Rolling Dog Farm

Not A Happy Thanksgiving. Until The End.

We nearly lost blind Widget over the Thanksgiving holiday.  That she survived was one part luck and four parts state-of-the-art, round-the-clock veterinary care.  I took the photo this afternoon of our vet, Dr. Jennifer Rockwell of Montana Veterinary Specialists in Helena, with Widget.  Jennifer spent her holiday saving Widget's life.

And it was something so stupid, and so apparently harmless, as a pack of Trident sugarless chewing gum that nearly killed her.  The lethal ingredient was xylitol, an artificial sweetener used in an increasing number of everyday household products, from chewing gum to toothpaste to store-bought muffins and cookies.  Humans can ingest xylitol with no apparent ill-effects, while it can be fatal to dogs.  Xylitol is, for our canine friends, a poison.  In "routine" cases, xylitol causes hypoglycemia, and in higher doses, it can cause acute liver failure and thus death.  (Its effect on cats is unknown.)

Alayne and I were only vaguely aware that there was some "issue" about dogs and sugarless gum, but we learned from this terrible experience that it's only sugarless gum with xylitol that is the danger.  An incredible danger.

Late on Wednesday afternoon, Alayne heard a racket coming from her closet in our bedroom.  She walked in to find clothes strewn all over the floor, the step-ladder knocked over, and Widget happily smacking her lips.  Widget is what we call a "miner" because she loves to root around in dog crates and closets, under chairs and shelves, always in search of an overlooked dog cookie or something edible.  A surprise treat. 

Alayne thought it was odd Widget was smacking her lips and wondered what on earth she had found in the closet to eat.  She pulled the clothing away and found the packaging from the pack of chewing gum on the floor, with only one stick of gum left.  It was a blueberry-flavored sugarless version of Trident.  It must have fallen out of a purse or a pant pocket.  What's even more a fluke -- here's the irony of this entire story -- is that Alayne typically never buys sugarless gum but the "real thing."  She figures she must have purchased this pack of gum by mistake months ago and never used it because it was the sugarless type. 

It was just pure luck Alayne happened to find Widget in the act.  Otherwise, we would never have known, and an hour or two later, we would have found her in hypoglycemic distress.

Staring at the empty gum packaging, Alayne recalled hearing or reading something about sugarless gum, and we called our vet clinic in Helena right away.  Dr. Jennifer Rockwell asked us to tell her what the ingredients were, and when I read off "xylitol" as the third item, she said, "Uh oh."  She told me to induce vomiting immediately by giving Widget 15 cc's of hydrogen peroxide orally, and then rush her over to the clinic.  (It's at times like this, faced with a medical emergency and a 70-mile drive over mountain passes on two-lane highways, that we could really use a helicopter!)

I filled a syringe with the hydrogen peroxide, propped Widget on my lap, and Alayne held her still while I squirted it into her mouth.  A few minutes later she was vomiting all over the living room floor.  (Linoleum -- no worries!)  I pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and sifted through her vomit, trying to figure out how much gum she had eaten.  All we had was the empty package from the closet, and knowing how many sticks of gum she ate would tell Jennifer the dose of xylitol she had ingested.  As I ran my hands through the wet piles of puke, I could smell an intense odor of ... blueberry.  Dang.  I found multiple pieces of gum fragments, some still in their individual wrappers.  But the blueberry smell was pungent.

Alayne ran to the vehicle shed and brought the truck over to the house while I gathered my coat and other things for the trip.  We put Widget in the back seat and then I drove at a mad clip for Helena.  Of course, this being the evening before Thanksgiving, it was dark and our usually empty rural highways were crowded with holiday traffic.  (Helicopter, anyone?)

Jennifer and her vet techs were waiting for us at the clinic.  The first thing Jennifer did was administer another medication to induce a final round of vomiting, just in case anything was still left in Widget's stomach.  Then she put Widget on IVs with a dextrose drip and began treating her for hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar.

