Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary

Ellie May: Rolling With Joy

I posted back in late October about how blind-and-deaf Ellie May, the elderly Cocker Spaniel who had recently arrived, had taken it upon herself to become my minion.  Well, months later, Ellie May has still not left my side ... or my desk, where she spends most of her days.  She is a devoted little thing, always searching for me if I'm not at my desk.  She will go to all the closed doors in the house ... front, back, closet, you name it ... and scratch at the door, just certain that I am hidden behind it and someone needs to let me out.

Absolutely the most joyful thing that happens to Ellie May is when I magically reappear in my office.  She does a little wiggle-butt dance and then throws herself over on her bed under the desk, rolling and rolling in sheer happiness.  "He's back! He's back!"  This happens so fast that I have never been able to get a photo of it until today.  By the time I get the camera out, turn it on, take the lens cap off, aim and ... it's over.  I'm not sure how I got the photo this time -- maybe I was a bit faster on the draw and she a bit slower on the roll.

So that's Ellie May above, rolling with joy after I came back into my office from barn chores this morning.  This isn't a once-a-day event, either.  Ellie May will flop over and roll with joy every time she finds me again ... even if the absence has been a mere 10 minutes.  (Just for the record:  None of Alayne's legions of minions does this.  So there.)

A Little Too Much Christmas Cheer, Perhaps

Yes, that's blind Widget again, looking completely decadent on the morning after.  As usual, we don't know what went on in her cottage overnight, but she definitely looked a little ... shall we say ... hung-over.  This clearly isn't presenting Widget at her finest moment.  I said to her as I was taking the photo, "You should just see yourself now, Widget."  (She didn't appreciate the blind dog joke.)

To leave you with a better impression, here she was the evening before in the very same chair, singing her very own Christmas carol in this 45-second clip:

I Didn't Hurt The Lambiedoodle. Honest.

As a Christmas gift for the dogs, a wonderful friend and supporter of the sanctuary sent a box of 40 Lambiedoodles -- a soft chew toy sheep with a squeaker inside.  That's one Lambiedoodle for every dog!  We handed them out on Christmas Day, and here are some of the photos we took Christmas night.  That's Bailey above, looking terribly guilty with his Lambiedoodle.  Definitely a Dachshund-in-the- headlights look there.

Here are blind Goldie and Belvie, each giving their Lambiedoodles a work-over:

And not to be outdone, here's Birdie with her sheepie friend:

I'm pleased to report that on the day after Christmas, there were still some Lambiedoodles left!

A Big Horse With A Small Problem

A couple of hours after Dr. Joseph Harari left this afternoon (see previous post), I had just finished putting the horses up in their stalls at Beauty's Barn when I walked over to see if I could help our new employee, Jodie B., wrap up at Lena's Barn.  (Jodie and Gloria have both joined us in the past month, so we now have two full-time people helping us on animal care.)  Jodie was taking her last horse to his stall, but told me she had noticed our Belgian draft horse Beaver bleeding from his hoof when she was feeding him.

I had taken Joe and his friend over to meet the Belgians earlier and hadn't seen anything wrong, so whatever it was had just happened.  Jodie and I headed over to look.  At this point it was 5:30 and getting dark.  Sure enough, he was bleeding from a puncture wound at the coronary band, just above the top of the hoof wall ... and he had managed to peel off a layer of hoof, about an inch wide, all the way down to the bottom of his foot.  Just below the coronary band the hoof wall felt spongy.  Beaver boy!  If it were just a puncture wound, I wouldn't be too concerned, but because of the location and because he's got hoof wall injured, I'm worried.

I call our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, on her cell phone.  She knows my number and sees it on her caller ID.

Erin: "Dr. Smith."  (She calls me that. I love it.)

Me: "Another sighted horse finding new ways to injure itself."

She laughs.  The last time I was at her clinic I looked at their whiteboard with the list of horses currently there and pointedly noted how many of them were being treated for "lacerations" ... and each of these horses, of course, could see.  It's totally counterintuitive:  Why is it that sighted horses manage to cut themselves more often than blind horses?  But I digress.  Again. 

