Rolling Dog Farm

Let Me Show You How Much I Love You

We're not sure what it is about blind Goldie, but all of the male Dachshunds we've had over the years have always adored her.  Little Oscar, who we lost a couple of years ago, cherished her the most.  Bailey has since taken over where Oscar left off, and he has become her latest heart-throb.  Whenever we take a few minutes after dinner to sit by the wood stove in the living room, Goldie always comes over to lie down on a bed near Alayne.  That's the moment Bailey's been waiting for, and in seconds he has skittered from his perch in the kitchen and into the living room to be next to Goldie.  He then begins to groom her, carefully and dutifully licking her from one end to the other. 

The funny thing is that Goldie has never returned the Dachshund affection in kind.  Ever.  In fact, she completely ignores her devoted fan club.  She'll even -- on occasion, when she's had quite enough of being groomed, thank you very much -- growl at Bailey to say, "I know you have a crush on me, but that's enough, now beat it." 

Undaunted, Bailey will stop grooming Goldie but then contentedly lie down next to her.  You can see him almost sigh he's so happy to be this close to her.  He just knows she loves him back, even if she doesn't ... well ...  show it. 

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Please keep voting for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in fourth place and still on track to win $3,000 for the animals, but every vote counts!  We just slipped from third place to fourth, so please help round up as many votes as you can so we can stay in the running for the $3,000.  Ask your family and friends to vote for the ranch, too!

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

I Think I'm Getting The Hang Of This

What a difference a month makes.

When Ella arrived here from Louisiana at the end of February, she was so fearful she tried to avoid us at all costs.  She wouldn't come into the house, wouldn't let us get close to her, and wouldn't even come up to eat her meals -- we'd have to put the bowl down and then back away.  Once we had retreated a certain distance, only then would she go up to the bowl and start eating.  Needless to say, we had a lot of work to do with this young lady. 

The biggest help, of course, was just having the other dogs around.  She'd watch them greet us, jump up and down at our feet so we'd pick them up, and see how they would come over to us to be petted and loved.  We saw her watching them do all this, and we could tell that it was beginning to dawn on her that dogs and people naturally enjoyed each other's company!

The breakthrough came one morning when I was trying to get Ella to come in the front door.  She stood about 8 feet away, just off the ramp, clearly wanting to come in but not trusting me enough to walk right past me and through the door.  As I was pondering what to do next, here came blind Madison up the ramp, tail wagging, and eager to get some loving.  I bent down, made all over her, and then she walked through the open door and into the house.

Ella stood there watching this.

In an instant, she hopped onto the ramp and skittered past me into the house.

From that point on, we noticed she was paying a lot of attention to what Madison was doing.  If Madison did it, she would be comfortable doing it.  So over the next few days, if Ella was balking about coming in the door, we'd go get Madison, put her outside, and then call her back indoors.  Ella would follow along right behind her.

We began feeding them next to each other.  Pretty soon Ella stopped running from us when we approached with her food bowl.  She'd still be nervous, with her tail tucked, but she wouldn't go hide.  She'd park herself near Madison and eat her meal.

One day in the living room, I was petting Madison and scratching her ears and making all over her.  The next thing I knew, Ella had gotten up off the dog bed nearby and came over to stand next to Madison ... to get her share of loving!  There I was, making over both of them, side by side.

That was the second breakthrough.

"Madison," I said, "you're a wonderful teacher, old girl!"

Ella has come so far that she now gets jealous if we're petting another dog.  She will come over and shoehorn her way in to make sure she gets a little of it, too. 

She's not 100% yet ... there are still flashes of her old fears and insecurities ... but every day she's more and more like a normal dog.  The "disability in her head" that I wrote about in that first blog post is almost gone.

And you can see from the photo above just how relaxed she now is.  As far as she's concerned, the Dachshunds and Spinner can have the two armchairs -- but the couch is hers!

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I wouldn't know this if TypePad, our blogging service, didn't keep track of such things, but this is my 1,250th blog post.  So this is as good a time as any to announce that I'm going to start posting three days a week rather than five -- Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  Doing these daily blog posts -- photos with narrative -- takes more time than one might realize, and time is the one thing we're chronically short of around here.  So for the immediate future, I'm going to trim back the blogging schedule and see how it goes. 

Speaking of data, how many comments have been posted on the blog?  Would you believe 13,753?  Wow.

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Please keep voting for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in fourth place and still on track to win $3,000 for the animals, but every vote counts!  We just slipped from third place to fourth, so please help round up as many votes as you can so we can stay in the running for the $3,000.  Ask your family and friends to vote for the ranch, too!

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Timmy's Surgery

Just a quick update on Timmy's surgery (no photo, sorry!) -- his leg was amputated yesterday afternoon and he came through the surgery in good shape.  He will be staying at the clinic for the next few days.  Once he fully recovers and comes back home, I know he will be a much happier boy without that leg bothering him.

