Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary

Two-timing Hound Dog

Our employee Cindy was over at Widget's House the other morning when she saw the usual start-of-the-day antics beginning.  Most mornings when we let the dogs out, Trooper -- the hound mix from Louisiana with a twisted front leg -- goes dashing out the door, closely followed by his girlfriend, Priscilla the blind Poodle.  Priscilla chases Trooper around the yard, romping and roughhousing with her hound dog of a boyfriend.  Often Priscilla's sister, blind Molly, joins in the fray.  (Molly is increasingly showing a lot of, um, special attention towards Trooper.  It's like she wants a boyfriend, too, and doesn't care that her sister is already dating him.  These girls just seem nutty about this Cajun boy.) 

Now, I have tried to capture these antics before, but whenever Trooper sees me with a camera, he stops playing with the Poodle sisters, so I've never been able to get photos of these morning games before.  This time, when the threesome started up their routine, they did so on the front porch of Widget's House, and Cindy was able to get the photos through the screen door.  They didn't even realize she was there photographing.

Here Molly is giving Trooper a right-hook, while blind Brody on the cot realizes mayhem is nearby and is doing his best to stay clear:

In this one it looks like Priscilla and Trooper have teamed up to get Molly by the ears (not nice!):

But just moments later, Priscilla has the hound by his ear while blind-and-deaf Blanca looks on (sort of):

Finally, when it's all over, Trooper makes nice with sister Molly, who is clearly relishing the affection:

Hard to believe both girls are completely blind, isn't it?

Baron's Great Campfire Meal

Wendy M. of Missoula, who adopted blind-and-deaf Baron and blind (and mostly deaf!) Stoney from us a few weeks ago, took her two dogs camping last weekend.  She emailed us a really funny set of photos of Baron at the campsite ... and after yesterday's sad blog, I thought you -- and we -- could enjoy something lighthearted.  Wendy said both dogs did great, and they enjoyed the attention they received from the other campers.

At the campsite, Baron developed an entirely new routine.  This is how Wendy described it, along with the photos she sent:

Here are Baron's five steps to a great campfire meal

Step 1 -- Dig giant hole with front feet and put bone inside:

Step 2 -- Push dirt in hole using nose:

Step 3 -- Wait 15 seconds:

Step 4 -- Remove dirt also using nose and find bone again:

Step 5 -- Eat bone:

[Comment from Steve:  Please note how his pink, pig-like little nose remains clean at all times!]

Thank you for sharing these photos, Wendy!

Laddie Died Today

This was one of those days we had dreaded for a long time.

Laddie was our blind Arabian who had lived with a major orthopedic problem for years.  His left front knee was very arthritic and swollen, and he walked with a limp.  Laddie had required regular cortisone injections in his knee and daily anti-inflammatories for comfort.  Back on May 7, I had posted a blog update on Laddie and a corrective shoe our farrier was fitting on his left hoof to help with the knee problem.

I said in that post, "...Laddie is a case where every week we assess his quality of life. These amazing animals can be so stoic that it is hard sometimes to tell just how much pain they're in and whether it's time to make the ultimate decision.  We only get one chance to get it right, and we sure don't want to make it too soon ... or wait too late."

Alayne was taking Laddie and his buddy blind Shasta out to pasture Saturday morning when she noticed Laddie walking with more effort -- his left leg seemed stiff and bowed out to the side a bit.  We upped his dose of the anti-inflammatory, but it didn't seem to make much difference.  Over the weekend he didn't wander around the pasture to graze very much and began hanging out in the same spot, a sure sign that it was painful to walk.  Shasta, ever the faithful friend, stood right by him. 

When I examined Laddie again yesterday, his knee was more swollen than usual, puffy with fluid.  When I made him walk so I could watch his gait, he was so stiff he was almost walking as if he had a peg-leg.  His knee barely flexed.  Worse, now he was dragging his front left hoof.  Oh, no.  When he wasn't walking, he stood still, eyes half-closed, looking miserable. 

I took Alayne out to see him and show her the changes I was seeing.  We both realized the time had come.  I called our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, and asked if she could come out today.