I explain to Erin what I'm seeing, and she tells me what to do.  Clean it up, bandage it, start him on antibiotics, get some bute (an anti-inflammatory) in him, and then call her in the morning when we have daylight to get a better look at it.

So that's what I'm doing in the photo at the top of this post.  Jodie is holding Beaver, while his brother Rooster looks on.  We brought Rooster along to keep Beaver company -- these two have to go everywhere together -- and we kept him occupied with some grain in the bucket he has knocked over.  ("I'm done, so I think I'll just kick this bucket to let them know.")

We're using the mercury vapor light on the outside of Lena's Barn to see, along with an LED headlamp I'm wearing.  Alayne came to help and also take these photos.

Here's a shot of that huge foot ... I'm spraying betadine, a disinfectant, on the wound:

I'm balancing Beaver's foot on something called a HoofJack, a lightweight, amazingly strong hoof stand that our farrier introduced us to.  Of course, I still had to lift his foot onto the stand and "persuade" Beaver to keep it there, and after several rounds of lifting and holding his foot, my back was killing me.  I don't know how farriers do this kind of work for a living!

Dr. Harari and Trooper Meet Again

Dr. Joseph Harari, our board-certified veterinary surgeon at Veterinary Surgical Specialists in Spokane, came out to the ranch today for a visit with a friend of his.  I took the photo this afternoon of Joe and Alayne with our recent arrival, Trooper.  Joe had examined Trooper last week, the morning after he arrived from a shelter in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Joe suggested today that we have Dr. Britt Culver, our internal medicine specialist in Helena, do the surgery on Trooper's hip -- it's essentially a femoral head ostectomy, or FHO, which Britt has done before on a couple of our dogs.  Trooper's hip joint has been obliterated from trauma at some point in the past, which also had broken his pelvis.  The FHO procedure will "clean up" the joint and make it easier for him to use that leg.  Once Trooper has healed from this procedure, Joe will proceed with the more complicated surgery on Trooper's left front leg.

In this next photo Trooper is fascinated watching Spark, one of our barn cats, walk by the isolation yard.  You can see how that left front foot turns outward: 

Trooper, by the way, is no longer the shy, quiet fellow he pretended to be when he first arrived.  No, sir.  He's become a happy, bouncing, jumping-with-joy character.  He's also found his voice, and he sounds like ... well, a hound dog.  To match those ears of his.

Let's Look Inside

If it seems like there have been a lot of veterinary blog posts recently ... well, it feels like that's all I've been doing these past two weeks, taking animals to one of our vet clinics.  Today I took another full trailer-load to see Dr. Erin Taylor at Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital in Missoula. 

First up was Luna, our blind mare.  On Tuesday night, as I was walking out to close up the barns about 10 p.m., I heard a lot of choking and coughing coming from Beauty's Barn.  I raced over and found Luna choking in her stall.  I called Alayne, who was over at Widget's House letting the dogs out one last time before bed, and asked her to come over to the barn as soon as she could.  Then I called Erin, who was still up because of a colic case.  She directed me to give Luna injections of acepromazine and banamine, monitor her for an hour, and then call her back.  The drugs got Luna relaxed, the choking stopped, and we finally went to bed.  On Wednesday she was fine.

But this morning, she was coughing a bit and had some yellow/greenish gunk come up, so I decided it was time for Erin to look at her.  In the photo at the top of this post, Erin is looking through an endoscope into Luna's trachea and esophagus.  Dr. Angela Langer is guiding the endoscope into Luna, while vet tech Courtney is holding Luna's head.

Here's another view of the same thing, taken a few minutes later:

There were no obstructions in Luna's trachea or esophagus, although on her physical exam Erin noticed Luna's neck was thickened.  She suspects that maybe some trauma was involved -- Luna perhaps getting kicked by her pasture buddy blind Hannah.  These two girls do squabble from time to time, and the hooves sometimes fly.  If that happened on Tuesday and she got whacked in the neck, it might have predisposed her to choking.  For now we are going to treat Luna with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and keep a close eye on her.