Also:  Thanks to everyone for all the great comments on Widget.  Funny thing about that photo:  Everyone else saw Widget winking ... except me!  And then, after I read the first couple of comments about her "winking" at us, I went back and looked at that photo again, and sure enough, I could "see" the wink!  Maybe this is a case of being just a little too close to the subject matter!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend, and please keep those votes coming in the Shelter Challenge!

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Please keep voting for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in fourth place and still on track to win $3,000 for the animals, but every vote counts!  We just slipped from third place to fourth, so please help round up as many votes as you can so we can stay in the running for the $3,000.  Ask your family and friends to vote for the ranch, too!

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Cute As She Ever Was

Here's our darling little Widget, after I took her sutures out this morning.  She healed up just fine from her eye surgery last month.  We've thought about getting her an eye patch and having her look like a pirate, because sometimes she acts like a pirate around here!  ("Here, let me help myself to your dinner."  Or:  "Excuse me, I believe that chair is mine.  Now get out.")  But with only one eye instead of two, she's just as cute as ever.

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Please keep voting for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in fourth place and still on track to win $3,000 for the animals, but every vote counts!  We just slipped from third place to fourth, so please help round up as many votes as you can so we can stay in the running for the $3,000.  Ask your family and friends to vote for the ranch, too!

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Roomies

I like to say that "Montana is a small town," because so often you run into situations where you think, what are the odds of that happening?  More often than you'd think in Montana!  For instance, a couple of weeks ago one of our wonderful longtime volunteers, Kate W. in Missoula, was looking for another place to live.  Kate had adopted Luke, a blind Lab, from us a few years ago, so she needed a pet-friendly house or apartment.  After scanning the listings of available housing for a while, she eventually responded to an ad for a room to rent in a house in Missoula ... only to discover that the person who was renting out the room was Wendy M., who had adopted blind Stoney and blind-and-deaf Baron from us a couple of years ago! 

What exactly are the chances of that?

So Kate and Luke moved in with Wendy and her brood last week.  Wendy emailed me to say, "Obviously the first thing Kate and I did was try to get a group shot of Baron, Stoney (she's the one in the bandana), and Luke together.  Trying to get three blind dogs to look in the same direction is impossible!  They all get along great and are sharing toys and bones already."  Good roommates indeed!

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Please keep voting for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in fourth place and still on track to win $3,000 for the animals, but every vote counts!  We just slipped from third place to fourth, so please help round up as many votes as you can so we can stay in the running for the $3,000.  Ask your family and friends to vote for the ranch, too!

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Would You Know This Horse Was Blind?

Back in mid-February, I had dropped off our blind colt Cash at his new boarding school -- oops, boarding stable -- in Missoula.  We had arranged with a trainer, Will Balis, to work with Cash and train him for riding.  Well, Will was riding Cash at the end of his very first week -- even out on pasture!  Barbara Howell, who runs the Flying H Stables where Will trains horses, shot some video the following week and emailed it to me.  (It's taken me this long to get around to editing it down and posting it on YouTube!)  The first time I saw this video of Cash being ridden, I'll admit, I got a lump in my throat.  So many people think a blind horse "isn't good for anything," and yet here is this youngster cantering around an arena like any sighted horse.  In fact, as you'll see when you watch it, you'd never know the horse being ridden was totally blind.

Note:  If the fellow riding Cash looks different from the fellow holding Cash in the February blog post, it's because Will shaved his beard.  Barbara said it was a "winter thing" with Will.  I wonder if it had more to do with the number of comments and emails I received saying how much he and I looked alike.  I suspect that may be what got him to shave his beard.  

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Please keep voting for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in fourth place and still on track to win $3,000 for the animals, but every vote counts!  We just slipped from third place to fourth, so please help round up as many votes as you can so we can stay in the running for the $3,000.  Ask your family and friends to vote for the ranch, too!

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Uh Oh. Now I've Done It.

On Friday morning I was letting the dogs out at Widget's House and had just reached Timmy's crate when I noticed drops of blood on the floor outside his crate door.  As I opened the crate, I could see the paw on his crippled leg was a bloody mess.  He had blood dripping down his mouth and chest, and as he sat there, waiting to spring out of the crate, blood dripped off the paw as he held his leg up in the air.

Hmm.

Once I got him cleaned up, I realized what had happened.  He had started chewing on his foot, a case of self-mutilation.  This development meant only one thing:  That leg was now starting to bother him.  Whether he has odd tingling from nerve sensations (our vets were pretty sure he has radial nerve damage), or it was turning painful, we don't know, but clearly -- and quite suddenly -- it got his attention, and not in a good way. 

