Rolling Dog Farm

It's Okay, I'll Just Help Myself

She may be completely blind, but Lena knows there's hay on the utility vehicle -- and when I drive up into her paddock, she comes slowly trotting after it.

No, she's not going to run into it -- she can tell exactly where she is, relative to the vehicle, by the sound. And Lena's a smart girl, so she slows down when she realizes she's close, then walks gingerly up to it.

Her moment of opportunity comes when I've stopped to fill up Cash's water tank in the adjacent paddock. Unlike Cash, she's not interested in exploring the manufacturing quality or engineering skills behind the Kubota RTV. Lena wants a head-start on the hay, and she knows it's waiting in the cargo box. So while I'm dispensing water to Cash, she's self-dispensing hay to herself. I said she's a smart girl, eh?

Checking It Out

I took this photo with my phone yesterday morning when I was taking hay and water out to the horses. That's blind Cash inspecting the RTV utility vehicle. Cash has always been a very inquisitive character, and because he's blind, he uses his muzzle to explore things in his environment. He's always fascinated when I pull up in the RTV, and loves to reach through the fence to run his nose and lips over it. (Um, that's one problem with using smooth wire fences for blind horses -- they can always reach through them if they really want to!)

We've had an incredible run of several days of warm, dry and sunny weather, so I've been able to start cleaning out the corrals and spreading manure. Because winter was so persistent and the weather didn't really "break" until last week, the grass hasn't grown much -- so putting the horses out early like this isn't affecting the grass growth yet. Typically we wouldn't do this because they'd eat all the young fresh shoots, setting back pasture regrowth. We've left them out around the clock for days, and they are loving it.

And this is actually helping the pastures, because the grass is getting lots of manure just at the right time, plus the "litter" of left-over bits of hay on the ground that decomposes into the soil.

Meanwhile, someone gets to check out an interesting piece of equipment a couple of times a day.

Horse Stock

Our farrier, Steve Sandvil, was here the other day to put horseshoes on the two Belgians, Bill and Bob. We don't typically put shoes on the blind horses, with the exception of Rosie, who occasionally needs "corrective" shoes to deal with a hoof flaring issue on her front feet. But because of the kind of work the two draft horses do, they needed to be shod.

Although BillyBob are a pleasure to work with -- well behaved and responsive, easy-going and calm -- they are a bit touchy about having their feet trimmed. We suspect they had some less than pleasant experiences in the past. To help the trimming and shoeing process, we got a horse stock specifically made by the Amish for draft horses. You can tell that Bill in the photo above fills the entire width of the stock; yet he's not even a large draft, so the Amish make a "super-size" version for the really big guys.

Here's Steve fitting a shoe on the rear foot:

And finally, here's an interesting shot of Steve using the grinder in his work trailer to put the finishing touches on a shoe, with sparks flying:

The small oven-like box on the left there, with the white insulation, is really just that -- an oven to heat the horseshoes to red-hot temperatures so they can be hammered and shaped to fit. It's fueled by a propane tank in the trailer. It's kind of a modern version of the "farrier's forge."

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 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.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still 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!  

Little Guy, Big Guy

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Before I begin this post, I wanted to say that Alayne and I are very grateful for all the heartfelt comments and condolences we received in the past couple of days about losing Avery. He was a special one, and it was wonderful knowing how many people were touched by his story. Thank you for all of your support!

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On a happier note, one of the things we wake up to every morning is the sight of blind Cash and Bill the Belgian (the other half of our BillyBob duo), roughhousing with each other over the corral fence. They started doing this a few months ago, not long after Bill and Bob arrived here. There is a complete mismatch in size, as you can see in the photos -- Bill is a couple of feet taller and several hundred pounds heavier than Cash. Yet these two just have a blast playing with each other first thing in the morning.

I had to take the photos from a distance because every time I get close enough with the camera, they stop playing and focus on me ("does he have anything we can eat?"). So the best way to see the photos may be to click on them for a larger version.

In the first one above, Bill is reaching over to nip on Cash's neck.

In this next one, Cash has turned his butt to Bill, which only gives the big guy another chance to take a bite of some neighboring horse flesh:

Here Cash is getting a nip of his own on Bill's neck:

A second bite is as good as the first:

And here they're both taking a bite out of each other's neck at the same time:

Cash is small for a horse -- not even 14 hands -- but he loves mixing it up with his big friend on the other side.  And Bill could probably pick Cash up by the neck and lift him over the fence if he wanted to, but he is as gentle as can be with his little blind friend.

