Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary

Forbidden Fruit

Our farrier, Rich Boyle of Simms, Montana, was out here last week trimming the horses' hooves.  That meant lots of hoof trimmings lying about in the pastures and corrals.  There's something about these hoof trimmings that dogs just love as chew toys.  Now, most of the dogs stay in our fenced dog yards and don't have access to the pastures and corrals, but one of them does get out and about, and that's Dolly. 

She can't get enough of these things ... and that sets up a contest of wills.  We don't let her chew on them because they aren't sanitary and we worry about sharp pieces breaking off and getting swallowed.  So Dolly knows -- we've been through this a lot in seven years at the ranch -- that hoof trimmings are a no-no.  Which makes them all the more desirable, if you know what I mean.

Dolly can't help herself, though.  You'd think, having found one of these forbidden hoof trimmings, she'd slink off behind the barn to quietly chew on it.  But no, she is compelled to walk around with it in her mouth, as if she's flaunting it.  She'll walk right up to me with the dang thing in her mouth ... and yet she knows I am going to make her drop it.  Thus the look on her face in the photo above.  Judging from the gravel dust and grit on her nose, it appears she had been rooting around for this particular treasure, like a pig hunting for truffles.  And just like the pigs who aren't allowed to eat the truffles they find, Dolly had to surrender the hoof trimming, too.

Ellie May -- That's My Girl!

Here's a photo I took this afternoon in our living room of Ellie May, the little blind-and-deaf Cocker Spaniel who came to us a couple of weeks ago.  Her eyes were chronically painful and we had to have them removed, but she has recovered just fine from the surgery.  The sutures are still in and will be taken out in another week.  We picked up Ellie May the day after surgery at our vet clinic in Helena.  From the moment she came back, she hasn't left my side.

As I write this, she's at my feet under the desk. In fact, she stays so close to me here in my office that I have to be very careful when I roll my chair back, because she's frequently sleeping right up against the wheels.  Even though there are plush dog beds on the floor, she'd rather lie on the linoleum next to the chair than be three feet away on a comfortable bed.  Thus I've taken to pulling the dog beds right up alongside the chair to keep her on something soft. 

I had to put her on the living room chair for the photo because I couldn't get a decent shot of her otherwise; she's always sacked out on the floor underneath my desk or trying to be right next to me.  The only way we could get her to sit still in the chair long enough for the photo was the old "hold the cookie high" trick, where we waved a dog treat back and forth above her nose.  The minute she thought the cookie was gone, so was she, climbing back down to get back to me.

Alayne said that this morning, while I was cleaning a poopy crate in one of the dog cottages, Ellie May thought I had gone into my office.  Alayne heard her barking excitedly, and discovered Ellie May in here looking up at the empty chair, thinking I was in it and happy to have found me.  Her tiny stub of a tail was wiggling away.

Hey, when you're blind and deaf, you have to rely on your nose, and sometimes it can give you false positives!  But most of the time her nose works great, and she follows me around the house just using her sense of smell.  (Yes, I shower frequently!)

Tonight when I was cooking dinner, Ellie May was lying on the floor in the kitchen, so close I had to keep stepping over her to get to the sink or to the fridge.  When we sat down to eat, she followed us over to the table and parked herself there.  Wherever I am, she is.  She doesn't have separation anxiety -- she doesn't get upset and start chewing or doing anything destructive in my absence.  She'll look for me and if she finally realizes I'm not in the house, she'll simply give up and wait until I return.  Then she's glued to me.

What's interesting about this is that she had spent her entire life, as far as we know, living with a woman, so we expected her to bond with Alayne.  But she chose me, and now I have a minion of my own!

Waiter, There's A Horse In My Soup

Blind Lena has taken to doing this ridiculous thing when she's finished with her grain.  She stands in her feed bucket, both feet firmly planted in the center.  She does this to signal to us that a) "I'm done, thank you," and b) "it's time to untie me."  There's really no mistaking this look, is there?  And she won't move those feet until we turn her loose.

We feed Lena's "brood" -- the three youngsters who arrived at the ranch as blind foals, Nikki, Destiny and Cash -- their grain at the same time.  Unless we tie up Lena by the fence, she'll finish her meal quickly and then head over to help herself to the youngsters' portion.  She's clearly not a girl who needs any extra weight on her!

All The Way From Beirut ... Here's Popeye!

