Rolling Dog Farm

Firewood

One of the reasons we wanted to move to this property in New Hampshire was to have our own woodlot.  Because we heat the buildings with wood, providing firewood for ourselves was an important step towards becoming more self-sufficient.  Since we moved mid-year, we didn't have the time to put up our own firewood, let alone get it seasoned, so this winter's supply came from our wonderful neighbor and friend, Jim D.  (He's the one who built all the ramps on the house for the dogs.) 

At the moment we are working our way through 12 cords of wood from Jim's adjacent property.  A cord is a stack of cut logs four feet high, four feet deep and eight feet wide (1.2 m x 1.2 m x 2.4 m).  We're realizing it probably isn't going to be enough!

Thanksgiving weekend was our first chance to get out and start bringing in our own trees, so Alayne and I scouted around looking for recently downed timber that we could reach with the tractor.  I do not yet have the skills or knowledge to bring down trees with a chainsaw -- we have a lot to learn in that respect, and for the bigger stuff we'll hire someone to take them down for us -- but for the moment there are a lot of trees already on the ground that just need to be hauled out so we can cut them up. 

Part of this property was logged in the year before we bought it, and much of that ground we've now had cleared and seeded for additional pasture, but there's plenty of timber left on the ground that will be excellent firewood.  Our goal this first winter is to get as much of that out as we can.  What we can't reach with our tractor Jim will help us get with his skidder, a piece of logging equipment designed for this purpose.

We have a huge amount of timber still standing and growing all over the property ... acres and acres of woods, and thick stands in need of thinning, too.  But we'd like to use as much of the downed timber as we can while it's still good for firewood (i.e., before it begins rotting on the forest floor).

Alayne took these shots on Sunday afternoon while we were pulling a tree out.  This is one of several we got over the weekend.  In this shot I'm attaching a chain from the tree to the backhoe on the tractor:

As I get in the tractor, I'm double-checking the angle that I will need to drag the tree through to keep it from getting hung up on other downed trees and brush: 

I've started to pull forward very slowly, gradually increasing the tension on the chain:

You can see how tight that chain is now:

And down the lane we go:

This lane runs north-south, and is about 100 yards west of the buildings.  I'm driving the tractor north, towards the road we live on.  The lane ends where the newly cleared pasture begins to the south.

It was a modest haul this weekend, but it felt really good to finally start bringing in our own wood!

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Still 2nd place -- but it's close!  Contest ends December 19th.

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge -- the votes are adding up!  And remember, you can vote every day, so consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.

 It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Pre-wash

This is able-bodied Holly, who recently began helping us with the dishwashing chores by doing the "pre-wash" on the dog dishes.  Holly slips into the dog room, picks up the dishes still in crates with her mouth, brings them out, sets them down, and then methodically licks them clean.  This is not to be confused with Widget's mining, in which she is in single-minded pursuit of edible treasure.  To Widget, licking bowls doesn't seem particularly rewarding or worth her time.  To Holly, it's a divine task. 

Notice that while Holly could lay the bowl down on the wood floor, she's choosing to put it on the dog bed instead:

And then she settles in for a thorough licking:

She has, in this case, picked up Travis' bowl, which is usually still pretty covered with the leftovers from his liquid slurpy dinner.  Yum.

It turns out I did post Holly's story on the blog way back in January 2007 here.  What I didn't say in that post was that Holly had come to us in 2006 as a semi-feral stray along with her brother, who looked exactly like her.  We had named him Buddy (get it?  Buddy Holly?), and a few months after they arrived, we "traded" Buddy to a local Montana shelter that had asked us to take an older blind dog named Bud.  (No, really.)  We were holding the line on our numbers, so this was a good deal all the way around, and the shelter was happy to get a cute, young, adoptable dog and send us their elderly disabled one. 

A few weeks later we got a call from a family that had just adopted Buddy from that shelter, and they'd heard we still had his sister.  They loved Buddy and wanted to know if they could adopt her as well.  I said, "You know, that would be terrific, why don't you come out next weekend and meet us and Holly?"

Pleased as punch, I went outside to find Alayne and tell her the great news.