We wish he were as gentle with the corral panels, though. He and Bob have started crushing the top rail of one panel by simply standing over it with their necks and pushing downwards. <Crunch!> These are lightweight Priefert corral panels that are fine for regular horses, but can't stand up to a Belgian who wants to "flex his muscles." We had to do emergency repair last Saturday morning when we came out to find BillyBob had reduced the panel to the left of their feeder to chest height ... and were contemplating vaulting over it.  Our temporary fix was to chain up a much heavier "bull panel" against the crushed panel (too frozen into the ground to pull out). If you click on the photos for a larger version you may be able to make it out.

(The gray things in the foreground are upside down Rubbermaid stock tanks.)

Someone will ask why we don't just put them together in the same corral if they're friends. That's because when it comes to feeding time, the boys would keep Cash away from the feeder, and the competition might end up with him getting kicked -- and a big Belgian kick could do serious and perhaps fatal injury to a little horse like Cash. (Don't forget, they can see and he can't, so that increases the risk factor even more.) Plus, Cash already has the beautiful blind Lena for his companion; she's just off to the left and out of the camera frame. So ... the big boys are for goofing around, but Lena ... Lena is for love.

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The new Shelter Challenge started Monday, January 9 and ends at midnight on March 18. 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.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still 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 for Week 4 in this 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.

The Apple Is Better On The Other Side Of The Fence

It's not just the grass that's greener on the other side of the fence; the apple over there is better, too. That's blind Cash reaching through the fence to munch on a fresh apple on a recent morning. Every day when we put them out to graze in their paddocks, they make a mad dash to the corner where the apple trees are (they may be blind but they've mapped everything in their heads). They know a bunch of new apples have fallen off the trees overnight and dropped onto the ground, and they want to scoop them up before any of their buddies do. 

It might be hard to imagine a group of blind horses making a "mad dash," but this they do. As soon as we take their halters off, they race across the paddock to the apple orchard corner. They don't gallop or do anything foolish, they just walk at a brisk pace -- although Cash will often canter over -- for the first 20 yards or so, then put their heads down to start smelling for the apples as they get closer. Even ancient Hawk, the gray Appaloosa next to Cash in the photo above, knows that if he doesn't hustle over, then Lena and Cash will help themselves to his share.

Here's what it looks like from a distance:

But of course, nothing is quite as tasty as the apples across the fence, and no one is more determined, or more adept, at retrieving them than Cash. Apple season can be hard on the fences for that reason, and just last week Kate and I had to do a lot of fence repair one morning before turning them out again. They know the apples won't be around for much longer, so right now they're all enjoying their fruit salad with breakfast.

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Still No. 3!

The current Shelter Challenge started on July 4th and ends at midnight on September 18th. 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.  [Yes, we are still listed as Rolling Dog Ranch for the purposes of the contest, not Rolling Dog Farm.]

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this round of the Shelter Challenge. 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!

Bo's Last Day

Yesterday we had to let Bo, one of our blind Appaloosas, go to the big green pastures in the sky. In the past two months he had suddenly started losing weight dramatically, and blood work showed his kidney and liver values were screwed up. A follow-up urinalysis revealed ketones, meaning he was now using up his own body fat reserves. Clearly, something else was competing for the nutrition he was getting -- and winning. Our equine vet, Dr. Steve Levine, sent Bo's test results to an internal medicine specialist at New England Equine Medical and Surgical Center in southern New Hampshire for consultation. The medical consensus was that he most likely had a tumor of some sort, though based on the lab work we didn't know specifically what kind. Whatever it was, it was aggressive.

The problems quickly mounted. His immune system became suppressed, his skin and hair deteriorated (flies took advantage of that situation and would cling to him no matter how much fly spray we applied, even while leaving the other horses alone), and -- alarmingly -- we could actually hear his bones creak when he turned his neck or walked. Alayne described him as "brittle," which was probably the most apt way to put it. 

After weeks of trying to turn things around, we sadly realized it was time to let him go, and yesterday morning Dr. Levine came out to euthanize him. Our neighbor and friend, Jim D., had already come over with his excavator to dig a grave.

