Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary

Another Contortionist

If you enjoyed the video of our blind foal Cash figuring out how to graze under the corral panels while lying down, you'll appreciate this one, too.  Just two weeks ago we cross-fenced the huge 1-acre yard in the front of Widget's House, dividing it into two smaller 1/2 acre yards.  This allows us to spread the dogs out into smaller groups.  (We have three other fenced yards behind and to the side of the building.)  Well, we soon noticed wobbly Allie was somehow managing to get back and forth between the two front yards.  The new fence and gate kept everyone else in their respective sections, but Allie was free to come and go as she pleased. 

A few days ago, we discovered how she did this.  Then I videotaped her doing it.

Now, as you'll see in the video, Allie is truly one wobbly girl, and walking takes quite a bit of effort.  Yet despite her compromised motor skills, she is still able to get from Point A to Point B, regardless of whatever obstacle she finds.  In this case, the fence and gate keeping her from where she wants to be.

As you watch this, notice blind Peabody and blind Penny standing behind Allie.  It looks like Penny is saying to Peabody, "Hey, I wonder what she's doing down there?"  You'll also see blind Pepper come up to check out what Allie is doing.

(Oh ... yes, Penny's back!  Her adoption didn't work out -- new baby coming, as it happened -- but Penny was so happy to be back at the ranch it made us feel guilty about adopting her out!)

What's Outside Your Front Door?

I was waiting impatiently tonight at 9:15 p.m. for Google Video to finish processing a short clip I had uploaded 30 minutes ago when Alayne came into my office and motioned me towards the front door.  A few minutes earlier we had "emptied the house," as we call it, putting everyone outside for their last pit stop before bedtime. 

As usual, we got the "Who, me?" look from most of the dogs.  They prefer to hang around the front door, not convinced it's really bedtime until either Alayne or I step outside to start putting them up in their cottages.  So this was the collection still waiting for us to come out.  I grabbed the camera and took the photo.

And since I am still waiting on Google Video -- a rare glitch for them -- to process the clip I was planning to post on the blog tonight, I thought I'd use this photo instead.

That's deaf-and-blind Spinner on the far left, little Bailey the mini Doxie, behind him big blind Helen, then Birdie who has muscular dystrophy, Belvie the new mini Doxie, and wobbly Soba the Collie mix.  Up on the step is Daisy the mini Doxie, blind Callie the plump Doxie by the door, blind Willie the Beagle, and three-legged Cody hogging the entire landing.  Off camera to the right was Nevada the blind puppy, blind Brody, blind Evelyn and who-knows-who-else?

(Click on photo for larger image.)

There's A New Gardener In Town

We were heading out for afternoon barn chores today when we saw our blind foal Cash mowing the grass in his own unique way.  We kind of wondered how the grass was getting clipped so far from the corral panels.  Most horses will stand at the edge of a corral and stick their heads under the bottom rail to eat the nearby grass.  Cash, who is completely blind and has never seen other horses do it the "normal" way, figured out another approach.  His way definitely has its advantages!

And when he's finished -- which can take a while, since he likes to snooze off and on while dining -- he just slides himself back under the corral panels.

Here's a 40-second video I shot this afternoon.

Jumping For Joy ... Or Was It For Dinner?

I went over to Widget's House this evening to help Alayne feed the dogs.  As I opened the gate you see in this photo to let blind Pepper and blind Emmy Lou through from their yard, deaf Tyler suddenly shot through the gate opening from the adjoining yard.  Pepper had already come through, but Emmy Lou heard Tyler thunder past and took off after him.  Emmy Lou can hear but she can't get a fix on where the sound is coming from, so she went bounding off in Tyler's general direction. 

It didn't take her -- or Tyler, for that matter -- long before they realized that everyone else was going inside for dinner, and here they were, on the wrong side of the gate!  After getting the other dogs in, I came back out and saw Emmy Lou jumping up and down at the gate.  She was literally clearing three feet in some of her jumps.  I dashed into Widget's House to get the camera.  By the time I got back outside she had quit jumping, but when she heard me call her name, she jumped again, just once.  I called her name.  She jumped again.  I called her name ... and she jumped. 

I took 24 photos in quick succession (oh, thank heavens for a digital SLR camera!), each time calling her name, and each time I got a photo of her in the air.  I'm sure she was relieved when I finally decided I had the photo I wanted, because she looked like she was getting a little tired!

Tyler, meanwhile, wasn't sure what Miss Jumping Bean was trying to prove.  All he knew was that he was still on the wrong side of the gate.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

We Hear You!