Why hypoglycemia?  As Jennifer explained it to me, for unknown reasons the canine body -- unlike the human body -- interprets the xylitol as exactly the opposite of what it is.  In other words, rather than "reading" it as a sugarless compound, the canine body sees it as an onrush of sugar, or glucose.  This triggers a massive release of insulin to help the body to soak up and use that extra glucose.  Well, there is no extra glucose in the bloodstream, so the insulin release causes the body to absorb the existing normal amount of glucose in the bloodstream.  Suddenly the animal is at dangerously low levels of blood sugar, which can cause shock and seizures and, if untreated, send the animal into a coma and even death.

But Jennifer told me it would be a couple of days before we knew if Widget would survive.  That's because in some cases, dogs can develop acute liver failure from xylitol ingestion, but the first signs to show up -- in elevated liver enzymes -- don't necessarily appear until 12 to 24 hours, and sometimes even later.  Only until we still had normal liver enzyme levels 48 hours post-ingestion could we start to breathe easier.  Jennifer calculated that based on the amount of gum we think Widget ate -- xylitol was the third ingredient, not the first one, listed on the Trident packaging, which means a lower dose -- Widget was at 0.5 g/kg of xylitol, right at the threshold for risk of liver failure.

Jennifer also began treating Widget with therapies for liver support as a precaution, and she stayed up with Widget throughout Wednesday night.  From then on, we anxiously awaited Jennifer's daily call with the latest CBC and chem panel results.  But not until Saturday, when Widget's liver enzymes were still normal, could Jennifer tell us, "I think our little girl is going to be okay."

This morning, at 10 a.m., Jennifer called to say, "Widget is ready to go home today!"  We left her at the clinic for a few more hours to continue weaning her off the IV fluids she has been on since Wednesday evening (too abrupt a withdrawal can make the kidneys unhappy), and I told Jennifer I would meet her at the clinic in Helena at 2 p.m. this afternoon.  But I asked her to tell Widget we saved some Thanksgiving dinner for her!

This post is already too long, so rather than getting into more detail on xylitol poisoning in dogs, here are links to two articles on this subject from reputable veterinary sources.  I would definitely recommend you read these yourself and then give a copy to your vet.  The dangers of xylitol poisoning, and how to treat it, are still not widely known, even in the vet community.

New findings on the effects of xylitol ingestion in dogs.  This is the definitive article from the journal Veterinary Medicine, December 2006, by Eric K. Dunayer, MS, VMD, DABT, DABVT.  This is the one your vet needs.  It has treatment protocols in it.  Dr. Dunayer is a board-certified veterinary toxicologist at the ASPCA's Animal Poison Control Center and the leading expert on this subject.  He also authored a paper on xylitol and liver failure in dogs that appeared in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association in 2006.  While that paper is not publicly available online, it is excerpted in this Veterinary Medicine article.

Xylitol toxicosis.  This is a Web page from VeterinaryPartner.com, which is owned by the Veterinary Information Network, or VIN, the veterinary community's online forum for sharing the latest in medical knowledge.  Written by Carlye Rose DVM, DABVP, it has a graph showing the dramatic rise in xylitol poisoning reported to the Animal Poison Control Center -- from 711 cases in 2006, to 1,944 in 2007, and to an estimated 4,000 cases in 2008!  Widget will be one of those cases.

This last article has a final line that is worth highlighting:

Xylitol poisoning is preventable. Xylitol-containing foods or gums should not be consumed in pet-owning households.

I took this photo of Widget enjoying her special welcome-home Thanksgiving dinner this evening:

And Jennifer, bless her heart, is finally going to have her Thanksgiving celebration tonight, too.  It's been a long five days for all of us!

Sleek and Svelte. Or Maybe Not.

I got this photo of our blind Dachshund Callie on a cot in our living room the other afternoon.  Callie has been on a diet ever since she arrived here as an overly plump girl, and even though we've reduced her weight, she's still rather ... well, expansive.  (Yes, we've tested her for thyroid and other medical issues.)  But she has lost quite a few pounds in recent months, and it's as if she wanted to show us what she thought was her new sleek and svelte figure.  Callie realizes blind Widget has so far won the weight loss competition and maybe she just wanted to prove how many pounds she's shed. 