In the photo above, you can see just how thin Bo was, with his ribs sticking out. Kate walked Bo's girlfriend blind Rosie out to keep him company right up until the end.

In this photo Dr. Levine is beginning to inject the euthanasia solution while I hold Bo:

Bo always loved gobbling the apples that fell from the trees around the horse paddocks, so I scooped up a few before we set out for the gravesite and gave him some as a final treat just before Dr. Levine began the procedure. I'd like to think that Bo's very last sensation was the taste of those apples in his mouth.

In a ritual that our equine vet in Montana, Dr. Erin Taylor, had encouraged us to adopt, after Bo died we brought Rosie over to be close to him and sniff his body. Erin believed, and we think she's right, that it helps bring closure for these animals who become bonded with one another. Rather than wonder why Bo suddenly disappeared and never came back, Rosie could smell his prone body and know that he was gone:

Earlier, just before that shot, Rosie had been gently running her muzzle over Bo's ribs, gently nibbling at his hair and feeling his body. Then she raised her head and sniffed and sniffed some more. In all, maybe only a minute or two elapsed, but I could tell she knew he had died ... and she was ready to move on. We had noticed in the past week that she was responding to him, and treating him, differently, and we figured she must have known something was very wrong with him.

Kate and I walked Rosie back down to the horse paddocks and turned her out with blind Bridger and blind Nikki. She found them, put her head down, and settled in to graze.

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Thank you so much! We just won $1,000 for getting the most votes in week 3 of the Shelter Challenge!

The current Shelter Challenge started on July 4th and ends at midnight on September 18th. 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.  [Yes, we are still listed as Rolling Dog Ranch for the purposes of the contest, not Rolling Dog Farm.]

Because of your votes, we just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last Shelter Challenge. 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!

Grazing Begins

Today we put the horses out to graze for the first time this season, and were they ever a happy bunch. It's been a long, long winter here -- unusually so, everyone tells us -- so we were a few weeks behind on grass growth. But finally the grass was tall enough, and thick enough, for grazing, so Kate and I led them out to the pastures and turned them loose. In that photo above, Kate is leading the first set, blind Cash and blind Lena, to the upper paddock.

As we do every year at the start of the grazing season, we let them stay out only for a couple of hours at first, then we will gradually increase the length of time they stay on pasture. Too much green grass too soon can cause problems for them.

You can see the dandelions got a head start on the grass -- we had a bumper crop, and so did everyone else. I've never seen so many dandelions in pastures and lawns as I have here in Lancaster this spring. None of the horses seemed to mind, of course ... Lena just considered them another tender green in her New Hampshire salad bar:

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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 just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this current Shelter Challenge. 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!

More Eyes, Larger Version

No, it wasn't Friday afternoon when we had to call our equine vet, Dr. Steve Levine. It was worse -- Saturday afternoon. I was out feeding the horses and noticed blind Bo's right eye was closed shut and tears were streaming down his face. I struggled to get his eyelid open, but when I did, I could see blood and edema, or fluid, under the cornea. There were lots of tiny blood vessels laced across the outer surface of the cornea, all headed towards the area where the blood and edema were located inside. Typically when you see this, it means the body is directing blood to where healing is needed. It looked like trauma to the eye, but I couldn't see any visible damage to the corneal surface itself, i.e., an ulcer of some sort. 

I gave Bo some oral banamine for pain relief and called Dr. Levine. I felt awful, because it was late on Saturday, it was pouring rain, and clearly this hadn't just happened. I was hoping he'd be able to walk me through what I could do to keep Bo comfortable until Monday morning, but he insisted he should come out and look at the eye. He was so gracious about it and said, "You feel worse about me coming out than I do, so don't worry!" 

About five minutes later my cell phone rang and it was Steve, saying he had just had an emergency colic call come in right after he got off the phone with me. He would need to stop at that client's farm first and then head to us. That made me feel a tad better that I wasn't the only person screwing up his Saturday evening. 

When Steve arrived, I haltered Bo and brought him up to the main barn. In the photo at the top, he's injecting a nerve block for the eyelid so we didn't have to fight to keep Bo's eyelid open. I have often said that the strongest muscle in a horse is not in the leg -- it's the eyelid. Especially when the eye is painful, a determined horse can keep the eyelid closed tight. I have, over the years, become pretty good at prying them open enough to get the job done, but a nerve block makes life much easier!