Each spring our target date to start taking the horses out to pasture is June 1, although in practice this means we usually begin on Memorial Day weekend.  Because of our climate, it takes longer for the grass to "green up" and grow to a respectable length before we can turn the horses out for grazing.  We got a bit of a head-start today and took 16 of the horses out. 

We have to introduce them gradually to pasture after a winter of eating hay, because too much of this rich spring grass too soon can make them sick.  For right now, they will go out for a few hours at a time, and over the course of a couple of weeks their intervals on grass will get longer until they're out for the entire day.

I took these two photos this afternoon when Alayne and I went out to bring in the "three blind girls," as we call them.  That's Destiny on the left, Nikki in the middle, and Lena on the right.  (On the far right is blind Guadalupe.)  We were at the gate to their pasture and they heard us calling to them, which is why their heads are up and they're looking in our direction.  Destiny is, um, always a little "off."

And a minute later, here they come, headed straight for us.  Destiny managed to re-set her gyroscope and got a course correction.  It really helps to have two other horses to follow, you know?

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Camouflage Kitty

You may remember that last autumn our blind cat Cinder gave birth to two kittens a few months after arriving from the Bitterroot Humane Association in Hamilton, Montana.  (We didn't know she was pregnant when we agreed to take her.)  We had found a home for one kitten, but that fell through, and the other kitten we had planned to add to the sanctuary "staff" as a barn cat.  So we ended up with two new staff additions. 

Alayne took this photo of the kitten we named Spark, checking things out in a very wet and muddy corral yesterday.  Spark is the very assertive one of the pair.  Her sister, Ash, is not nearly as confident or as outgoing, but both love to explore.  Our other barn cats stick to their territory -- Smoke and his sisters Smudge and Skitter hang out at Lena's Barn, while Joshua and Rocky never venture far from Beauty's Barn.  Ash and Spark, on the other hand, go everywhere ... basically, wherever we are, they are.  As we make our rounds from barn to barn, corral to corral, these two girls follow us along.  And some nights Spark will even sleep in Beauty's Barn.

Like Cinder their Mom, Spark and Ash have small frames, bright green eyes, short stubby tails with a kink in the end,  and extra toes on each foot.  Spark is the one who got Cinder's bossy, take-charge personality, though, and she's been busy bossing the other barn cats around, even though they are all much bigger and older than she is.  In the animal world, it's all about attitude.  And as we certainly know, the smaller they are, the more attitude they have!

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While Alayne had the camera out, she also got this interesting shot looking across the corrals to the mountains of the Scapegoat Wilderness.  She was struck by how the contours of the white horse -- our old, blind guy Shasta -- kind of looked like the ridgeline of the mountains.  The fresh snow had arrived in a big spring storm Monday.  We had a few inches of snow at the ranch Monday night and plenty of rain on top of it, so we were happily drenched.  We desperately needed the moisture, because for the last couple of weeks we were in the 70s and even 80s, when we should have been in the 50s. 

All the horses in the photo have their heads down because Alayne had just fed them their dinner.

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(Click on photos for larger image.)

45 Seconds of Pure Joy

I had just come back from Missoula late this afternoon and had gone into my office to check emails when I heard this rustling sound coming from the dog bed outside my office door.  There was Bailey, rolling around like mad, having the time of his life.  I grabbed the video camera and walked out to capture the moment.  He saw me standing there and stopped.  Now, that's unusual because he is, as I've mentioned before, a dog who loves to perform for the camera. 

He scampered off the bed, scooted around the living room (his back legs list at about a 45-degree angle now), and then suddenly made a bee-line for the dog bed again.  I had turned the camera off and before I could fire it up, he had thrown himself into an entirely new 'roll extravaganza.'  It was almost like he had to go backstage for a quick breather before his next performance.  And with no warning to the audience or cameraman, he was at it again.

So this is what I captured on video.  For a little dog who was rescued from an animal hoarder's outdoor pen, Bailey has come a long way. 

(The clickity-clackity noise you'll hear on the audio are Belvie's toenails as he zooms around the house while I'm filming.  In the first couple of seconds you'll see Belvie race into the video -- I think he was trying to snatch one of the toys Bailey was playing with -- and then he disappears just as fast.  But those are his feet you hear in the background.)