One of our supporters, Steffanie G., had seen an appeal from an animal rescue group in Beirut, Lebanon.  The group, called Beirut for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or BETA, was planning to fly a dozen or so cats to the U.S. for placement in mid-October, and they were looking for homes for them.  (Best Friends in Utah had helped BETA bring 300 dogs and cats to the U.S. last year.)  One of the cats was blind, and Steffanie wanted to know if we'd be able to take it.  His name was Popeye.

Now, we're of the view that there are enough disabled animals right here in North America that desperately need help.  Every week we have to turn down anywhere from four to ten animals -- and sometimes, in a really bad week, far more -- because we're at our "manageable" limit of 80 disabled animals.  But Beirut was one of the (many) places overseas I spent my childhood, and I was impressed with the effort BETA was making to find homes for its animals ... so we agreed to take Popeye.

Two weeks ago, a BETA member named Maggie flew to Boston with the cats in tow.  A wonderful lady in Providence, Rhode Island, Sue T., had arranged to give Maggie and feline crew a place to stay on arrival.  Sue held on to Popeye for us until we could fly him out to Montana on October 16.  Then the day before his flight out West, he became sick with an upper respiratory infection, and Sue rushed him to her vet.  With some medications and a lot of loving care from Sue, Popeye became much better quickly, and we rescheduled his trip for the following week.  On Tuesday the 23rd, Sue drove Popeye to the Providence airport to catch his flight, only to discover that the outbound flight had been canceled.  So then I made new reservations for this Saturday.  (Third time's a charm.)

Yesterday morning Sue headed to the airport again with Popeye, and this time everything worked just fine.  Popeye flew from Providence to Atlanta and then to Salt Lake, and finally to Missoula on the last Delta flight of the night.  I picked him up at the Missoula airport about 11:30 p.m.  Popeye thought it was insanely cold when I carried him out of the terminal to the truck -- yet it was a balmy 33 degrees.  I said, "Middle Eastern boy, this is nothing, just wait!"  When we arrived back at the ranch around 1 a.m., it was 17 degrees.

In anticipation of Popeye's arrival, we moved Tibby and Fibby out of the isolation cottage and into the cat house yesterday.  We spread blankets on the floor, and the two youngsters are doing well ... everyone's getting along splendidly.  The wobbly brothers, Smokey and Charlie, also moved out yesterday, and are now happily dancing and prancing with the rest of the gang who stay at our house with Alayne and me.

Thus Popeye spent his first day at the ranch in the bright and sunny iso cottage.  He's not yet sure where he is and what's happened, but he was quite comfortable in my arms when we took the photo above.  He has keratitis, which is an inflammation of the cornea.  His eyes are an odd blue/gray, which you should be able to see in the photo.  I'm concerned he may have something else going on in addition to the keratitis, because his eyes look larger than normal.  So he will get a complete ophthalmology work-up by our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, at Montana Veterinary Specialists in Helena.

Thanks to several kind and compassionate people -- Steffanie, Sue, and the BETA folks -- Popeye is ready to start his new life in Montana!

(Click on photo for larger image.)

Blind Laddie Visits His Doctor

I hauled a trio of blind horses into Missoula today to see Dr. Erin Taylor at Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital.  Laddie, shown above, was one of the horses making the trip.  He needed to see Erin for a couple of reasons.  He has a lingering lameness problem in his front left leg from an arthritic knee; Erin had injected his joints with cortisone a few months ago, and that had really helped.  In the past few days, however, he had developed a pronounced limp in that leg.  Of course, by today when it was time to visit with his doctor, he wasn't limping at all.  (Just like taking your car to the mechanic, you know?)  Because you want to use the steroid injections only when absolutely necessary, and keep the intervals between treatments as long as possible, Erin recommended we continue monitoring Laddie, use an anti-inflammatory (bute) to keep him comfortable, and see how he does.

The other issue with Laddie was a suspicious, abnormal growth on his left eyelid that we noticed yesterday.  Because of his coloring, he's at greater risk for skin cancers, so we wanted to have Erin remove it and send it in for a biopsy. 

In case you're wondering, Erin is not choking dear old Laddie in that photo at the top.  She's tying off his jugular vein as she injects a sedative into him.  Laddie needed to be thoroughly sedated before Erin could cut the growth out of his eyelid.

In this photo Erin is scrubbing his eye while Julia, one of the vet techs at the clinic, holds Laddie still.