Back in May, Erin thought we could buy some more time for Laddie with the corrective shoeing.  Today, she saw the continued deterioration in his knee and agreed that there was nothing more we could do for him.  It was time to let this wonderful boy go.

This one really hurt, because Laddie was the sweetest, gentlest, nicest horse we have ever known.  Truly.  We adored him.  He was a once-in-a-lifetime horse.  To make this even more tragic, he was also relatively young (only in his late teens) and otherwise very healthy.  Except for that blown-out knee, he looked great.

Alayne took the photo at the top of this post just after Erin had sedated him but before she injected the euthanasia drug.  At that point, we were saying goodbye to this gentle soul.  Fortunately, you can't see the tears running down my face.  Less than a minute later, Laddie was gone:

While I was bent over Laddie, Erin said to me, "This was the right decision at the right time."  And I knew that was the case, but it doesn't do anything to help with the grief.

And then, in an end-of-life ritual that Erin started us doing last year to help these closely-bonded horses understand that their friend is gone, Alayne brought Shasta over to say goodbye to Laddie:

We will be pairing Shasta up with another of our blind horses this week.  I buried Laddie this afternoon here on the ranch. 

Goodbye, you sweet boy.  We love you.

--

One final note:  Lots of people have forwarded to us in the past couple of months the story of "Molly the Amazing Pony," who was outfitted with an artificial leg at LSU's veterinary teaching hospital.  So in case you're wondering why we didn't try something similar with Laddie:  Molly was a very small pony, not a full-sized 1,000-lb horse, and her prosthetic device was fitted below the knee.  Laddie's problem was his knee.  A prosthesis was not an option for him.  We only wish it were.

Blind Buddy: Two Years After His Adoption

Last Friday we received a wonderful update on blind Buddy, a delightful hound mix adopted from the ranch by Susan S. in Missoula two years ago.  Buddy had come to us originally from a shelter in Spokane, Washington.  He was then just a big, goofy blind puppy who liked to carry a toy hedgehog around in his mouth all day long.  Buddy went blind from progressive retinal atrophy, and his eyes remain as clear today as they were when he first arrived.  That photo above is what Susan just sent me.  In her email, Susan wrote:

"Buddy couldn't be better....  He's five years old now, which I suppose is middle-aged for a big dog like him.  Last month he had his scheduled checkup and shots, and the vet said he's in great shape, and his weight was almost exactly what it was when we adopted him.  He has never been sick a day, and is still the best watchdog (no pun intended) in the world."

Susan continued, "He's always happy, always on an even keel.  It's like that dog in the joke:

Time to eat?  Yay, my favorite thing!!!
It's sunny?  Yay, my favorite thing!!!
It's snowing?  Yay, my favorite thing!!!
We're going for a walk?  Yay, my favorite thing!!!
We're going for a ride in the car?  Yay, my favorite thing!!!
Time to go in my crate?  Yay, my favorite thing!!!

And so on.  He's just happy all the time.  Well, maybe not so much when the Evil Garbagemen appear and "steal" our belongings or when strange dogs come around.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and thank you again for letting us adopt him."

Thank YOU, Susan, for giving this handsome boy such a wonderful home!

Another Blind Water Dog

Blind Stoney is not the only adopted resident of ours who has a thing for water.  Our fabulous volunteer Laura W. from Helena, who adopted blind Levi a few months ago, yesterday emailed me photos and some video of Levi enjoying his walks with her in the countryside outside town.

Laura wrote, "Levi is a very confident dog.  He loves going for his walks.  He walks off leash and runs around smelling everything.  He flushes out the birds and loves to run after the antelope if they have been in the area recently.  I can't imagine him not in my life."

And like Stoney, Levi has a favorite stream he likes to wade into.  If you just watched this video and didn't know anything about Levi, you'd have no idea the dog you're seeing in it is totally blind:

Okay, Now What?

After posting the video of the amazing automated hay wagon and the 14-foot high wall of hay it stacks, some of our blog readers asked:  Well, how do you get bales out of that thing?

The answer:  Carefully!

Vanna White was busy this evening, so I asked Alayne to come out and demonstrate how we break into one of these solid walls of hay.  Here she is doing her best Vanna impersonation.