I will admit, I did a double-take when I saw her on the cot looking so slim, and that's why I went to get the camera.  I had never seen her looking quite so slender.

Alas, then she rolled over on her side, and ... something changed:

Apparently we have a few more pounds to go.

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We're going to take a blogging break for the rest of this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday.  Next post will be for Monday, December 1st.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Have You Seen My Hay?

We've just started bringing the horses in from pasture in the past few days.  Typically we bring them in on November 1st because by then both the condition of the grasses and the weather mean grazing season is over.  But we had phenomenal forage conditions this year (lots of moisture plus fertilizer), and so far we only have a skiff of snow on the ground, so we've been able to leave the horses out about three weeks longer than usual.

And we're not done yet.  We have the sighted horses and six of the blind ones still left out on pasture because the paddocks they're in are ones we rested until late summer (meaning we didn't graze them until then), so they have plenty of grass to eat.  This time of year the grass is pretty much what we call "standing hay," but it keeps them out of the corrals and not eating the expensive stuff we call "purchased hay"!

I took the photo above this afternoon of two of our blind horses, Luna and Bridger, eating hay from a horse feeder made from a converted tractor tire.  They were among the horses we brought in on Friday because their paddocks had been grazed enough.  But if we can keep the others out on pasture for at least another week, that will be a full extra month of free eating!

Little Joe

Cristene J., who adopted Shep -- our blind German Shepherd from Afghanistan -- last month, emailed us these photos last week.  Cristene and her husband Duane have renamed Shep "Little Joe," which we thought was a perfect name for our "pocket Shepherd."

We all kind of figured Cristene and Duane's other Rolling Dog Ranch adoptee, three-legged Kasha, would shepherd (so to speak) the newbie around their place, but guess who attached himself to Little Joe instead?  None other than Arnold, the family's miniature Dachshund.  That's Arnold resting his chin on Little Joe's back in the photo above.  Cristene says Arnold has fallen in love with this blind boy.

I've posted before on an odd phenomenon we've seen a lot of here, which is large dogs preferring to sleep in ridiculously small beds.  I don't know if Little Joe picked up this habit at the ranch and took it with him to his new home, but here he is commandeering a cat bed as his own:

Judging from the number of people who have read our blog posts about this behavior and told us their dogs do the same thing, it is clear we are not alone in witnessing this canine preference for undersized beds!

Sun Worshipper

Alayne got this shot a few minutes ago this afternoon.  That's blind-and-deaf Granny (Duchess) doing her sun worshipper thing.  I've mentioned before that Granny loves to be outside, more so than nearly all of our other dogs, as long as the sun is out.  Today was a fairly brisk fall day, and contrary to the forecast, we ended up with some very nice sunshine.  That brought Granny outside, and she has an uncanny knack for finding the warmest place to be -- in this case, right against the door of Kelly's Cottage.  She was clearly enjoying soaking in the sun and having the white door reflect it back onto her.  This is a classic pose for her, too -- chin up, ears out sideways, little black nose pointed straight at the sun.

You Take The Front End And I'll Take The Back End

Alayne got this shot of Oliver and Twist the Dachshunds roughhousing with blind Austin the Beagle.  These threesomes are an ever-changing loop of chaos, with the role of who's-on-top shifting constantly.  In this case, Oliver is getting it from both ends in what might seem to be a coordinated flanking assault -- but in reality is more likely to be sheer fleeting happenstance.  You'd think the blind dog might be at a disadvantage in a melee like this, but as the photo shows, Austin is on his feet (for the moment, anyway) while Oliver has been rolled over.  And it's hard to get up when your best friend, Twist, has your leg in his mouth!

Austin loves to roughhouse with anyone who will join in the fray, but his favorite wrestling buddies are definitely these two characters, Oliver and Twist.

The Last Chemo

I headed into Missoula today for the weekly errand run to town, but the "main event" was taking blind Goldie to see our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Dave Bostwick, for her last chemo treatment.  After surgery to remove a mast cell tumor back in August, Goldie started a long course of chemotherapy that required a total of eight treatments.  I took the photo this morning of Dave administering the chemo while his vet tech Tracy holds Goldie.