I was met with an ice-cold stare.

"Um, did you hear me?  We've got Holly adopted!"

Silence.  Uh oh.  The frosty look told me I had really screwed up.  But how?

"We can't adopt out Holly," she said.

Completely befuddled, I said, "Say what?"

It turned out that Miss Marker had become very attached to this dog, and was not about to adopt her out.  This was news to me.  (Uh, clearly.)  She also thought that Holly would upset things with Buddy's new family, because the two of them together were a real handful -- a lot of noisy energy feeding off each other.  They could sound like an entire coyote pack.

I said -- being a bottom-line kind of guy -- that Holly wasn't disabled and thus didn't need to be here, but that if she stayed, she wasn't going to count towards our limit.  I insisted, "We aren't going to turn away a disabled dog because Holly being here keeps us at our limit.  If she stays, she doesn't count."  This was really throwing down the gauntlet, because Miss Marker was the taskmaster when it came to enforcing the numbers.

Being an attorney, though, black is never really black and white is never really white (gray, anyone?), and I knew she was going to try and find a way around this.  But I had given her a binary choice, and I wasn't sure how she was going to respond.

The frosty look continued, and without saying another word, she walked off in a huff. 

Hmm. 

About ten minutes later, Miss Marker returned.  She looked at me -- I would like to say lovingly, but that wasn't it -- and muttered between clenched teeth:  "Okay, she doesn't count."

That was an enormous concession on her part, and though I had sort of "won," it didn't feel like a win.  Perhaps because she was still glowering at me.

In any case, that's how Holly got to stay.

I called the family back and told them that, to borrow an expression, "What we have here is a failure to communicate...."

Miss Marker and Holly have continued to be quite the devoted pair over the years.  The disorder they create (which I wrote about in that original blog post) still follows in their wake, and years ago led me to start calling the two of them "Miss Mayhem, Director of Camp Run-a-mok, and her assistant, Sister Chaos."

Needless to say, I was delighted to see Holly pick up a quiet, solitary hobby like dishwashing.

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Still 2nd place -- but it's close!  Contest ends December 19th.

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge -- the votes are adding up!  And remember, you can vote every day, so consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.

 It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Radio Interview On WAMU In Washington, D.C.

I almost forgot!  Alayne taped a radio interview with the NPR station in Washington, D.C. -- WAMU 88.5 -- a couple of weeks ago and it is going to air on the station's Animal House program this Saturday, Nov. 27, at 12 noon Eastern time.  The show's producer told me this morning that the audio of the interview will also be posted on their website here, so you can listen to it online as well.  The audio will stay up on their site for several days.

[Please note:  If you can't get the audio file to run, I can't help or troubleshoot any issues.]

Happy Rolling ... Er, Thanksgiving!

Alayne got these shots a few days ago of Holly, one of our two non-disabled dogs, rolling in the front yard on a beautiful sunny fall morning.  Holly thought she might fit in better at the Rolling Dog Ranch if she perfected the art of rolling in pure happiness. 

I don't think we've told Holly's story on the blog in a long time, so I will in an upcoming blog post.  Holly has developed a new and peculiar habit since coming to New Hampshire ... something that happens after Widget gets done mining.  Alayne recently took some photos of Holly pursuing this new interest, so I will share Holly's story when we post those photos next week.

I'm going to take a blog break until Monday in light of the long holiday weekend, so from all of us at the sanctuary, Happy Thanksgiving!

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Still 2nd place -- but it's close! Keep those votes coming over the holiday weekend!

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge -- the votes are adding up!  And remember, you can vote every day, so consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.

 It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Suzi Gets Adopted!

Another amazing happy ending!

In response to our October email newsletter, I received an email from Marcia S., a long-time supporter of the sanctuary who lives in Connecticut.  She wrote, "I am so excited that you have moved closer to us and I would love to adopt a handicapped or blind dog, particularly a Cocker spaniel." 

As luck would have it, at that point we had just agreed to take Suzi from the Michigan rescue group, so I wrote Marcia back and said, "We have a blind Cocker coming from Michigan in a couple of weeks named Suzi ... has had both eyes surgically removed because she was blind and in pain, but she’s doing fine now.  Very pretty little thing.  She’ll be here about mid-November, and you can check the blog then for news about her arrival."

