home page.)

First I needed to "frame" the shot I wanted for our employee Cindy, who was going to be taking the photo of us.  This was one of the early test shots:

Yes, that's Margaret in the background, wanting to be in the photo along with Bailey.  We finally had to move Margaret and her sisters down to the welcome center so we could have a goat-free photo.  Once the shot was framed and goats removed from the vicinity, Cindy fired away with the camera, and here was the final photo we selected:

By noon the three goat girls had submitted a petition, signed with little hoof prints, demanding to be in the spring issue of the newsletter.  We'll see.

A Dog and Two Cats

I took three animals to our vet clinic in Helena today.  Goldie was due for her next round of chemotherapy, and our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dave Bostwick, had been treating her cancer.  But we had two cats who were also due for their annual vaccinations and health exams, and both were pending adoption, so we needed to get that done this week, too.  And that was something our clinic in Helena needed to do instead of Dave.

We try to minimize the number of trips we make -- Missoula is 60 miles to the west of us and Helena is 70 miles to the east -- and to save money (gas) and time (never enough), our goal is to make no more than one trip per week to either town.  Dave had earlier suggested that if we ever got in a jam and needed to go to Helena rather than Missoula, he would be happy to ask our internal medicine specialist in Helena, Dr. Britt Culver, to step in and administer Goldie's chemo.  (We're incredibly lucky to have two internal medicine specialists, one in either direction!) 

So yesterday Dave faxed over Goldie's treatment protocol to Britt, who graciously agreed to administer the chemo today.  Britt is married to our primary care vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, who was just out at the ranch doing the annual exams and vaccinations on the dogs a couple of weeks ago.

In the photo above, vet tech Heather A. is holding Goldie while Britt injects the chemo drug.  As usual, Goldie did just fine and continued to pester me as I drove around Helena running errands.  It's amazing, but so far she has shown no ill effects from the chemotherapy.

Britt was also kind enough to go ahead and take care of the cats, too.  In this next photo Britt is doing the physical exam on three-legged Honey Girl:

We have a potential adopter coming out to the ranch this weekend to meet Honey Girl, so if it happens, we'll have it on the blog next week.

And here is Britt with wobbly Claire:

Our employee Amy is adopting Claire, so she will soon be leaving the cat house for a home of her own with Amy!

Baron and Stoney -- The Good Life

Wendy M. from Missoula, who adopted blind Stoney and blind-and-deaf Baron back in June, just emailed us a wonderful update on them along with some new photos. 

For that photo above, Wendy wrote:  "Baron's favorite thing to do is sleep in on these cold mornings, so I included a picture of him refusing to wake up even though I've pulled the blankets off of him."

She said, "This weekend we went camping up the Bitterroot for probably the last time this summer. Stoney spent most of the time in the creek while the little one did the "Baron Prance" around the campsite. (Anyone who has seen Baron run knows what I am talking about!)"

Here's a photo Wendy sent of "I'm-a-water-dog" Stoney enjoying the creek:

Wendy wrote, "Stoney has really taken to me (I call her my sidekick) and rarely lets me out of smell range....  Along with knowing how to "sit," she now knows "lay down" and "shake."  She's also become a master of squeezing herself onto the couch even when there is no room for her.  She still loves going to the dog park here in Missoula and hiking up at Blue Mountain.  Her sense of smell and her attachment with me is so great we don't even have to use a leash -- she stays right next to me or a little behind."

And speaking of leashes, Wendy said "Baron has improved greatly on the leash and now understands that when I pull on him, I'm trying to help him!  He's very responsive now and can go for walks just like any dog."

Here's the family photo from Wendy's weekend camping trip with these two very lucky dogs:

Thank you, Wendy!

Whew. Fire Season Is Over.

There's no "official" end to the fire season ... it just depends on the weather, but with all the moisture we've had in recent weeks, the wildfire danger is definitely over for us.  That meant it was time to drain out the water tanks on our fire trailer, which is what we did today.  With a cold front forecast to arrive this weekend -- 16 degrees Friday night, 15 degrees Saturday night and 14 degrees on Sunday night -- we also had to get this done before the water froze and ruptured the tanks and valves.

I have the tractor hooked up to the fire trailer because we have a trailer ball now mounted on the pallet forks -- it quickly unscrews so you can use the forks to move other things -- and this makes it quick and easy to maneuver trailers around the ranch.  No longer do we have to hitch them up to a truck just to move them out of the vehicle shed for something like this, for instance.

In the end, we were very relieved that this year fire season came and went without incident here.   

Rainbow Flat

Although our little valley is called Kleinschmidt Flat ... named after the first settlers out here in the 1800s, the Kleinschmidts, and Flat because ... well, it is pretty flat ... Alayne and I have often wanted to call it Rainbow Flat instead.  That's because we frequently get stunning rainbows that sometimes take your breath away.  There's something about the geography of our valley that makes these so common.

I was over in Widget's House this morning doing the usual Sunday chores -- cleaning, scooping poop, washing dog food bowls -- when Alayne called over on the intercom.  "I think I got your blog photo for today," she said.  "Did you see it?"

I was at the sink at this point, seeing nothing except dog dishes in front of me.  "See what?," I asked.

"The rainbow," she said.  "Right behind us."

I turned and looked through the windows on the north wall of Widget's House but didn't see a rainbow.

"Um, no, I don't see anything."

Alayne said, "Well, I've got it on the camera and I think you'll like it."

When I got back to the house, I uploaded the photos to the computer and there it was -- one of the prettiest rainbows I've seen here.  Usually the rainbows are to the east of us, but this one was due north, and framed by the curving shape of Ovando Mountain right behind it. 

Nice shot, Alayne!