Rolling Dog Farm

Visions Of Sugar Plums Dancing In Their Heads...

I'm going to take a blog break for the holidays and will resume posting the first week in January.  In the meantime, I thought I would leave you with these images for the Christmas season.  I took these two photos of blind Goldie and blind Widget a few minutes ago, sleeping in the chairs downstairs in the living room.  "'Twas the night before ..." Well, okay, it was two nights before Christmas, but who's counting?

Alayne and I would like to thank all of you for your gifts that make it possible to provide this special place for animals like Goldie, Widget and their many disabled friends.  If you haven't already made a tax-deductible gift this year for the animals, we hope you'll consider doing so over the holidays.  It's quick and easy to do on our secure online donations page here.  We simply couldn't do this without donations from kind and compassionate people.  For 2010, our vet bills alone will be about $30,000 -- and this was a pretty "quiet" year medically for us!

On behalf of all of us at the Rolling Dog Ranch, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

And on that note, here's the door to the dog wing:

 

It's Official: 2nd Place and $5,000!

Wow!  The official announcement is out and our humble little Rolling Dog Ranch came in second nationwide in the Shelter Challenge, winning $5,000 for the animals!  Awesome!  Alayne and I are so grateful to each and every one of you who kept voting for the ranch, day after day for all those months.  THANK YOU!!!

It's no surprise that Best Friends came in first, given their size and reach, but I think the thing that struck me the most about this particular contest was that of the top 3 winners in this round, two focus exclusively on disabled animals as their mission.  (And of course, Best Friends does take in some disabled animals as well.) 

I think that says quite a lot about how far all of us have come in championing these special animals and helping people understand that they really can have a wonderful quality of life, if they're only given a chance.

On behalf of all the animals here at the Rolling Dog Ranch, thank you for making this amazing win possible!

Here's blind Widget doing a victory lap around the front yard:

 

Double Trouble

Alayne got this shot of me carrying blind Fuzzy and blind Clyde out to the front yard first thing this morning.  A few of our more "vocal" guests spend the night in the recently built "Dog Wing Annex" on the second floor of the barn.  This group of guests include Miss Party Hearty herself, Widget, as well as Dexter ... and the two fluff-balls I'm holding in that photo.  The only problem with the "let's-bring-'em-all-under-one-roof" model was the handful of dogs who prefer midnight revelry (defined by Merriam-Webster's as "noisy partying or merrymaking" -- yes indeed) to quiet slumber.  For them, there is the 15' x 20' (4.5 m x 6 m) room in the barn, well insulated as much for noise as for heat.  

Fuzzy is also now known as Wally "Fuzzy" McDuff, along with his newly arrived cousin, Clyde McDuff. 

Speaking of Widget, Clyde tried to express his romantic intentions with her yesterday afternoon.  Let us just say it didn't go over too well.  Not well at all.  "Vocal" hardly begins to describe her reaction to his affections.  Clyde was, you could say, a rebuffed McDuff.

Finally, please note the artful color coodination between the two terriers, the jacket, and the man's beard.

Just In Time For Christmas, Here's Blind Clyde!

This little tyke arrived shortly after 9 a.m. this morning from Louisiana.  Rebecca Y., who runs the Shreveport rescue group Becky's Bridge, took him in from another shelter in the state.  In her email to me a couple of weeks ago, she wrote, "Is there any chance of you taking a blind, senior yorkie?  He is coming to me today from a shelter about 1 1/2 hours away.  I am squeezing him in because I can't stand the thought of him being put down.  If you can't I understand, but I had to ask."  His name was Clyde. 

Gale Lang's TLC Pet Transport was booked up on their last trip before the holidays, so we arranged with We Move Pets, another ground pet transport company that we've used before as well, to pick up Clyde.  It was a brisk 16° (-8° C) when the driver, Bob, handed him to me in the bright morning sunshine.  Clyde was shivering a bit -- fortunately he had a sweater on -- but when we set him down on the ground, he went off and did his business.  And then he was very ready to go inside.  He seemed to say, "Okay, now where is that wood stove I heard about?"

Inside the house he was a bit nervous at first and trembled, so I sat in a chair and held him on my lap for a while so he could take in all the new sounds and smells.  After a few minutes of that, he started trying to climb down, so I picked him up and set him on the floor.  Off he went to explore!  Every dog he met -- except one -- he greeted happily, and his tiny bob of a tail would go up in the air and wag back and forth. 