On Wednesday, the day after I posted Suzi on the blog, Marcia emailed me to say, "I have fallen in love with Suzi!," and asked if she could adopt her.

Well, exactly one week after she arrived at the sanctuary, Suzi left today for her wonderful new home in Connecticut!  I took the photo this afternoon just before Marcia and Suzi hit the road for the trip back. 

Marcia volunteered for the service dog organization Guiding Eyes for the Blind for 10 years, raising and fostering dogs for them, and has three "retired" Labs from the organization, so you can see why she had a natural affinity for our little blind Cocker.  As she told us today, it will be interesting to see if any of her service dogs "pick up" on the fact that Suzi is blind and take to guiding her around!

And so one more angel has entered Suzi's life.  Wow. 

Marcia, thank you so much for bringing Suzi into your family ... and a special thanks again to Anne, who rescued her, and to Lisa, who paid for Suzi's transport from Michigan to New Hampshire. 

The only downside to this is blind Briggs was a bit dismayed that his new girlfriend was already leaving.  "What?!?  She just got here!," he moaned.  We assured him another girl would be coming soon, no doubt.  That's all he needed to hear.  (He's not picky.)

Here's another photo of Suzi we took yesterday ... I think our spring 2011 print newsletter's cover story may be "A Tale of Two Cockers" and their whirlwind visits to the sanctuary:

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Still 2nd place -- but it's close!

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge -- the votes are adding up!  And remember, you can vote every day, so consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.

 It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Don't Miss It

When we first said we were moving the sanctuary to New Hampshire, one of the many reasons we cited for the change was wanting a milder climate than we had in Montana.  That raised some eyebrows back here in the north end of New Hampshire, where they don't consider this a "milder climate" by any means.  And in truth, it is snow country here, as we said in our blog post announcing the move, and it can get below zero, no question about it.  But everything's relative, and where we were in Montana was by far colder, and windier, than where we are now in New Hampshire.  We would get much colder, earlier, and it would last longer.  In October 2009, for example, we had a week of sub-zero weather where it was 20 below at night and barely above zero during the day.

And then we saw the Ovando weather forecast for this week.  (Click on image for larger version.)  Yikes.  Boy, do we remember this sort of thing already in the fall: 

Tonight: A chance of snow before 11pm, then snow likely and areas of blowing snow after 11pm. Cloudy, with a low around -4. Wind chill values as low as -21. East wind between 5 and 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible.

Monday: Snow and areas of blowing snow. High near 8. Wind chill values as low as -22. East wind between 10 and 14 mph, with gusts as high as 22 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.

Monday Night: Snow likely and areas of blowing snow before 11pm, then snow and areas of blowing snow after 11pm. Low around -13. Wind chill values as low as -34. East wind between 13 and 15 mph, with gusts as high as 23 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches possible.

Tuesday: Snow and areas of blowing snow before 11am, then a chance of snow after 11am. High near 2. East northeast wind between 6 and 13 mph, with gusts as high as 21 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches possible.

Tuesday Night: A slight chance of snow before 11pm, then a chance for flurries. Mostly cloudy, with a low around -23. Chance of precipitation is 20%.

Wednesday: Mostly sunny and cold, with a high near -7.

Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around -21.

Thanksgiving Day: Mostly sunny and cold, with a high near 4.

Alayne and I used to pride ourselves in being able to work outdoors for hours in those kinds of conditions, but as the years wore on, we began to think a little less of that would be a good thing!

Before making the final decision on where to relocate, we looked at climate records for the past 50 years, as well as climate change model projections for the rest of this century.  A key piece of current data was one of the simplest, and yet most stark, ways to illustrate the difference between our climate in Ovando and the one we now live in.  The growing season last year -- time between killing frosts -- was 116 days in Lancaster.  In Ovando, it was 76 days. 

So when people here in northern New Hampshire ask us with genuine concern if we're "really ready for a North Country winter," we just smile and say, "Yep, I think we can handle it."