Laddie is truly one of the sweetest, gentlest horses we have.  He's also the smartest horse at the ranch.  He can a) open doors, b) turn gate handles, and ... we learned to our chagrin ... c) even unhook the safety latches we installed once we learned about his ability to do 'a' and 'b'.  These are all the things we tell people that blind horses don't do.  But he is the only one we've known who can do them, so I think this is a case of the exception proving the rule.  (Maybe.)  Meanwhile, Laddie has repeatedly earned the nickname we gave him early on, Laddie the Lock-picker.

The other two horses making the trip were Darby, also in for a recheck on a lameness issue, and her sidekick little Brynn, who was along only to keep Darby company.  (Translation:  Keeping Darby mellow.)  Brynn enjoys Darby's friendship but wasn't sure why she had to tag along for the ride to the clinic, since she's spent more time in veterinary hospitals in her first year of life than the average horse spends in an entire lifetime.

Take Me To Your Leader. Wait, I Am Your Leader.

This is three-legged Kasha, our Shepherd pup who arrived a few months ago from Spokane Animal Control after having surgery to remove what was left of her rear leg.  Someone had chopped her foot off.  She recovered well from her surgery and has really blossomed into a beautiful girl.  (Although the ears can be a bit ridiculous!)

She's also blossomed into a wannabe pack leader.  She's trying to become the alpha at Widget's House, and her bossy new attitude isn't going over well with the other dogs.  There's only one alpha or pack leader here, and that's us -- and the other dogs know it.  Thus they're confused about why Kasha is trying to assert herself.  So we're working with Kasha on this.  We won't let her get away with bossy behavior towards the other dogs.  We also reinforce her position as a regular member of the pack ... for instance, by having her sit and stay along with everyone else before coming through the door, and then making her wait until the others have come in first.

Kasha's young, she does have a dominant personality (but not aggressive by any means), and she's trying to figure out where she fits in.  So this is all part of her testing the other dogs, and us, to find out.  She's learning that this leadership thing is more complicated than she first thought!

Her best friend has turned out to be Travis, our dog with a fused jaw.  Travis is also, like Kasha, a very sweet dog with a dominant personality.  We joke that the fused jaw was nature's way of protecting him from himself.  He really thinks he's a tough guy, despite the fact that he can't open his mouth and looks like a clown much of the time!  So when I see Travis and Kasha roughhousing in the yard together, I like to think they're practicing their leadership skills on each other.

(Click on photo for larger image.)

The Odd Couple

After little Brynn came to us as a blind 5-day old foal in the summer of 2006, we tried to buddy her up with blind Lena, our Queen Bee mare who raises the blind foals that arrive at the ranch each year.  Even though Lena would seek her out and stand next to her, trying to kindle a relationship, Brynn showed no interest.  Nor was she interested in our other blind youngsters, Nikki and Destiny.  She'd park herself in the corner of the corral by herself, or wander around aimlessly, never looking for company.  For a horse, that's odd behavior.

We weren't dealing with 'orphan foal syndrome' here, in which a foal is taken away from its mare very early and then bonds with its human caregivers, only to forget it's a horse.  Brynn's mom came with her and nursed her until Brynn was four months old.  Even so, Brynn and her mom weren't particularly close.  When it came time to wean Brynn, her mom never even looked back as we led her away.  Amazingly, Brynn never whinnied a "where are you?" call as her mom's hoofsteps retreated towards the waiting trailer.

But Brynn did bond with people and loved all the attention she got from the two-legged herd at the ranch.  She just didn't connect with other horses. 

When blind baby Cash arrived at four weeks of age this past winter, we thought he would be a perfect companion for Brynn.  Smaller and younger, maybe he would make her feel more comfortable.  No dice.  She fled from him. 

So we gave up trying to be the Match.com of the horse world, and resigned ourselves to having a blind foal who liked to be by herself.

Meanwhile, we had a big, brawny blind mare named Darby arrive.  She's the one whose painful glaucoma eyes we had to remove recently.  We had paired Darby up with another blind mare named Honey.  She's the one with some, um, personality issues who we just had spayed to help with an "attitude readjustment."  Darby came to love Honey and was obsessive about being near her, frequently hovering right next to her.  She would become almost uncontrollable if we separated them.

Honey, for her part, bonded with Darby, but she did not like being crowded.  And she had a bit of a mean streak, so she frequently would turn on Darby and let loose with her hooves.  This behavior got worse over the past few months, and Darby became increasingly neurotic.  She had this overwhelming, almost fatalistic, need to be as close as she possibly could to Honey, but she feared getting kicked at any moment.  Darby would edge ever closer to Honey, and then tremble and flinch at the blow she knew was eventually coming.  But separate her from Honey, and she would become agitated and start thrashing around, banging her head.  It had become a completely dysfunctional relationship.

