Rolling Dog Farm

I Am So Guilty

Late Monday afternoon I was standing at the big table in the solarium in the dog room, dishing up their dinner into countless bowls, when the phone rang. Kate had been bringing in the last few dogs from outside, including Owen the blind Beagle, who we usually let run around the dog room while we're feeding the others. I was still on the phone when Kate was ready to leave, so I waved goodbye to her. After I finished the call, I filled some more bowls and then headed into the room to hand them out. That's when I saw the guilty party above, caught red-pawed with the evidence right in front of him.  

When Kate left, there had been no boot there. When Kate left, the only dog left in the room was Owen. Some may call this circumstantial evidence, but it seems like an open and shut case to me. And just look at the body posture, too. "Dang, caught in the act! Where did he come from?!?" In fact, this character has come before the Court of Canine MisBehaviors before on the same charges. He seems to have a hankering for barn boots. (Always something deliciously tasty on them, no doubt.) He finds them in the mud room, just outside the dog wing, and pulls them into the room and onto the bed for a chewfest.

A minute later, having been photographed, he was pretending not to be interested in the boot:

But we weren't falling for it. Guilty!

 

My Name's Max. Mad Max.

We had some new arrivals come while I was out of town recently, so Alayne had her hands full handling the introductions and integration, needless to say! Here is one of the newbies, a 9-year old long-haired Dachshund named Max. He came to us from Becky's Bridge, a rescue group in Shreveport, Louisiana run by Rebecca Y. She also sent us little Wilbur back in January, as well as several others over the years. Max's owner had surrendered him to Rebecca's group.

We had agreed to take him because he was blind, but on arrival he showed an astonishing ability to act like a sighted dog: zooming everywhere at high speed, darting through barely opened doors, and never running into anything. On closer inspection, however, he seems to have a very dominant cataract in his left eye and the start of one in his left eye. That's the bad news. The good news is that since he obviously still has vision of some sort, he just might be a candidate for cataract surgery. The only way to know for sure what's going on, of course, is to have our veterinary ophthalmologist, Dr. Sarah Hoy, do an eye exam and an ERG, or electroretinogram, to test his retinal function. So Max will be joining our "group ophthalmology party" later this week when I'll be taking Wilbur and Mitch to see Dr. Hoy in Burlington.

Don't let that soft, demure expression in the photo above fool you. Max is a character -- vocal, energetic, mischievous, and full of Dachshund chutzpah. This is why we call him "Mad Max":

Here's an interesting shot in which Dexter seems to be saying to Max, "Well, you may be new but at least you're a Dachshund.":