Rolling Dog Farm

Introducing ... Willy The Blind Dachshund!

Oh, the twists and turns in a poor dog's life. I didn't even realize until today, when looking for emails about Willy for background material for this post, that we had declined to take this very same dog back in July!  

The original request came in a letter from Marilyn O., who works with a rescue group in southern New Hampshire. They had taken over caring for a blind Dachshund after his owner had been hospitalized with a terminal illness. The Dachshund had no training, had never had a collar or leash put on him, had not been around other dogs, and was a fearful boy who did not do well with other dogs.

The rescue group had asked a local shelter to take Willy for three weeks so the shelter's trainer could work with the dog. But, Marilyn subsequently told me in an email, "although they thought they could make him adoptable in three weeks' time, (they) asked us to take him back right away or to agree to have him euthanized as he has proved to be getting worse instead of improving, not bonding with anyone, and is very agitated and frightened."

A Dachshund breed rescue group had also declined to take him, believing he wasn't adoptable.

After a couple of lengthy emails with Marilyn, we concluded that we probably didn't have the right environment for Willy. One of our basic groundrules is that a dog has to be able to do well with other dogs; we're just not set up to keep dogs isolated and separated because they can't get along with others.

Fast forward to October, and I received an email from a lady in Massachusetts, Brenda R., about a blind Dachshund she had taken in from a shelter in New Hampshire the day before he was to be euthanized. Even though she had said his name was Willy, I didn't make the connection. (Given the volume of emails and inquiries we get, the passage of several months, and the fact that my post-50 brain is not the finely-tuned information processing machine it once was, that shouldn't be surprising!)

Here's how Brenda described him:

"Willy was dumped in a shelter in New Hampshire and after a couple of weeks was due to be euthanized simply because he was a scared blind dog! I was horrified by this. As an owner of 7 Dachshunds already I just could not see that happen. Dachshund rescue refused to pull him, saying he was not compatible with humans. I have to wonder if they actually met him because he is a wonderful dog! I picked him up on a Thursday afternoon, he was due to be euthanized the next day. I visited him and climbed right into the pen with him. He was very receptive to me and made no aggressive moves or behaviors. I took Willy home hoping to buy time to find him a home. It's been a few months now and I have had no luck finding him a forever home. Willy was clearly loved and trained well. He is house broken, eats well and walks on a leash, even my sighted dogs don't do nearly as well as he does! He gets along very well with all of my other dogs."

Quite a difference, huh? 

Well, we went ahead and agreed to take this Willy, and he's now been with us for about a month. He's doing great! He hasn't really bonded yet, but he's given Alayne some kisses and seems to be on his way. He does fine with the other dogs. 

But I can see how Willy may well have been the way he was originally described when he was taken from the only home he'd known and placed in that shelter. It was probably just too much for him. Brenda just happened to be the angel who showed up in the nick of time. Maybe at that point Willy was also finally ready to respond to someone. And obviously in Brenda's home environment, he adjusted remarkably well.

So it wasn't exactly a straight line, but Willy ended up at the Rolling Dog Farm after all. Here he is enjoying the sunshine coming through the solarium in the dog room on a recent morning:

Ring Around The ... Doxies

Alayne saw this scene over Thanksgiving ... three of the Dachshunds all together in a circle (of sorts). That's blind Sophie on the left, Dexter on top, and Belvie on the right. A very contented trio.

Speaking of Dachshunds ... did I mention last week we had two new arrivals to introduce?  Hmm...

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Final Contest of The Year -- Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, October 8 and ends at midnight on December 16. 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.

*** You will find us listed as Rolling Dog Farm.  The state is NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the current contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

Please Welcome ... Blind Bertie!

First, we hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Okay, so this particular welcome is a bit overdue -- Bertie came to us from Atlanta Beagle Rescue back in August! But he got off to a bad start his very first night here, when he bit my hand ... hard enough to draw blood but no serious damage. It was the first time I had ever been bitten in 12 years of doing this. Then we had a second incident a couple of weeks later, so we decided to hold off making his introduction until we improved his social skills. 

He was also loud, barked constantly, and had to go everywhere at 150 mph. Moreover, unlike any other Beagle we'd known, Bertie didn't seem interested in people. The folks at Atlanta Beagle Rescue had described him as an "odd duck," and they were right. 

We set to work on a Bertie make-over. As in, Miss Manners comes to Rolling Dog Farm.