Best Friends

Alayne took this photo of Nevada the blind puppy playing with wobbly Noodle this morning.  Nevada just loves Noodle and her sister Soba, and she plays with them all the time.  We've had a hard time getting video or even close-up photos of Nevada in action with the sisters, though, because whenever they realize we're nearby, they stop playing to come over and be with us.  So Alayne took this shot from the back porch.

Noodle and Nevada were playing "king of the cot," roughhousing back and forth.  A few seconds after Alayne photographed them, Noodle tumbled backwards off the cot, leaving Nevada triumphant.

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In case you're wondering, the cottage is named after Kelly, the very first blind dog we took in here at the ranch.  She came to us from a small private shelter in Deer Lodge, Montana.  She was found up in the mountains, lost and wandering around, where she must have been dumped.  Kelly was a sweet little thing, a gentle and loving soul.  Tragically, she died of pancreatic cancer less than a year after arriving.  But we've never forgotten her, and the cottage helps remind us of her every day.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

Little Belvie Comes To The Ranch

I'm not quite sure how this happened, but Dachshund No. 5 has arrived at the ranch.  They seem to slip in under cover of darkness, stealing hearts as they go (or, I should say, as they come).  These Dachshunds are fast moving up to challenge the Labs as the largest number of any one breed at the sanctuary.  At the moment the score is Labs 7, Dachshunds 5.  The newest arrival is Belvie, a miniature Dachshund who came to us from the Kootenai Humane Society in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. 

I took this photo above of Belvie and Bailey this afternoon.  The only way to get Belvie to sit still long enough for a photo was to have Alayne hold a squeaky-toy over my head ... hence the intense look you're seeing in those two faces.  Bailey came out to have his photo taken because, well, he's a camera hog.  (His motto is, "Have camera, will appear.")

Belvie belonged to an elderly man who had to go into a nursing home.  His toenails were so long they curled underneath his feet, and he was terribly skinny.  (He's still thin.)  Belvie first went to a private rescuer, but he needed medical treatment for an abscess on his face and some dental work that this rescuer couldn't afford, so he ended up at the Kootenai Humane Society.  He was briefly adopted by a family in Missoula, but that didn't work out, so back to the shelter he went.

The Missoula family felt bad about it and contacted us to see if we would be able to take him.  In the meantime the shelter continued to try and find someone to adopt him, but didn't have any success.  So we agreed to take him, but only after Alayne had come down with a bad case of Dachshunditis and mumbled to me from her sickbed, "Well, jeez, what's one more Dachshund anyway?"  (Hmm.)

Belvie's got the classic bad back problem that affects our other miniature Dachshunds.  He can get around at an astonishing rate of speed, but swiveling and sashaying (is that a word?) as he goes.  He has difficulty climbing up and down, and occasionally teeters over, but he's not as compromised as Bailey by any means.  The back problem, of course, affects his neurological capabilities, so he has the usual incontinence issue our other mini-Doxies have.  (Please join us as we celebrate National Linoleum Appreciation Week.)

Belvie is obsessed with soft squeaky toys, just like our blind dog Goldie.  Whenever we come into the house, he gets excited and grabs a toy and starts running in circles through the living room, around the kitchen and across the dining room, making a big loop through the house, squeaking as he goes.  In this photo he couldn't take it any longer and began barking at Alayne to demand that she finally ... "finally, I tell you!" ... give him that toy!

(Click on photos for larger image.)

Can We Help?

Today was "herd health day," when our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, comes out to do the spring vaccinations and annual health checks on all the horses.  With 32 horses at the ranch, it takes most of the day!  In this photo Bill and his vet tech Linda C. are getting a little help from blind Nikki on the left and blind Destiny on the right, as Bill gets ready to examine blind Lena.  Just because they're blind doesn't mean they aren't inquisitive, and these girls definitely are that.

In this photo Nikki was trying to steal the clipboard literally right out of Linda's hands.  Nikki had no idea what a clipboard was, of course, but the best way to find out is to steal it and then check it out yourself.  Linda managed to grab it back before this three-year old took off with it.

We saved the best part for last, which was getting the strangles nasal vaccine up each horse's nose.  Needless to say, there isn't a horse alive that likes having an 8-inch plastic tube stuck up its nose and then a liquid squirted out.  Our two Belgian draft horses not only really don't like this procedure, but their sheer size makes it even more of a challenge to get the vaccine delivered to the right spot.  So I handed the lead rope to Linda while I shot this video of Bill giving Rooster and Beaver their strangles vaccines.  (At the end of the first clip of Rooster getting his dose, the audio is not very clear but Bill is saying something like, "Hey, my shoulder is still in the socket!"