We pick up one of the poles we use to help hold the front of the stack in place, then pry off the very top bale in the corner of the stack.  We knock that one down to the ground, then the next one over, and so on ... but we do this in a stair-step fashion, so this is the one and only time we ever have a solid vertical wall.  In other words, we remove bales from the top down while leaving a few lower tiers of bales in place ... and work our way backwards into the stack.  That stair-step configuration helps keep the entire stack more stable.  It allows us to then climb up on the hay stack safely and knock down more bales by hand as we need them.

Once we've chewed into the stack several bales deep, we remove some of the rows of bales forming the lower tier in front -- or the bottom step.  The best way to describe it is as a moving stair-step, eating into that giant stack of hay.

Yes, you'll notice we couldn't quite fit all of that last load completely inside the hay barn.  We still had some hay left over, which is why it didn't make it all inside ... but it will be gone soon enough!

Weeds

With 160 acres here, a significant part of what we do is taking care of the land.  Most of it -- about 140 acres -- is kept in pasture for the horses, while the rest has the barns, animal cottages and other buildings on it.  But with that much land, there is a lot of work to ensure healthy soils and healthy grasses.  We've always wanted to be good stewards of the land, and that means making continued investments in caring for it.  I just had our county extension agent out here yesterday to help us with a pasture grass "census," soil analysis, and recommendations for improving our forage quality. 

Our biggest challenge is noxious weeds, which is a huge problem not just here in Montana but across the Rocky Mountain West.  (See Montana's noxious weeds list here.)  As rich and thick as much of our grass is, these noxious weeds still crop up in our fields, with persistent, deep root structures and seeds blown in on the wind.  Although "integrated weed management" is the preferred approach -- using a combination of herbicides, biological control (beneficial insects targeted for specific weeds), grazing, and mechanical means (mowing and pulling) -- it is much more difficult to achieve in practice.  Different weeds respond to different control methods, and they also come up at different times, all of which complicates efforts to get rid of them. 

We use all those "tools" in the integrated weed management toolbox, with varying degrees of success, but at the end of the day we still need to have the fields sprayed to control the worst weeds.  The three big noxious weeds for us are leafy spurge, knapweed, and Dalmatian toadflax.

We are also now dealing with a nasty, invasive plant called cheatgrass, which is actually a member of the bromegrass family.  As a grass, this means a different approach to controlling it than the noxious weeds -- including a different herbicide, which happens to kill your other brome grasses!  As one report says, "Cheatgrass invades rangelands, pastures, prairies, and other open areas. Cheatgrass has the potential to completely alter the ecosystems it invades. It can completely replace native vegetation and change fire regimes."  Cheatgrass also has barbs which are a painful problem for dogs as well as livestock.  So for right now we are mowing the cheatgrass stands and then we will spray those sites in the fall, which is the optimum time.

For the past several days our weed expert, Jeff Campbell of Blackfoot Weed Control in Seeley Lake, Montana, has been at the ranch spraying the pastures.  I took the photo above of Jeff on his ATV spraying in one of our paddocks at the northeast corner of the ranch this morning.  Jeff is a retired forester with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks, so we know we've got one really knowledgeable guy helping us take care of this problem!

When I took that photo of Jeff, I was standing right next to this fencepost:

That field looks lush, doesn't it?

But now look at ground level, and what you see in this one spot is a nice, thick patch of young toadflax:

And by the way, we had sprayed the entire property last year, too.  That's why they call these weeds "noxious" and "invasive."  You can't ever let up.

As much as we don't like applying the herbicides -- and it means taking the horses off the pastures for days -- there isn't much choice.  We had long-time supporters of the sanctuary staying at the ranch last weekend, and they own an organic lawn care business in Washington state.  We asked them if there was any way we could manage these weeds using organic methods.  Their immediate answer:  "No.  Not for these kinds of noxious weeds, and not for a property this size."  They thought if we had 5 or maybe 10 acres we might be able to stay on top of it using organic methods, but it would be incredibly labor-intensive and we couldn't "scale up" to cover the rest of the ranch.

Still, our long-term goal is to minimize the use of herbicides and convert as much of the ranch as possible to organic pasture management.