Dave had told us then that he'd never had a dog become sick from this particular chemo drug, vinblastine, and Goldie kept Dave's track record perfect.  Not once did she ever show any side-effects or even become lethargic.  In fact, she always got so excited whenever we pulled up to Dave's clinic that I liked to joke we'd never seen any dog look forward to chemotherapy as much as Goldie.

We also realize just how blessed we are, because the type of chemo drug can make all the difference in the world.  In Goldie's case, we were lucky.  Other dogs with different kinds of tumors require chemo drugs that can really take a toll on the animal.

Goldie will stay on prednisone for another three months, and then she'll be completely off any medication for her cancer. 

For now, we're putting this one in the "win" column!

Margaret Makes It To Capitol Hill

A week ago, I wrote a blog post about Margaret's ambitions to become the Obama family's new First Pet.  Well, Margaret's campaign for the White House made it all the way to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., today.

Roll Call, a newspaper that covers the innerworkings of the U.S. Congress and is widely read by members of Congress, their staffs, lobbyists, corporate government relations executives and others who follow Congress closely, published a story on Margaret in their Monday issue.  It appeared in their "Heard on the Hill" column that starts on page 1, and the item on Margaret ran in the rest of the column that continued on page 20.  That's it above.  (Click on the image for a larger version.)  The headline is about another topic in the column.

This started when Randi S., one of our fabulous supporters in Washington, D.C., emailed our blog post to a staff writer at Roll Call early last week.  I didn't think more of it until the phone rang on Friday morning, and I found myself talking with a reporter from the paper.  After getting off the call, I emailed the reporter the photos from the blog post, and lo and behold, look what showed up in Roll Call!

The caption for the photo reads, "As the Obama family contemplates what kind of puppy to bring with them to the White House, Margaret the Goat of Ovando, Mont., campaigns for a place in the Obama administration. Maybe if Montana had voted Democratic..."

The story reads:

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The Obama Scapegoat? While D.C. insiders squabble over who will get the Secretary of State gig in the Obama administration (yawn), most of the country has been enthralled over a more pressing question — which breed of dog will the future first family pick?

But in a town that’s all about competing interest groups, nothing is ever that simple, and now there’s another four-legged creature lobbying to be First Pet.

Margaret the Goat lives at the Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary in Ovando, Mont. While most of the residents at the nonprofit sanctuary are disabled dogs and cats, Margaret came to the ranch on work duty, assigned to eat pesky out-of-control weeds, ranch overseer Steve Smith tells HOH. But instead, Margaret ignored her duties to hang out with the staff.

“She is more like a dog than a goat. She follows people all over the place,” Smith says. “She goes for a walk down to the mailbox to get the mail with you.”

With her friendly disposition (and entitled I-don’t-want-to-work nature), Margaret would make a perfect White House pet, Smith argues. To get the word out, Smith posted an item on the ranch’s blog about Margaret, writing that there’s precedent: Former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Harrison both kept goats at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Even if Margaret doesn’t make it to Washington, Smith says he’s just happy that the Obamas plan to get a rescue dog rather than a pet from a breeder. He even offered up Molly and Priscilla, two blind standard poodles who live at the ranch, noting that they are hypoallergenic.

“There are absolutely wonderful animals in shelters today that would make terrific family pets,” Smith says. “We were just thrilled that the Obamas decided they were going to adopt.”

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Meanwhile, Margaret spent the day expecting CNN to call any minute and is surprised they haven’t yet.

The Blind Boys Start Their New Life

Last Thursday I drove to our vet clinic in Helena to get Buddy and Jake, the two blind dogs who arrived from Nashville on November 6th.  After picking them up at the airport in Bozeman that day, I had taken them to our vets for medical checks, eye exams, and blood panels.  After a week at the clinic, it was finally time to bring them home to the ranch.  We put them in our isolation cottage and yard for their first few days here, to give them a chance to acclimate themselves and get acquainted with us.