I called our vet clinic in Helena and spoke to Dr. Jennifer Rockwell, who had treated Timmy for his heartworms two weeks ago.  We had already planned to have his leg amputated, but because of the heartworm treatment the surgery was postponed for a month or two.  Now we were going to have to do the surgery sooner than expected.  Fortunately, Timmy has tolerated the heartworm treatment very well, and given his age, energy and overall physical condition, his risk profile is lower than it might otherwise be. 

So Jennifer told me what to give him in the way of two different broad-spectrum antibiotics and pain medication, and I explained what I had done to address his wounds and how I bandaged his foot.  Basically, we were going to provide the same level of care for him this weekend that the clinic would have done anyway until they could get surgery scheduled for this coming week. 

To keep him from pulling the bandage off and gnawing on his foot some more, Timmy also got to wear a cone all weekend long.  Now, every time I post a photo of a dog wearing one of these cones, someone always asks whether we know about the soft e-collars and the other assorted ones on the market.  Yes, we do.  And we have them all.  But each type has its purpose and some are more effective than others -- and some don't work at all -- depending on the location of the wound or surgery site.  And clever dogs, for instance, can figure out how to manipulate the soft e-collars and bend them back.  (Which is why Widget gets a hard plastic cone.)  For a highly energetic and intelligent dog like Timmy with a paw wound, the hard plastic e-collar is the best way to keep him from getting to the paw.

The interesting question -- and this is where it would be so helpful if they could talk to us! -- is what changed to cause Timmy to do this?  Did it suddenly start feeling weird?  Did it start to hurt?  I wish we knew.

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Please keep voting for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in fourth place and still on track to win $3,000 for the animals, but every vote counts!  We just slipped from third place to fourth, so please help round up as many votes as you can so we can stay in the running for the $3,000.  Ask your family and friends to vote for the ranch, too!

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

How It's Done

I got these photos a while back and forgot I had them on the computer ... but here is blind-and-deaf Spinner working her way into her favorite chair.  Because she is blind and deaf, and because these chairs are also the favorite of some previously identified snapping Dachshunds (a.k.a. Daisy), she begins the process quite carefully.  By the time I grabbed the camera and started taking photos, I missed capturing phase 1 of the process:  she stands right in front of the chair, sniffing to see if anyone is in it. 

Then she inches closer, sniffs some more, and then puts her front feet in the chair.  At that point she waits a little longer, sniffing left and right:

Finally satisfied that the chair is hers to claim, she starts climbing up:

It takes a moment of circling and smoothing things out to get it just right:

And then it's time for a nap:

Notice that the entire time, the sleeping Dachshund in the other chair, blind Callie, didn't stir.

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To answer Kathleen's question in her blog comment, our spring/summer print newsletter went on the press today in Missoula.  It will be mailed out to our donors in a couple of weeks.

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Please keep voting for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in fourth place and still on track to win $3,000 for the animals, but every vote counts!  We just slipped from third place to fourth, so please help round up as many votes as you can so we can stay in the running for the $3,000.  Ask your family and friends to vote for the ranch, too!

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Up Close And Personal

When Alayne and I were taking photos for the spring newsletter recently, I had to chuckle when I saw this shot after my camera finished uploading the images to my computer.  Blind-and-deaf Gabe is going to be the "cover model" for this next newsletter, though this is not the photo that will be on the cover!  He continues to do great, and other than the hair growth on his face, you'd never know what he had gone through last year.

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Please keep voting for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in fourth place and still on track to win $3,000 for the animals, but every vote counts!  We just slipped from third place to fourth, so please help round up as many votes as you can so we can stay in the running for the $3,000.  Ask your family and friends to vote for the ranch, too!

Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Beagles vs. Dachshunds

As soon as I opened the mail yesterday and saw the cover of my March issue of DVM Newsmagazine ("The voice of veterinary news"), I knew there was going to be trouble.  A small headline said, "page 8:  AKC unveils top breeds."  Now, everyone around here knows that Labs always come in No. 1 in these rankings, year after year (19 in a row, but who's counting?), and no one cares.  "Labs, Schmabs," they say.  What the gang wanted to know, of course, is where the Beagles and Dachshunds ranked.  That's the real competition at the ranch.  So I gathered them round the kitchen table and read off the top 10 list, and when I got to No. 5 -- Beagles! -- there was a lot of celebratory woo-woo-wooing.  And then, mercifully, came the Dachshunds at No. 8.  There was a chorus of little barks from way down there near the floor, but it was pretty subdued compared to the Beagle cheering squad.  They were more than a bit worried that they just barely made it into the top 10.  "How can that be?" they fretted.  "We're so cute and have so much personality, and besides, we're easy to pick up and carry!  Just try lugging a Beagle around."

The Dachshunds don't know what people see in Beagles, and vice versa, but at least they can both agree that they should be more popular than the Labs/Schmabs.

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Please vote for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day!  We're currently in third place -- oops, just slipped to fourth! -- putting us on track to win $3,000 for the animals.  Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!