Rolling Dog Farm

Excuse Me, I'm No Wobbler

This is what we're doing right now to contain our fence-jumper, Travis -- he's spending most of the day in the "wobbler den" on the front porch of Widget's House.  When we let him out in the morning, he gets to race around the yards while we're over there scooping poop and doing laundry and washing the dog dishes.  That way we can keep an eye on the rascal.  Then we put him up in the pen when we leave.  We turn him loose for another hour or two in the afternoon when we head back for the evening chores.  And he gets one more chance to run his steeplechase course when we let him out again for the final "pit stop" before bedtime.

Smokey, our little wobbler, loves being outside in the snow during the day -- it's soft enough that tumbling over in this stuff is kind of like landing on a pillow.  (Smokey's brother Charlie is no longer with us.  Sadly, we had to euthanize him last fall because of a progressive nervous system disorder that was unrelated to his cerebellar hypoplasia.)  So while Smokey wobbles around in the snow, Travis gets to stay in the wobbler den.  He doesn't think it's fair but then, as we tell him, who said life was fair?

We need the snow to melt about, oh, another foot before we can let this scamp have free rein again. 

Blowhard

A mild spring snowstorm yesterday morning turned into a roaring blizzard in the afternoon and lasted until about 8 p.m.  After sustained winds as high as 25 mph (40 kph) coming from due north, we were left with snowdrifts piled up around the ranch in new and interesting places.  When the winds suddenly quit yesterday evening, I headed down the drive towards Widget's House to let the dogs out and found myself knee-deep in snow.  I decided not to go back to get the snowshoes and continued trudging the 100 yards towards the Widget's House gate, which I then had to dig open using the grain shovel we leave there for this purpose.  By the time I finally got to the building, I had some really full bladders waiting for me and some dogs who were wondering, "What on earth took you so long?"

Our typical snowstorms come from the northwest or northeast, and because our main drive runs east-west, the wind generally blows the snow down the drive, leaving it mostly passable.  But with a straight north wind, our drive ended up as little more than a trench buried in snow.  Because the air temperature was still relatively warm -- just about freezing -- the snow was wet and heavy.  (We call it "Cascade concrete," like the snow we used to see when we lived in Washington state.)

Thus I knew last night how I would start off today:  on the tractor, using the snowblower to open up the drive.  Right after breakfast, I fired up the tractor and headed down the drive, chewing my way through the snow towards the Widget's House gate.  (Hey, I didn't want to have to walk through all that again!)  Alayne came out with the camera to get this shot of the arc of snow coming out of the machine.  By this point I had already made one pass down the drive and was on my way back.

More snow in the forecast for tomorrow and tomorrow night.  Sigh.

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The Travis "confinement solution" will now appear in the next blog post!

My Jaw Can't Move But My Legs Sure Can

I was over at Widget's House scooping poop on Friday and watched Travis racing back and forth between the yards, literally leaping over the fences as he went.  He was showing off for me, and how better than to take advantage of the deep snow to run a steeplechase course around the building?  Travis is an exceptionally athletic and agile dog, and having a fused jaw doesn't slow him down one bit.

I set the pooper scooper shovels aside and went into Widget's House to get the camera.  Outside, I called Travis over, pointed to the nearest fence, and said, "Okay, go for it!"  And he did.  He'd take off on a dead run for the fence, leap over it, hit the snowcover, run about 20 more feet, then stop and spin around to look at me.  His face had an expression that said, "Well, how was that?"  As he cleared the fence, I'd click the shutter.

Not sure if I got the photo I wanted, I'd say to him, "Okay, let's do it again!" and he'd zoom back over the fence for me.  I had him do this four times until I was satisfied I had the photo, though he was happy to keep obliging.  Yes, he likes to show off!

His ability to leap fences when the snow is this deep is clearly a "confinement issue" in winter, since he does like to get out and take off if he sees an opportunity when unsupervised.  In tomorrow's post, I'll show you our current "confinement solution" for this boy.