Also in to see Erin were:

-- Roy the old mule, who was in to get an appetite stimulant shot.  Roy isn't eating enough, and will often still have grain and hay in his feeder the following morning after being in his stall all night.  There's not another equine on the ranch who has any food left in their feeders the next day.  We are also going to be treating him for a presumed ulcer, and the medication for that (GastroGard) is arriving tomorrow.  That's a 28-day course of daily treatment.  Roy is now officially the world's most expensive old mule, although we love every dollar I mean every minute we have him.  Here's Erin giving Roy the shot, while Courtney holds him:

-- Domino, one of our blind Appaloosas, who was in for a penis/sheath exam.  He had been kicking at his belly a couple of days ago, and he didn't have colic.  The last time this started happening we discovered he had a sheath infection, necrotic penile tissue, and maggots crawling around inside.  Egads.  Today we learned that he was starting to get red and inflamed again.  Erin thinks he isn't dropping his penis enough when he pees, and he splashes urine around inside his sheath ... which then causes urine scalding, damaged tissue, and the whole icky cycle.  So we have a special compounded cream to apply.  (Guess who gets to do that.)  To make sure I don't get confused, Erin helpfully wrote on the lid of the jar, "For Domino's P.P."  I decided you didn't really need to see photos of the penis exam.  (You're welcome.)

-- Crazy Horse, our only sighted Appaloosa, an old boy who was in for a lameness exam. He was, of course, much better today than the past two days -- it's amazing what a trip to the doctor can do for you -- so Erin and I chose not to give him another course of steroids in his joints right now.  His last treatment was in October, and we only want to use steroids when you really, really need to.

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And that was today.  On Friday, either Alayne or I will head to Helena to pick up blind Dusty and blind Babe, who I dropped off on Wednesday for eye work with Dr. Brenda Culver.

Just In Time For Christmas: Oliver & Twist. And Another Cat, Too.

I drove over to our vet clinic in Helena, Montana Veterinary Specialists, this afternoon to pick up three animals we'd never seen before but had agreed to take last week.  In this photo I took at the clinic, vet tech Heather A. on the left is holding a blind cat that the Lewis & Clark Humane Society in Helena had asked if we could take.  Although the cat doesn't look happy -- he just had surgery yesterday to remove a painful, glaucoma eye -- he in fact was purring up a storm. 

Vet tech Jayme J. is holding two Dachshunds (what? more Dachshunds?) who came from a bad situation here in Montana -- a woman had more than 100 Dachshunds and Jack Russell Terriers at her place.  Yes, she was breeding, and clearly things had gotten way out of hand, as these backyard breeder situations often do.  Another lady had convinced her to start letting go of some of the dogs.  This lady was able to get 20 of the dogs out last week, and she called us when she realized that two of the Dachshunds had medical problems.

The clinic staff had named them Hairy and Smoothy, for obvious reasons, although Alayne had since decided to name them Oliver and Twist.  We often say that Widget claims to be a Beagle trapped in a Dachshund body, and Oliver would appear to be an Airedale trapped in a Dachshund body, too.  He's one very long-haired guy ... he's got curls, too!  He has intervertebral disk disease, with weakness in his limbs.  He hops when he walks, although this is more from poor conformation than from an neurological problem.  You'll see in this photo of Oliver kissing Jayme how his back legs go out:

Oliver also needed to be neutered.  Did someone mention "breeding"?

Twist's left rear leg is his major problem.  In the photo at the top of the post, you can see how it juts straight out.  Our vets took X-rays yesterday and said it looks like his joints were "installed" backwards in that leg.  So when he walks, the leg is twisted (hence the name) outwards at an angle, stiff as a board.  Yet he doesn't seem to be in any pain, and our vets didn't think there was any need at this point to remove it.  He seems to get around fine with it.  Twist is also developing disk problems, and although his back is impossibly long, right now he is not showing any neurological damage. 

If Oliver's a bold kisser, Twist is really shy.  I was trying to get a photo of him so you could see all of him, but the only thing he wanted to do was hide behind Heather's legs:

And the cat ... he needs a name!  The shelter had named him "Seer," but we'd like something different, so suggestions are welcome for this one, too.  (We've enjoyed all the suggestions for the three-legged girl and will make a decision next week on her name!)  Everyone at the clinic described him as just a sweet little lovebug.  As soon as I put my hands on him this afternoon, his purr engine roared to life.  (And he can't feel very good anyway, having just had an eye removed yesterday.)