Early on, every evening when we brought the dogs in for dinner, Bertie would careen around the room, running flat-out and crashing head-first into walls, crates, table legs, etc. He'd pick himself up, then zoom off to do it all over again. (Blindness + Speed = Headache.) Alayne called him "Pinball Bertie." This didn't seem to bother him, but it clearly needed intervention. I began to bring him in on a leash, teaching him to walk quietly and patiently by my side, and not releasing him until he gave me a quiet sit in front of his crate.

"Quiet" was the operative word in his training, because this was a dog who clearly had been able to bark and bay all day long his entire life. We suspect that he probably had been a hunting Beagle and lived in a kennel, where that is normal behavior. He learned that we don't permit that here, and he needed to cool it. That was a struggle, but by us staying on top of him and getting on his case as soon as he started to bark, Bertie is now a much quieter boy than when he first arrived.

We've had no more biting incidents, either, since he learned his place in the new pack.

Bertie is still relatively "distant" in terms of a connection with us, but he does seem a little more focused on us than he once did. Nothing like any of other dogs yet, but our sense is that he is slowly coming around and will one day be affectionate. He spends his days with blind Louie the Beagle and blind Bugsy, both of whom are very affectionate, so I think this will rub off on Bertie, too, just like Louie helped Bugsy turn the corner.

Miss Manners hasn't given Bertie his Certificate of Good Behavior yet, but we can see a day soon when he will successfully complete the course!

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Final Contest of The Year -- Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, October 8 and ends at midnight on December 16. 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.

*** You will find us listed as Rolling Dog Farm.  The state is NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the current contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

Thanksgiving Blog Break

In light of the Thanksgiving holiday next week, we'll be taking a blog break and will resume posting for Monday, November 26th. 

A Momentary Fling With This Thing

Blind Sophie discovered a new toy in the dog room the other day and spent a couple of hours zooming around the house showing it off to one and all. In fact, Sophie was in such constant motion that most of the photos Alayne took were a bit blurry because Sophie was moving so fast. That's Bugsy in the background, no doubt wondering what the zooming Dachshund was up to.

The toy belongs to a new arrival, whose bed and pen you see in the left of the photo. We actually have two recent arrivals we haven't mentioned yet ... and they will have to wait until after we get back from next week's Thanksgiving blog break!

What's fascinating about this toy obsession is that we have never seen Sophie interested in toys before ... and there are always some lying about this place. That's what struck Alayne when she saw Sophie clutching that thing in her mouth and racing around the house -- it was the first time we'd seen her with a toy. Here's the other fascinating bit: Since that day, Sophie has shown no further interest in that toy ... or in any other toy!  It was a one-time thing on one particular day and she is now over it. Go figure. The mysteries of dogs.

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Weekly Winner for Week 5 of the Shelter Challenge!

Yes, we just won $1,000 as the latest weekly winner in the Shelter Challenge, thanks to all of your dedicated voting! If memory serves us correctly, Alayne and I think we have now won something in every single Shelter Challenge contest since we first participated. That is thousands and thousands of dollars for our disabled animals. Thank you so much! 

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Final Contest of The Year -- Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, October 8 and ends at midnight on December 16. 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.

*** You will find us listed as Rolling Dog Farm.  The state is NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the current contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

I Need To Check You Out

A few minutes after we let the dogs out the other morning, our barn cat Smoke saw blind Penny the Yorkie drinking from the bucket by the fence and headed straight for her. Something about Penny caught his attention, and he kept trying to reach her by sticking his paw through the fence. (I took the photo with my phone, which is why the quality isn't so good.) It was odd because he so clearly wanted to physically touch her. Exactly why I don't know!

Between being blind and having her head in the bucket, Penny never seemed to realize Smoke was there -- she was just out of reach by an inch or so -- and I don't know what she would have done if she had figured out there was a mysterious cat's paw by her face. (Yes, we have smaller water bowls for the small dogs but as I've pointed out in other posts, they like drinking out of the big dogs' buckets and vice versa.)

The lumber on the driveway was for a remodeling/repair project -- Billy the blind Beagle and Max the Dachshund have been destroying the lattice under the porch, and after several patch jobs, we decided it was time for some stout lumber to close it off instead of lightweight lattice that can be chewed up and ripped apart.

In any case, Smoke kept pawing at her for a minute or so until giving up and wandering away. Penny eventually quit drinking and sauntered off, none the wiser.

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Final Contest of The Year -- Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, October 8 and ends at midnight on December 16. 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.

*** You will find us listed as Rolling Dog Farm.  The state is NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

I'm Going To Make This Work

When Alayne and I came in from chores on Friday morning we found blind Madison squashed inside a wire basket in the dog room. This just didn't look comfortable at all, as you can see. I've posted many times over the years about the odd choices some of our dogs make in their sleeping arrangements, and this one certainly fit in that category.