We knew we had to do something. 

So the day I took Honey in to be spayed, Jeanne H. -- our part-time employee who helps us care for the horses -- had a flash of pure inspiration.  She put Darby in with Brynn and then watched what would happen.

It was, as they say, love at first sight.  (Not with two blind horses, but you get the idea.)  They sniffed each other, then quietly stood side by side.  No squealing or other "getting to know you" antics.  A few minutes later they put their heads down and began munching hay together in the feeder.  (Honey would never let Darby anywhere near food or she'd kick her, so we always had to tie up Honey at mealtime.)  Darby visibly relaxed, and by mid-day these two were actually taking hay out of each other's mouths.  Why, I don't know, but it's a sure sign of absolute bonding.  Darby is probably 20 years old, Brynn just over a year old, yet the age difference didn't matter at all.  Physically they couldn't be more different either, with Darby towering over Brynn.

It's been just a few weeks, and Darby is a new horse.  Although she's completely dependent on Brynn for companionship, she's no longer neurotic about it.  She doesn't have to worry about getting kicked.  She finally found the gentle soul she so desperately wanted in a friend, and someone who treats her with kindness and respect.  (Hey, isn't this what we all want?)  And Brynn finally found the buddy she needed but didn't, until now, know she needed.

So there they are, big Darby and little Brynn.  We call them the "odd couple," and for them, this relationship sure seems to work.

As for Honey, we'd like to take out a singles ad on an equine dating site that says, "Attractive foundation Quarter Horse mare, seeks friendship in strong male or female companion who won't take no for an answer.  Learning to share the good things in life.  Not perfect but becoming better.  Love to go for strolls in pasture together."

Tibby And Fibby And The Overnight Guests

Here are Tibby and Fibby, the two kittens with deformed back legs who first came to us back in August -- and as you can see, they have been growing a lot!  Tibby, the little girl on the left, is still by far the smallest of the pair, but proportionately she is keeping up with her brother as they grow.  We still have them in our isolation cottage, which is now turned into a nursery of sorts for these two.  We haven't moved them to our cat house yet for two reasons.  One, we want them to be bigger before they meet the rest of the feline gang; we're a bit concerned that blind Bobby might pick on them when they're this small.  (Hey, just because you're blind doesn't mean you can't be a brat.)  Two, the cat house floor is linoleum, and we don't know how they'll do because of their legs.  So we're going to ease them into it.

For now, they are very happy where they are, and they get all sorts of interesting company coming through.  For instance, the wobbly brothers, Smokey and Charlie, are the newest overnight guests in the cottage, dancing around in their crates.  Tibby and Fibby look at those crates rocking back and forth in wide-eyed amazement.  During the day, Tibby and Fibby sit just inside the open door -- the door sill is about 8 inches above the cottage floor, and about a foot higher than the ground outside, keeping the kittens in and the puppies out -- and watch with similar amazement as Smokey and Charlie do the cha-cha-cha across the isolation yard.  "Wow, those guys can really rock!," they seem to be saying to each other.

Widget vs. Baron, Round Two

Although I try hard to maintain a 'professional environment' in my office, the fact is it's widely viewed by the dogs as simply another playroom.  Or bedroom.  Or ... wrestling ring.  Not too long ago I posted a video clip of blind Widget roughhousing with blind-and-deaf Baron in my office.  Well, they went at it again.  (It's amazing I get any work done in here.)

The advantage to having these contests occur in my office is that I keep the cameras parked on my desk, so my ringside seat makes it easier to whirl around and capture these on film.  You'll notice Baron displaying some new and impressive moves in this bout, while Bailey makes yet another guest appearance at the very end.  (Bailey's beginning to remind me of those guys who get so worked up at sporting events that they have to climb down from the stands and run onto the field.)

So here's the second round of Widget vs. Baron in 90 seconds of video:

Ellie May Comes Through Surgery

Our small animal vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, called this morning just before going into surgery on Ellie May to let me know that she was about to begin, and would call me once Ellie May was through the operation and recovered from anesthesia.  About 11:30 a.m., the phone rang again and it was Brenda, saying Ellie May had come through the surgery just fine.  She did so well under anesthesia that Brenda was able to do a full dental as well. 

We're planning on picking up Ellie May tomorrow and bringing her home!