The only wary greeting he had was with, believe it or not, Fuzzy -- the only other intact male in the place.  (Fuzzy was positive for heartworms and his neutering is pending completion of treatment.)  Clyde has to be neutered, too, but we need to have him tested for heartworms first.  Fuzzy tips the scales at 12 pounds (5.4 kg) and Clyde at all of 7 pounds (3 kg), but the testosterone has them both convinced they are 120 pounds and 70 pounds, respectively.  So there was a bit of strutting going on this morning between the two of them when they first met.  Things settled down pretty quickly once the referees stepped in and threw some penalty flags.

Dexter, who is the chairman of our Welcome Committee, went over to give Clyde a special hello:

You can see just how tiny Clyde is compared to Dexter, who's a miniature Dachshund.  We don't have any other history on Clyde, but the vet in Shreveport who did his health certificate for us thought he was about 8 years old.  He is very skinny, has dental disease, and is blind from cataracts (though he might have had retinal or other issues before the cataracts developed).  Needless to say, he will have more vet appointments in his future!

As I write this, shortly before noon on Sunday, Clyde is snoozing on a dog bed in the living room, just a few feet from that woodstove he'd heard about.

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[Every time we write about transporting pets, we get the inevitable emails and blog comments asking if we know about Pilots 'n Paws and similar groups.  Yes, we do.  These volunteer pilot networks prefer to do transports that are 400 miles or less; beyond that, it usually requires multiple pilots and planes, and things get complicated.  A short trip like Snuggles had, coming from Buffalo to Lancaster, is ideal for these groups.  Cross-country trips are a different story.]

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*This Is The Last Day To Vote -- Contest Ends At Midnight PST Sunday!*

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.

As of mid-day Sunday, we were still No. 2 behind Best Friends, but please vote today if you haven't already.  We need every vote we can get to make sure we hold that spot -- and win $5,000 for the animals!

The Shelter Challenge winners will be announced Wednesday, December 22, so we'll await the official word before popping any champagne corks -- but until then, thank you for all your votes in this round of the contest!

Snowy Frolics

I took these photos today after we turned the horses out for some exercise in the paddocks.  That usually means one thing:  Cash, our blind 4-year old, spends the first part of every session pestering his two pasture mates, the much older and much bigger Bridger and Hawk.  Somehow the little squirt ended up as the ringleader of this blind trio, and nothing makes him happier than to run circles around them (literally and figuratively) out on pasture.  Cash is always trying to get something started, while they wish the punk would hang up his spurs (so to speak) and leave them in peace.  In truth, both Hawk and Bridger adore Cash, even if it means putting up with his antics. 

In the photo above, that's Cash going up in the air after "surprising" Bridger with a sneak attack. You'll notice in all these photos that Cash is not wearing a blanket; that's because he would rather shred his to pieces, and after going through a few blankets back in Montana, we got the message.

Here's a typical sequence ... Cash edges up on Bridger:

Then bites him on the butt through the blanket ... but note Cash's hindquarters, already positioned so he can spring up and out of the way in case Bridger decides to let him have it with his back feet:

Up he goes:

And away:

A few minutes earlier, Cash had been rolling as Hawk was starting to go down to roll:

Cash loves to interrupt Hawk's rolls by charging at him just as he begins rolling (I said he was a punk).  So Cash sprang up from his own roll and headed straight for Hawk:

Cash always stops just short of his friend; he's done this countless times and we've never yet seen him actually run into or over Hawk ... he's bluffing, but Hawk is never quite sure and it makes him get up quickly ... which is exactly what Cash is trying to achieve:

After prancing around Hawk for a bit, Cash goes for another roll:

 Finally, here he is showing off for Kate:

Pretty soon, Cash had run out of steam and all three horses were standing at the gate, wondering where dinner was.

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Just A Few Days Left -- Contest Ends This Sunday!

$5,000 In Sight ... But It's Still Too Close For Comfort ... We Need Every Vote Right Through The Weekend!

Please keep voting for the sanctuary in the Shelter Challenge all the way to Sunday -- 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!