After examining Bo's eye, Steve put a stain strip in under the eyelid, waited for a few seconds, and removed it. Then he pulled out a flashlight and immediately we could see where the problem was -- sure enough, there was a small ulcer, right where all the vascularization was. Here we are looking at it:

The yellow stain "pools" in any break in the corneal surface, and under the light it glows like neon. You can't miss it.

Of course, at this point I felt even worse, because I could have done the stain too, but I didn't have the stain strips. If I had, I could have saved him the trip out. A corneal ulcer is generally easily treatable with topical antibiotics, which we had on hand. 

Steve started the treatment on Bo's eye and left me with stain strips to check his eye later in the week, as well as for future cases like this. On Sunday, Bo was already holding his eye open much more, a sign the healing has begun and he's more comfortable.

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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 just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in this current Shelter Challenge. 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!

Fancy Footwork

Here's a fellow you haven't seen before ... this is our terrific farrier, Steve Sandvil, who was here on Tuesday.  He's been coming out to work on our horses since last summer, but for some reason I've never gotten him on the blog.  Alayne (a.k.a. "Potato Lady") came outside from kitchen duty briefly to hold Bridger (a.k.a. "Scarface") while I took these photos.  She's still wearing the rubber gloves she uses when she's busy washing and mashing potatoes.

Meanwhile, Steve had finished trimming Cash's feet so Kate was keeping him occupied over at the "salad bar" on the truck:

Here's another view:

With this last shot I've now covered three of Bridger's four feet ... you can see in the background Kate is still keeping Cash amused at the salad bar:

We've always had problems with blind Rosie's hooves and struggled over the years with various attempts to fix the issues with her front feet; in just three visits, Steve managed to do some corrective shoeing that fixed 'em once and for all.  I would've taken photos of Steve working on Rosie on Tuesday, but someone had to get back to her potatoes.

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Please Keep Voting!

The new Shelter Challenge started on Monday, January 10th, and ends at midnight on March 20th.  Grand prize in this round is $5,000.  There are no second- and third-place prizes this time, but new 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 came in 2nd nationwide and won $5,000 in the Shelter Challenge that ended in December 2010.  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!

So That's What Was On Top Of Me

Late on Friday afternoon we had one of those typical horsey disasters.  I say "typical" because they usually a) involve fences and b) occur at bad times, i.e., late on a Friday, at night, on a holiday, or any time on a weekend.  Never, ever, on Tuesdays at 10 in the morning.

Kate was driving the truck with hay down to the corrals to start feeding when she looked over to the pasture and saw blind Lena lying on her side in deep snow, tangled up in the fence, with a brace post laying across her.  Lena had somehow gone right through the fence and was lying on the outside, pinned up against two fenceposts, one at either end of her body.  Kate called me -- I had just returned inside and was in my office -- and Alayne and I grabbed our coats and boots and went rushing out.

We found Lena completely entangled, with fence wires wrapped tightly around her back feet and looped through her front legs.  This is yet another reason we don't use either electric fencing or barbed wire with blind horses -- either of which would have made this far, far worse.  She was facing uphill, with her feet sticking through what was the fence line.  Her left rear foot was bleeding profusely.  Blind Cash, who we had turned out with Lena for some exercise earlier in the day, was standing calmly right next to her.  He knew something was terribly wrong and wasn't leaving her side. 

Lena herself was the very definition of calm.  When she heard us coming, she raised her head up and nickered, then put her head down.  But otherwise she was perfectly still.  She didn't thrash around or panic.  Lena was waiting patiently for her humans to come help her out of the mess she had gotten herself into.  If she had panicked, she could have been seriously injured ... or worse, if she had severed part of her foot. 

But one thing we have learned in caring for so many blind horses over the years is that generally they don't panic in a situation like this.  Many sighted horses would, in fact, thrash around and try to get themselves out of it, and only injure themselves further.  But our blind horses -- because they have come to trust their humans so much, and because they've learned that they can only get hurt when they panic -- tend to stay calm and level-headed in a crisis.  This is completely contrary to the myth about blind horses being "dangerous" and likely to injure themselves.  Lena knew that she was in a terrible fix, but she knew she couldn't get herself out of it, and she knew that help would arrive.  So she just continued to lie quietly in the snow, waiting calmly for us to get there.