To show you what her other available options were at the same time in the dog room, here's a selection of the other bedding choices:

Maybe not thick enough foam, perhaps.

Nope, too thick:

Okay, how about this one:

Nope, been there, done that.

And notice there was no one else on those other beds.

No, for some reason she just found this new basket to be peculiarly comfortable:

Emphasis on the word "peculiar"!

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Final Contest of The Year -- Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, October 8 and ends at midnight on December 16. 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.

*** You will find us listed as Rolling Dog Farm.  The state is NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

On The Move

Here's another of the many "getting ready for winter" tasks we've been doing:  Last Saturday we moved the portable hen house (the "eggmobile") from the spot up on the hill where it sat all summer back down to the farmstead. We did this so it would be close to power and water, and easier for us to clear snow out of the way so we can gather eggs.

The spot we had the eggmobile in last winter -- in a fenced paddock next to the pond, below the dog yards -- turned out to be a disaster come springtime when we wanted to take it out to new pasture. It was so muddy we couldn't move it with the tractor, and a neighbor came over with his skidsteer on tracks to help move it ... and couldn't. He finally brought over his small excavator with big tracks and that's how we got it out of the paddock and up on to drive. 

Having learned that lesson the hard way and with next spring in mind, we picked a much firmer, level spot close to the barn for this winter. In the photo I'm moving the eggmobile with pallet forks on the tractor -- we have a hole in one tip of a pallet fork and put a trailer hitch ball through it, and hook on to the eggmobile that way. (It's built on an old trailer chassis so it has a tongue with a ball hitch.) It's much more maneuverable with the tractor this way than hitching it to one of the pickup trucks, and lets us get into fairly tight places.

To "home" the girls in their new location, we leave them on board for about 48 hours before opening the door to let them out for foraging. The eggmobile has power on board for lights, and at this time of year we plug in the trailer so we can turn on the lights for the early evening darkness (more "daylight" helps with the laying).

We had this eggmobile back in Montana and it made the trip to New Hampshire, too. We simply pulled it up onto our 24' flatbed trailer, chickens and all, and one of the drivers who was hauling for us that year drove it out. He said he got the strangest looks when he pulled into truck stops -- people would see this odd-looking structure on wheels with chickens looking out the windows. 

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Final Contest of The Year -- Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, October 8 and ends at midnight on December 16. 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.

*** You will find us listed as Rolling Dog Farm.  The state is NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

Loading Up

First, just a quick update to report that we had no major impact from Sandy -- no damage, and the power was out for only about 90 minutes. We had 1.5 inches of rain over 36 hours, quite a bit less than we get during some intense thunderstorms. So we are feeling very fortunate indeed.

I took the photo above on Saturday a week ago. I was hauling more firewood from the place where we cut the logs up and stacking it in the woodshed. This is a never-ending process this time of year, and continues right through until spring. We burn far more cords of wood -- about 14 to 16 -- during the heating season than we could ever stack in the woodshed, so we're always replenishing the supply of fuel for the wood boiler (whose chimney and roof you see in the background.)

We had friends visiting from Ovando, Tim and Cindy J., the previous week, and Tim remarked with some astonishment, "You know, they use hardwoods for firewood here -- we think hardwoods are too valuable to burn!" Indeed, it's a funny thing about New England -- few people here consider using softwoods, i.e., conifers like pine, fir and spruce, for firewood. New Englanders consider "real" firewood to be hardwoods like ash, maple, cherry, and birch. That's because in general hardwoods deliver more BTUs per volume than softwoods, and because they're denser, they burn longer and produce hotter coals. If you tried to sell someone firewood made of spruce or pine, you'd get run out of a town on a rail (made of hardwood, no doubt).

But out west, your only choice for firewood is softwoods, and everyone stays warm just fine, thank you. We had the same view as Tim when we first arrived in New Hampshire ... the thought of burning maple or birch for heat seemed very strange to us. Three years later, it still does, but hardwoods are what we typically burn.

In the photo I'm hauling the wood -- these are whole logs about 30 inches long, which I load right into the wood boiler -- on our Kubota RTV utility vehicle. The small bed on that vehicle can hold half a ton -- 1,000 pounds -- about the same as a Ford F-150 pick-up. 

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Final Contest of The Year -- Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, October 8 and ends at midnight on December 16. 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.

*** You will find us listed as Rolling Dog Farm.  The state is NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!