Rolling Dog Farm

Morning Gathering

This morning when we got up and looked out the bedroom window, we could see two ducks cruising in the pond.  By the time we got to the kitchen to make coffee and start breakfast, the ducks had been joined by a group ... er, gaggle ... of geese, which you see in a nice formation of four on the right.  Then, a few minutes later, a great blue heron dropped by to say hello.  The heron is on the ground just to the right of the thick brush on the bank of the pond in the center of the photo.  (I made the photo extra large, so click on it and you'll get a much bigger image.) 

Alayne keeps binoculars and a copy of the "Pocket Naturalist Guide to New Hampshire Birds" on the window sill in the kitchen just for these kinds of sightings.  I stepped out on the back deck to get these photos, at which point the geese broke formation and started honking the alarm at my presence up above.  Photos in hand, I retreated inside, and the geese went back to quietly paddling about the pond.  Before long, though -- while we were eating breakfast -- all the birds had flown off and the pond was quiet and still again.

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The current Shelter Challenge started on Monday, April 4th, and ends at midnight on Sunday, June 19th.  Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners.  There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

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.

Because of your votes, we won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the Shelter Challenge that ended in March.  Please help us win more money for the animals here by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Molly and Priscilla

Here are the next two we are listing for adoption on PetFinder -- our adorable Poodle sisters, Molly and Priscilla.  (Alayne, though she is adorable too, is not included in the adoption package.)  We are going to adopt them out together because of how bonded they are with each other.  Plus, their antics playing and roughhousing together are priceless.  As much as we would love to keep these two blind girls, we realize there's a wonderful family for them out there somewhere, and it's time to try again.

I say "try again" because we had Molly and Priscilla on PetFinder for nearly a year, stretching from 2009 into 2010.  Over the course of that time we had four separate inquiries on them -- and oddly, in their initial set of questions each person asked specifically 1) how much do they weigh? and 2) what is their height?   These were in their very first "Top 4" questions -- in fact, a couple of people made them their No. 1 and No. 2 questions!  It seemed odder still because Molly and Priscilla's PetFinder page showed a photo of them with Alayne (the same one above), making clear how big they were. 

We have been adopting out animals for over a decade, and we can't recall someone asking about an animal's height and weight.  Certainly never as their very first questions.  Moreover, these weren't the typical "Oh, I think I'm in love with these two girls, how do I go about adopting them?" kind of adoption emails we normally get.  Instead, they were rather clinical in their tone and the kinds of questions they were asking.  We reacted to the focus on weight and height the same way we do if someone asks us about a dog up for adoption, "Does he shed?"  It's a signal that this isn't the right kind of person to adopt one of our animals.

After getting four in a row with these same weight and height questions, I finally asked the fourth person, "excuse me, but why would it matter?"  She told me that since standard Poodles vary in size, it was important to know Molly and Priscilla's specific dimensions.  (Other breeds don't vary in size?  Well, whatever.)

Like I said, it was a red flag for us.  With four of these inquiries, all asking the same thing -- and these being the only ones we received -- it just felt a little too weird.  We decided to take the girls off PetFinder for a while and make another run at it later.

So ... here they are!  Adorable, lovable, playful -- and beautiful!

P.S.  Someone's bound to ask about Trooper.  I've said this elsewhere in earlier posts, but the Poodle sisters are long over their "thing" with Trooper and he is in a separate play yard these days.  They don't miss that no-good two-timing hound dog.

Lots of Contests in April!

April seems to be a contest crazy month, so here's a separate post devoted to the ones we know about:

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The Animal Rescue Site's Shelter Challenge

Yes, it's starting again on Monday, April 4th.  As I write this on Sunday afternoon, there is no web page up for the new contest and so I don't know what the details are for this round.  I hope the usual link will work:

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.

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The ASPCA $100,000 Challenge

Our friends at the New Hampshire SPCA "downstate" (as they say here) in Stratham have made it into the qualifying round of the ASPCA's $100,000 Challenge to Save More Lives contest.  They are competing to be one of the 50 shelters eligible to participate in the final round of the challenge.  This is not a contest for us -- you need to care for a minimum of 1,000 animals during the year to enter.  The NHSPCA has made it past the first stage and into the qualifying round, and now they need as many votes as possible to get one of the final 50 spots in the contest.  On their behalf, we'd like to ask you to vote for them -- they do wonderful work and we'd like to support their efforts.

The qualifying round of the contest starts Monday, April 4 and runs until April 15 -- and you can vote EVERY DAY in this challenge, too!  Please vote for the NHSPCA here.

If you have questions or want to know more about this Challenge, please go to this page.  My standard disclaimer:  I cannot help with voting issues, troubleshoot, or provide any other assistance for this contest.

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Kuranda's Dog of the Month

One of our terrific supporters, Cathy S., entered her dog Casey as "Chill'n" in Kuranda's Dog of the Month contest for April.  If he wins, Kuranda will send us five free dog cots -- and as I think long-time blog readers know, the Kuranda cots are very popular around here!  Please vote for Chill'n here.  You can cast one vote every day throughout the month of April.

Thank you, Cathy!