Between their stay in the private boarding kennel in Nashville and the time spent at our vet clinic, we figured they had already completed a two-week quarantine period after getting out of Metro Animal Control in Nashville.  (We typically isolate our new arrivals for two weeks for health reasons.)  So today, on a quiet Sunday, we were ready to let them out to start exploring and meeting some of the other animals. 

Alayne and I walked them over to a large 1/2 acre (.20 hec) yard that sits between our house and the various yards around Widget's House, our main dog building.  I took the photo above of Alayne with Buddy on the left and Jake on the right this afternoon.  I managed to get those adorable simultaneous head tilts by making ridiculous high-pitched squeaking noises from behind the camera.  (Alayne does not respond to those noises.)

Our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver of Montana Veterinary Specialists, determined they are both blind from a retinal atrophy.  In addition, Buddy's right retina is starting to detach, which Brenda thought she detected with the slit-lamp and confirmed with an ultrasound of his eye.  But at this point both dogs have comfortable eyes -- their intraocular pressures (IOP) were normal -- and there's nothing we need to do besides continue to monitor them.  Down the road we may see other changes, like cataracts developing, but for right now they're fine.  Their blood work, Brenda said, looked great.

The boys had a wonderful time this afternoon exploring their new yard and doing the usual "getting-to-know-you" introductions across the fence.  Here's Buddy meeting that other southern hound dog, Trooper from Louisiana -- please note how high both tails went up:

Since Trooper can see, all the blind dogs at Widget's House were hounding him (so to speak) for a full report on the new arrivals -- looks, size, breed, coloring, etc.  The blind Poodle sisters from Texas, Molly and Priscilla, had only one question on their mind:  "Just how cute are these new boys?"  (They might be getting a little bored with their two-timing Cajun boyfriend.)

After some more introductions at the fence, off they went to check things out:

Here's a close-up of Jake:

Both dogs are very, very skinny, so we've got some serious weight gain to work on with them.  This next shot gives you a better idea of how thin Jake really is.  Yikes, look at those ribs:

And this one will show you how skinny Buddy is (click on image for a larger version):

That's blind Babe from Washington state in the background on the left, and Trooper is on the right -- no doubt nervously keeping an eye on the potential competition in the yard next door.

Both dogs are very sweet, and as you can see in this last photo, Jake was ready to give some kisses during the photo session with Alayne:

Thanks to the efforts of Simone R. in Washington, D.C., and the attorneys in D.C. and Nashville, these blind boys finally got the chance to start their new life here in Montana.

Wait, I Thought This Was A Bed

Alayne and I had just gotten up from the dinner table the other evening when we saw blind Callie start climbing into the toy box in the living room.  Now, this was something we had never seen a dog do before.  And for good reason.  For starters, it's hard to climb into, with high metal sides that bend outwards from the base.  It's even more insurmountable (or so we thought) for a short-legger like Callie, because the box is quite a bit taller than she is.

But as we stood there watching, puzzled, she continued to maneuver her way into it, first with her front paws on the rim and then pulling herself up over the edge and into it.  We wondered what she was doing, and then it occurred to us she must have momentarily become confused and thought it was a bed.  Callie isn't into toys, so we knew she wasn't doing this to get a favorite plaything.   Frankly, neither one of us thought she could actually hoist herself all the way into it, and moreover, we figured she would suddenly realize what it was and quit midway. 

We were wrong. 

Over the top she went! 

I zoomed into the office to get the camera.

As soon as she landed inside the toy box, she realized her mistake.  She instantly had this odd look on her face.  "Oops!  This isn't what I thought it was!" 

She milled around on top of the toys, determined where her four corners were and the size of the box, and confirmed her navigation error.  We could see the Dachshund version of a worried, furrowed brow develop on her face.  "Dang.  How embarrassing.  Definitely not a bed."  I don't think it helped that she knew we were standing there watching her.

Now she turned her attention to trying to get out of the toy box.

Not wanting to prolong her embarrassment, and not wanting to have her jump out of the box, Alayne scooped her up and set her on the floor.  Mustering as much dignity as she could, Callie waddled off in search of the real thing.