Update on Callie's Radiation Therapy

Alayne and I are just blown away by the outpouring of support for Callie.  Oh my goodness!  As of this afternoon, between donations that have come in online and from checks we've received in the mail already this week, and from commitments we know about for gifts coming next week -- we now have enough funds to pay for all of Callie's radiation treatment at WSU! 

That is amazing.  It is hard to express just how incredibly grateful we are for all of these generous gifts for our little blind girl.  We are so touched.  Thank you!!!

Callie is now scheduled for her initial consultation at WSU on Monday, April 13th, with her first radiation the following day.  The delay is because the oncologist who does the radiation treatment is out of the country until then, and there is no one else at WSU who can do it besides this one person.  But our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Dave Bostwick, believes there is no harm in waiting until then since we are currently treating her with the phenobarbital and prednisone.

On behalf of Callie, thank you so much!

Bunny The Dog

We just received a wonderful email update with these photos from Tia and Karl M., who adopted Bunny our three-legged cat last summer.  They have taken to calling Bunny their "4th dog," for reasons that are clear from the photos.

Tia wrote, "Shadow, our 10-year old, was playing in the yard and tore his doggy ACL.  He had surgery 2 weeks ago and with a lot of babying, is recovering nicely.  Needless to say, Bunny likes to mother him and lay on him whenever she gets the chance.  She thinks she is a dog...really!  She lays with our other dogs too.  They are her "pack."  Never has she ever laid next to any of our other 2 cats, at least not very close!  But she has started cleaning Mia, our little kitty with cancer, since she's been sick...but, just like a cat, only when Mia allows her to!  Bunny...always the doting mother!"

I think these pictures tell the full story of Bunny the dog:

Tia reports that Bunny -- or Little Bun-Bun, as they also call her -- always sleeps with her feet pointed out:

Apparently there's no such thing as too much togetherness:

This is Bunny sleeping under the lamp with one of Tia and Karl's other dogs:

Why not share yourself with two dogs:

Okay, how about three:

Thank you, Tia and Karl!

Hey, Who Let All The Snow In Here?

It was finally warm enough the other day to open the cat house window to let the adventuresome ones wander out into their enclosure.  It was the first time in months they'd had a chance to go outside.  Blind Herbie, as usual, heard the window open and zoomed right out.

But then, almost immediately, he realized the enclosure was still packed with snow.  Lots of it.  So he sat on the outdoor cat trees and pondered the situation.  And pondered some more.  He went from one cat tree to the other, sitting on each in turn, trying to decide whether he really wanted to wade out into all that mushy white stuff. 

You can see in the photo how the weight of the snow sliding off the roof has pushed the fencing down that seals off the top of the enclosure.  Fortunately that back section of fencing overlaps with the front section by a few feet -- it's hard to tell from this angle -- so Herbie the climber can't take advantage of the gap to get through it, but it's one of those maintenance jobs we'll have to do once it stops snowing.

After taking this photo, Herbie realized I wasn't going to dig my way into the enclosure and then shovel out all the snow for him, so he zipped back through the open window and called it quits for the day.

The Big Melt

Our snowpack is finally starting to melt -- we call this time of year "The Big Melt."  I took this photo of our drive on Sunday afternoon, and then we woke up Monday morning to three inches of new snow on the ground and a drive that had disappeared.  But the three inches has melted away, the drive is visible again, and that pond is even bigger today. 

The Big Melt happens in fits and starts, because new spring snowstorms keeping adding some new stuff on top ... like the three inches yesterday and the three to five inches of snow we're forecast to get tomorrow.  How fast it melts depends not just on daytime temperatures but also on how cold it gets at night.  We're forecast to be at 13 degrees tomorrow night (-10 C) and 7 degrees (-13 C) Thursday night.  When it gets that cold, it obviously takes longer to warm up enough the following day to resume melting.

By the time we get to this point in late March, we are really, really ready for spring.  The songbirds have returned, the geese are flying north overhead, the days are getting warmer, and the evenings are staying lighter longer -- but there's still almost two feet of snow out there.  Scooping poop right now is also rather annoying, since we're often sinking down up to our knees -- and sometimes to our thighs, if a dog has helpfully pooped on top of a snowdrift -- because the snow is all mushy and still deep.