Needy

Dexter was in one of his "needy" moods yesterday (hey, anyone know a Dachshund who isn't needy?), and this translated into him taking every opportunity to snuggle next to blind Goldie -- who was in one of her favorite spots, the laundry basket bed in the living room.  Dexter loves the laundry basket as much as she does, so when he's feeling particularly needy, the absolute best place to be is in the basket snuggled up tight with Goldie.  They spent most of yesterday, off and on, in that basket in one form or another.  They started off the day like this -- I took the photo above shortly after breakfast -- and they ended the day like this, in a photo I took late that evening:

Now hold on a minute, that Dachshund is not fat.  I have no idea why he looks so plump in the photo there.  He's needy, not fat!

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On The Homestretch -- Contest Ends Sunday, December 19th!

$5,000 In Sight ... But It's Still Too Close For Comfort ... We Need Every Vote!

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!

It's Harder Than It Looks

Here's another set of pre-snow photos that Alayne took recently, these of wobbly Soba playing with a kong.  Soba was born with cerebellar hypoplasia, which makes her wobble and "dance" when she walks.  With this condition, the more an animal like Soba tries to concentrate on a fine motor skill-type task, i.e., trying to pick up an object with her mouth, the more her head will tremor.  As the article I just linked to on cerebellar hypoplasia says, these are known as "intention tremors."

It's hard to tell from that photo above, but her left paw is actually hovering over the kong.  (Click on photo for bigger image.)  She was batting at it, trying to bring it closer to her.  It worked:

Here she's looking inside, hoping we might have stuffed a treat inside (no such luck):

Then she's back to pawing at it and rolling it around:

Ultimately she decided it's time to give it a good chewing ... but now she has to really focus on it, and this is when we're most likely to see the intention tremors set in.  Appearing at first almost like she's having a petit mal seizure, the tremors make it harder to grasp the object, but she will persist:

Until she gets it:

And that makes for a happy girl:

Another odd thing we've noticed in Soba but not all the cerebellar hypoplasia animals we've had over the years is this:  When we pick her up to carry her into the house, her body often goes rigid and her eyes dart back and forth in rapid nystagmus -- but otherwise she's just fine.  When we set her down inside, she takes a few seconds to come out of it ... whatever "it" is ... and is then perfectly normal again.  Usually animals with this condition become limp and relaxed when you pick them up.  Not sure why Soba is different in that regard. 

(I thought I had mentioned this in an addendum to a blog post months ago but maybe not ...  we lost Soba's sister Noodle last year.  She became increasingly compromised and finally lost her quality of life.  She just looked defeated, and we decided to let her go.  Soba, fortunately, has continued on much like before.)

One more thing that's odd about Soba:  She can move much faster backwards than forwards -- and we've never figured out why!

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Final Week -- Contest Ends Sunday, December 19th

$5,000 In Sight ... But It's Still Too Close For Comfort ... We Need Every Vote!

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's New Home

I thought you'd enjoy seeing these photos of Suzi in her new home with Marcia.  Beckie, Marcia's daughter, sent the photos to me and said, "Suzi is the sweetest girl, we all love her to pieces!"  In the one above, that's Marcia with Suzi and two of her Labs.  

In an email to me a couple of days after adopting Suzi, Marcia wrote, "She is absolutely wonderful.  My other dogs greeted her so gently, as if they knew she was special.  She is finding her way away around so quickly and has a good appetite, sleeps all night and chose the big dog bed.  One of my big labs curls up in the little cocker bed I bought for her.  She is very affectionate and she and I just love to cuddle.  She slept on my lap wrapped in a Christmas blanket all the way home.  It really was 'love at first sight.'"

Here is Suzi with two of Marcia's granddaughters:

I loved this next shot in particular:

Here's Suzi checking things out with one of her Lab friends:

This shot had an artistic flair to it:

In an email to me this morning, Marcia said, "I'm just lovin' Suzi and my crew of labs and we're all getting along fine. Thanks again for such a wonderful gift and blessing at the right time in my life."

Thank YOU, Marcia, for giving this special girl such a wonderful, loving home and a family of her own!

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Still 2nd place -- but it's too close for comfort!  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!