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Of course, having just posted this, I have pretty much guaranteed the immiment arrival of the "Winter Storm of the Century" for upper New England.  Sorry about that, folks.

A Trick For My Treat

Alayne and I were taking photos of Snuggles last weekend, just before she left for Colorado, for use in our spring 2011 print newsletter (hey, you have to plan ahead in this business!).  After taking a lot of shots for a potential cover photo, Miss Snuggles was growing tired of the modeling thing and beginning to droop.  So Alayne went to get some dog treats to perk up Snuggles' interest in the job at hand. 

I had asked Alayne to hold a dog cookie out in her hand, over Snuggles' head, to get Snuggles to look up. Alayne was holding the cookie higher than I initially planned, and that photo above is Snuggles looking at the cookie.  Then, suddenly, Snuggles leaped into the air, all four feet off the ground, spun around, and came down in a perfect landing.  Just in a flash like that, she had pulled off this amazing acrobatic stunt. 

Alayne and I looked at each other, somewhat astonished.  Snuggles walked back across the floor to Alayne, and when Alayne didn't immediately hand her the cookie, Snuggles leaped into the air and spun again.  She got the cookie.

As you can imagine, I started taking photos, and every time Alayne would hold out a new cookie for her, Snuggles would perform her little trick before getting it.  She moved so fast I couldn't get a complete set of photos from one entire trick, but this series gives you the idea.  She went from sitting, like you see above, to straight up:

Notice in that shot how she's already beginning to spin as she goes vertical.

Then she begins to twist ... and she's a full foot off the ground at this point and still climbing:

Now she's turning around to position herself for a landing:

And here she comes on approach:

Just like a jetliner, she touches down on the runway with main landing gear first, nose wheel to follow:

I could never get a decent photo of the instant she had all four feet on the ground because she'd spin around on the floor and start walking in a millisecond. It was one fluid motion.

But here she was, heading back to Alayne ... she was beginning to wear herself out with her repeated acrobatic manuevers by now:

She's thinking, "Jeez, these people are really making me work for those dang treats!"

I had emailed Snuggles' new Mom, Ellen, last weekend, told her about this little trick and attached one of these photos.  I had also told Ellen we had discovered a couple of weeks ago that Snuggles loved slices of apples as a treat, too.  On Wednesday, Ellen emailed us to report Snuggles had arrived safe and sound, and she added: "She did her jump and spin for apples yesterday, too."  Have trick, will travel.

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Still 2nd place!

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge -- the votes are adding up!  And remember, you can vote every day, so consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.

 It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Please Welcome ... Suzi!

Here's the sweet girl who arrived early on Sunday morning in the same transport that Snuggles left on ... one Cocker in, one Cocker out!  This is Suzi, who came from a small foster-based rescue group in Michigan called Happy Homes Rescue.  Anne R., who runs the group, emailed me a few weeks ago to say:

"I rescued a blind, female Cocker Spaniel from a breeder in May 2010.  Suzi had juvenile cataracts as a puppy and at some point after that her pupils luxated. When I first saw Suzi, her eyes were bulging out of her head.  I rescued her and took her to a fabulous surgeon and had her eyes removed.  
 
Suzi is a beautiful dog and a very well behaved girl.  She is 5 years old and she has no other known medical conditions.  I have taken care of all of her veterinary needs.
 
I have been disappointed by the fact that since May, no one has had any interest, at all, in adopting her.  I've had her picture posted on petfinder.com and on our website. I haven't received any applications. When I have taken her to adoption events all that happens is that people want to have us take her out of the crate so they can see her, but they have no interest in adopting her.  They just want to look at the dog without eyes.  I get very upset because they treat her like she is some kind of freak show." 

Well, that last line really got to me.  I stopped reading her email for a second to let that sink in.  I knew exactly what Anne meant.  People can react very oddly to the sight of an animal with no eyes in his or her head; being blind is one thing, having no eyes is something else.

Anne continued, "To be honest, I've never had any problems adopting out any dogs and I never imagined that I would be in this position with Suzi. She's a beautiful, well behaved dog and I really thought she would get adopted."