At the same time, the later the snow stays on the ground, the better it is for the pastures.  But while the grass farmer in us appreciates a long, slow melt, the other part of us would really like it to hurry up!

Foxy Lady

I got this shot out the dining room window at breakfast a couple of days ago -- that's "our" fox in the process of making her morning rounds. (To be honest, we don't know her gender but for some reason we've decided she's a she.)  Just about dawn, she emerges from somewhere and heads down the drive towards our house, goes around the barns, comes through the corrals, then loops behind the vehicle shed and back through the pastures behind our house and Widget's House before disappearing again.

A few months ago we were distraught to see her limping and holding her left rear leg up in the air.  Even with the binoculars we couldn't tell what the problem was -- whether she'd had it caught in a trap, been shot at, or suffered some other kind of trauma.  Of course, our instinct was to do something to help her, but Fish & WIldlife Department regulations don't permit that sort of thing, and you have to accept that nature is going to run the show. 

As it turned out, as the weeks went by her limp began to decrease and she started putting her leg down, though it's clear she still has a leg problem of some sort because of her gait.  But her life will get a lot easier once the snow is gone.  Every year we have a family of fox kits born on the property, and we hope this year is no different.

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Callie Update:  As of this afternoon, we've received $1,695 in online gifts towards Callie's medical fund, and we've heard from a number of folks who have put checks in the mail for her -- wow!  Thank you!

Callie's Radiation Treatment

Our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Dave Bostwick, heard back from the oncologist at Washington State University's veterinary teaching hospital on Friday afternoon.  The cost of the radiation treatment for her brain tumor is steep -- the oncologist estimated it would be in the $3,800 to $4,200 range -- and it would take a total of 18 to 20 "fractions," or doses, spread over a three-week time span.  Because the radiation doses are administered every other day or so, we would leave Callie at the WSU vet hospital for the three-week duration.  It would be early April before they could take Callie, although Dave was not concerned about the wait because we are managing her seizures in the meantime with phenobarbital and prednisone.

If we can give this little girl an extra three years or more, we think it's worth doing, so Alayne and I decided we're going to proceed with the treatment.  Some people have already made donations towards her care in the past few days, and others have offered to help -- and for all of which, we are so incredibly grateful!  If you'd like to make a gift towards Callie's treatment, you can make an online donation at our secure Web page here or by mailing a check to the ranch at 400 Rolling Dog Ranch Lane, Ovando, Montana, 59854.  Please mark your donation for Callie so we can put it towards her medical fund.

Thank you!

It's A Brain Tumor

We found out yesterday evening that blind Callie does indeed have a brain tumor.  A large one.  In this vertical view of her head from the CAT scan image, it's the bright glowing thing at the base of her brain at the front end.  (The dark area in the center of her brain is the cerebral fluid.)

That's the bad news.  The good news is that our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Dave Bostwick, believes radiation therapy offers some real hope.  When I drove back into Missoula late yesterday to pick up Callie after the scan, Dave told me, "Her blood work is perfect, she's in otherwise excellent health, and given her breed, she could easily live another three years.  So I think she's an excellent candidate for radiation therapy."  (We don't know how old she is, but our working assumption is that she may be around 12.)

Dave said that her tumor is most likely a meningioma, which are generally benign -- and if you can shrink it down with radiation, you relieve the pressure inside the brain that is triggering the seizures.  He said that oncologists generally have a high success rate treating these kinds of brain tumors with radiation. 

So Dave has a call into the oncologist at Washington State University's veterinary teaching hospital this morning to find out about the cost and other details of the treatment.  We'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, after I got home last night with Callie, she ate her dinner and then methodically began going around the house, grooming her "clients" like blind Briggs.  She was a little put-out with us because she had all these grooming appointments scheduled for yesterday but spent the day in the clinic instead.  She tried to make up for it after dinner with some "speed grooming."  (I think that's like speed-dating, just different.)

To see a larger version of the scan, click on the image.