Neither Kate nor I thought about whipping out our cellphones to take some quick photos of the mishap until after we got Lena out of it, so you'll have to settle for this view of the scene, a day later:

As Kate ran to get the bolt-cutters, Alayne put a halter on Cash and led him out of the pasture and back to his corral.  Then she dashed off to find the soft ropes we use for these situations.  (We've seen this movie before.)  I stood by Lena, trying to figure out the mess of wires, where to start cutting, and then what the "exit strategy" was going to be.  The fact that she was facing uphill, against the fence posts, made it more complicated.

The first thing I cut was the one remaining nail still attaching the top end of the diagonal brace post to the fence post.  Lena had broken the bottom end off and dislodged it, and the brace post was laying right across her chest.  Once it was free, Kate and Alayne lifted it off and carried it down to the drive. 

As Kate applied gentle pressure to Lena's neck as a precaution to help keep her down, I began cutting the wires around her legs.  Because some of them were tightly wound around her feet, with a lot of tension, this is precisely the point where "normal" horses might start kicking and thrashing as they hear the bolt-cutters begin snapping through the wires and feel the tension releasing from around their feet.  That "trapped" feeling is awful, and as soon as they think they can spring free, they'll try ... and only cause more injury.

But Lena didn't budge.  She didn't so much as shift her feet as I cut and cut and cut.  Here's what was left of the bottom wire:

Here's part of the tangled mess I cut away:

Once we got her free of the wires, we were still left with a horse stuck in deep snow on her side, facing uphill, with fence posts preventing her from getting up on her own.  That meant rolling her back over the other way, downhill.  Not easy to do with 1,000 pounds (453 kg) of horse!  We loosely tied one rope around her front legs and the second rope around her back legs.  Kate and I had managed to get a halter on Lena earlier, and Kate was now holding the lead rope to help guide her once we got her up. 

Then, on the count of 1-2-3, Alayne pulled on the front legs and I pulled on her back legs.  We pulled and pulled, but Lena didn't go rolling over.  We realized the snow was so deep she had created a berm underneath her back, so we got down on our knees and scraped it away with our hands.  

Finally, several hefty pulls later, Lena rolled over and struggled to her feet.  She shimmied with her feet, trying to get the ropes off, but quickly stepped out of them.  We guided her down to the drive to assess her injuries.  After washing down her feet, it looked like the only injury was to her left rear foot, which had a nice, deep gouge through the heel. She was holding it in the air, trying not to put any weight on that foot.

I called our wonderful equine vet, Dr. Steve Levine from Northern Equine in Danville, Vermont, and a short while later he was here, tending to Lena.  He cleaned and dressed the wound, bandaged it up, and gave her injections to help with inflammation. 

She is now bearing weight on that hoof again, which is a big relief.  We have Lena in a treatment stall while she recovers, and she's on a course of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories in the meantime.  I took her out for a brief period this afternoon so she could stretch her legs, and Alayne got the photo at the top of her sniffing that confounded brace post. 

So ... after all that drama, how did she go into the fence in the first place?  None of us saw what Lena did, but we're pretty sure we know what happened because we've seen it before with other blind horses, and it goes like this:  Lena just happened to be standing next to the fence when she decided to go down for a nice roll.  She rolled and rolled on her back, and everything's going just great ... until she rolled completely over on her other side, and -- oops! -- suddenly her feet are caught up in multiple strands of wire.  Lena probably tried to pull her feet out and stand up, but with one wire completely wrapped around that left rear foot, she ended up falling over, taking down most of the remaining wires and knocking the brace post loose so it fell on top of her. 

And that's how we found her, sensibly waiting for help to arrive.

Now, having said all this, I don't want to leave you with the impression that this sort of thing happens all the time.  It doesn't.  We've had far more "fence disasters" and wire lacerations from our very small number of sighted horses over the years than we ever had from our much larger group of blind horses.  It was a running joke with our equine vets in Montana, because whenever we had an injury, the chances were it was a sighted horse, not a blind horse.  

But still, if a blind horse is going to get hurt, we like the "post-traumatic sensible syndrome" they seem to have!

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We Won $1,000 As The Weekly Winner For Week 4 -- Thank You!

The new Shelter Challenge started on Monday, January 10th, and ends at midnight on March 20th.  Grand prize in this round is $5,000.  There are no second- and third-place prizes this time, but new 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 came in 2nd nationwide and won $5,000 in the Shelter Challenge that ended in December 2010.  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!