I showed Anne's email to Alayne and she felt the same way I did:  Yes, we'll bring her out.

If Anne was the first angel in Suzi's life, a second one arrived shortly thereafter:  Lisa S., a friend of Anne's, graciously made a gift that paid for Suzi's transport to New Hampshire.

So on Sunday morning, we swapped Cockers ... off to Colorado and a wonderful new home went the one-eyed, energetic, brash and bold Miss Snuggles, and here came blind, quiet and timid Miss Suzi.  In terms of personality, they are polar opposites.  Every morning Snuggles greeted the new day with a "Hello world, what are you going to do for me today?" kind of attitude.  Suzi is so shy and meek you hardly realize she's here. 

But somebody did realize she was here.  Blind Briggs, the original ladies' man from Georgia, was thrilled with the new girl in town.  That last new girl, Snuggles, was a bit too pushy for him -- a number of times she even tried to hump the poor wobbly guy (and Fuzzy, too!) -- with predictable effects:  "Hey, what are you doing?!?," followed by the sound of Beagle crashing to the ground.  Briggs likes to lead on the dance floor, so to speak, so Snuggles was not his type at all.

Suzi's demure "oh, it's just me" nature is perfect for him.  Here he is, finally getting a chance to meet her:

Briggs:  "Say, come here often?" 

We keep telling him he needs to work on his pick-up lines.

Well, we may roll our eyes at his introductions, but it seemed the blind Beagle and blind Cocker have hit it off, because a short while later here was the scene:

Suzi, honey, you've come to the right place.

Anne and Lisa, thank you for rescuing this girl and helping her get to us!

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American Dog Magazine is holding its 1st Annual Humanitarian Awards poll and is asking print and online readers to vote for various organizations and individuals in several animal welfare categories.  We are included in the very first category called "Exemplary Animal Shelter" and also in the third category, "Rescue Organization Saving Dogs."  You can vote in the poll here.

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Still 2nd place!

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge -- the votes are adding up!  And remember, you can vote every day, so consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.

 It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Snuggles Gets Adopted!

This is a very happy ending we've been keeping under wraps for a while -- and today we're thrilled to report the news!  The day after I posted Snuggles' arrival on the blog, I received an email from Ellen M., a long-time supporter of the ranch who happens to be a veterinary internal medicine specialist in Colorado.  Ellen had lost her old Cocker a few months ago and wanted to know if she could adopt Snuggles! 

As you can imagine, we were thrilled at the idea of Ellen adopting Snuggles -- wow.  That took us about a nano-second to say "Yes!"  So why the delay in announcing it?  Well, we wanted Gale Lang of TLC Pet Transport to take Snuggles out to Colorado for us, and the soonest she could get here was today.  Shortly before 8 this morning, Snuggles left for her new home in the Rockies.  (Seems like we keep sending animals back out west.  Hmm.)  Snuggles was with us for just under a month.

Ellen is in private practice now but was on the faculty of the Colorado State Unversity College of Veterinary Medicine for a decade, and two of her students then were ... Brenda and Britt Culver, who had been our fabulous veterinary team in Helena for the past ten years!  Small world, huh?

As it turned out, Gale also brought us another disabled animal -- just as cute and adorable as Snuggles.  But, we're going to keep that arrival under wraps until the next blog post for Wednesday!

Ellen, thank you so much for adopting this wonderful little girl!

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Still 2nd place!

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge -- the votes are adding up!  And remember, you can vote every day, so consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.

 It was thanks to all of your amazing votes that we won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the final Shelter Challenge of 2009, and we came in fourth nationwide in the first Shelter Challenge earlier this year, winning $3,000.  So this is serious money and can really make a difference for our disabled animals!  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Love Of Dog Bakery's Charity Of The Month

Once again, Julie and Rob at Love of Dog Bakery in Maryland have kindly chosen the ranch as their charity of the month -- this time for November.  A portion of their sales during November will be donated to the sanctuary.  Orders need to be in before the end of the month.  Love of Dog Bakery's treats are just incredible, and your dog will love them!  Our dogs go crazy whenever a box of their dog cookies arrives.  You can order their delicious doggie treats here.