Squeeze Me In

Alayne got these shots a couple of weeks ago and they've been in the queue for a while, so I figured I'd better post 'em before I forget!  She saw blind Lucy squeezed in tight between blind Austin and Libby one morning in the dog yard (click on photo for larger image).  When Lucy heard the camera shutter click, up she popped:

The green fluff in the foreground was from a recently chewed up West Paw bed.  <sigh>

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Good thing we went canoeing when we did ... here's what the pond looks like today, in a photo taken from my office window:

We've had about 8 inches of snow over the past few days -- it's beautiful out there!

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Anne keeps asking about Daisy's ear -- it's fine!  She had a reaction to the initial sutures but our vets changed sutures and it's healed up.

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Still 2nd place -- but it's too close for comfort!  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!

Gone Fishin'

As I think everyone knows, one of the nice features of this property is a beautiful pond below the house and dog yards.  It's roughly 100' x 100' in size (30 m x 30 m), is spring fed, and water circulates from the spring, through the pond and out through a pipe even in winter.  That constant flow, of course, means it doesn't freeze solid.  We know that many years ago there used to be fish in this pond, but there aren't any longer -- we're not sure whether it was from overfishing or natural causes.  We'd like to stock it with fish again, both for ourselves and for the cats (well, and as an occasional treat for some lucky dogs, too!). 

So we've been in touch with a local company that does pond stocking and consulting to find out how many fish the pond can support, which types, etc.  Their recommendation is for one of three types of trout -- brook, rainbow, or brown.  Which one is best depends on the flow and temperature of the water in the summer.  But the first and most important question they asked was, how deep is the pond?  They wanted it at least 10 feet (.9 m) at its deepest point.  They said a pond this size and that depth could hold approximately 130 to 150 trout.

Now, late July or August was no doubt a better time to explore this issue, but we were caught up with the move and unpacking and getting our feet solidly on the ground.  Plus, I knew that ponds were typically stocked in spring or fall, so I figured we had some time to wade into this (so to speak).

As it was, one thing led to another, and finally, here we were in December with the question still unanswered.  No time like December to find out how deep a pond is, eh?

Our employee Kate was kind enough to offer up her family's canoe for the project, and on Thursday after lunch we carried it down to the pond.  After much discussion about who would actually go in the canoe, it was obvious that this job was going to be mine.  Since I hadn't been in a canoe in 30 years, Alayne brought along the camera to chronicle any mishaps, which she was sure were bound to happen. 

In her mind were these blog photos: 

- See Steve capsize.

- See Steve swim to shore.

- See Kate pull Steve out of the water.

I'm truly not making up the extent of her concern about this.  She actually insisted on tying a rope to the canoe "just in case."  Kate seemed to agree that this was a really good idea.  I told them this was embarrassing and that if I could, I'd Photoshop it out of the photos.  Alas, here's my "training rope":

I said, "What, you don't think I can make it to shore on a pond this size?  You think I might get lost out there?"

"Oh, I just think it's good insurance," she kept saying in response.  Kate continued to nod in silent agreement.  I think she was just afraid she'd never see her canoe again.

In fact, It was never really clear to me whether the rope was to help save me, or actually the canoe, in case of capsizing.  Alayne was always a bit vague on that point.

In any case, I climbed in, wobbled back and forth a few times trying to find my balance, Kate pushed the canoe off the shore, and I began paddling.  "Going in circles" is probably the kindest way to describe my first few minutes afloat.  But finally I got where I wanted to go, roughly in the center of the pond, and then dropped our sophisticated, scientific "marine depth measuring system," or MDMS, overboard -- otherwise known as a ratchet strap with a heavy hook on the end.

Here I am looking at the data this system yielded, i.e., where the water line was on the strap once the hook rested on the bottom:

With data captured, I headed back to shore ... though I wasn't certain whether I was actually under my own power ... or gently and surreptitiously being pulled back to shore by Kate with the rope.

Here she is doing a "happy dance" that I made it safely back to shore and didn't sink her family's canoe during the excursion:

Okay, in truth I think she was climbing over some brush, but I'm sure she was doing a "virtual" happy dance in her mind that the canoe wasn't resting on the bottom of Rolling Dog Pond.

I handed the high-tech MDMS device to Alayne, showed her the data point, and off she went to measure it.  The answer:  10 feet 4 inches. 

I can't wait to see the barn cats line up on shore in the spring as 100+ trout are released into the pond!

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Still 2nd place -- but it's too close for comfort!  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!