Here's what he looked like in a photo the shelter director emailed me last week:

The left eye turned out to have very high internal pressure from glaucoma, and the pain meant it needed to come out.  Inside that socket on the right-hand side he does have an eyeball, but it is very small and not functional.  It doesn't appear to be painful.

Here's the final shot of the day, with Heather holding the-cat-who-needs-a-name:

I also brought blind Allie the Lab home tonight.  She had her eyes removed last week, but she is feeling a lot better than she has in a long time -- she's frisky and bouncy and has a real spark again.  So it was a full truck headed back to the ranch!

Another Way To Enjoy Uncle Dillon

It's not just Baron or Blanca who likes to sleep curled up with old uncle Dillon -- just about everybody, sooner or later, snoozes alongside him.  Here's blind Callie, finding a new way to enjoy him ... not as a pillow, but more like a bed frame, while his stomach must feel like a built-in heating pad.  Dillon, bless his old heart, doesn't seem to mind these opportunistic sleepers. 

Animal Rescue TV Show With Story On Ranch Now Online

We just learned that the TV program Animal Rescue this weekend ran a special edition featuring the winners of the International Fund for Animal Welfare's Animal Action Awards.  The program is now online at this link.  The photo above is a screenshot I took this evening of the Web page with the clip featuring the ranch. 

There are a couple of steps to take before you'll get to the video.

When you bring up the Web page from the link, a regular Animal Rescue TV show will start playing.  You'll need to click on "Specials" in the bar under the screen.  Then you'll see a thumbnail photo come up underneath that says "Animal Rescue -- Special Edition."  (You can see it in the screenshot above -- the group hug photo.)  Put your cursor over the photo and it will say "IFAW  Awards 2007."  Click on the photo and it will load the video in Flash.

The entire program is about 45 minutes.  The first segment is about The Turtle Hospital in the Florida Keys.  Then the segment on the sanctuary starts about 9 minutes into the video and runs for about 5 minutes.  If you don't want to sit through the first segment (although we would recommend it -- they're doing fascinating work with sea turtles), you can simply mute it and let the Flash video play in the background for a while.  Because it's Flash, once the program has been running for a while, you can always grab the slider control and fast forward or rewind to the start of the piece on the ranch.

The camera crew filmed the episode on us back in July, when it was hot and very smoky from the forest fires here in the northern Rockies.  So that's what all the haze is you'll see in the video.

Happy viewing!

Same Man, Same Spot, Different Cat

Finally, here are photos of the two three-legged cats we picked up at Spokane County's animal shelter last week.  Alayne took these photos of me with them this afternoon outside our isolation cottage.  For a rash, fleeting moment, I pondered the idea of trying to hold both of them together for the same photo, one in each arm.  But then my 20+ years of cat experience, now hardwired into my brain, suggested that this was probably not a good idea.  (Although that might have made for some great blog photos.)

Ironically, as it turns out, both cats are missing the same leg -- the left front, although the gray one has a stump of a leg still left.

The tortie, named Honey Girl, was found as a stray by an animal control officer back in October.  The cat had a mangled leg, and the shelter took her to a veterinarian to have the limb amputated.  Although this cat is just as sweet as can be and loves people, no one was interested in adopting her.  Hence the call to us. 

The gray one, also a female, had been hanging around a school for five weeks. The students and staff had taken to feeding her, and eventually an animal control officer took her to the shelter.  This cat is sweet, too, but isn't quite as outgoing yet as Honey Girl.  Honey Girl is the kind of gal who would come right out and ask a boy to dance.  The gray one would wait to be asked.

In this photo, it looks like she's missing the right front leg, but she has her right foot pulled down and tucked underneath my arm.  That's the stump of her left leg you see hanging over my hand.

You can see there are a lot of similarities with these two -- they both came from the same shelter, both are females, both are missing the same limb, both are very nice girls, and both arrived at the same time.  But the gray one doesn't have a name, and thus suggestions are welcome!  (But no "Tripod," please.) 

There's something else about the gray one that may be different, too.  The shelter thinks she may be ...  pregnant.  Oh, no!  Yep.  She sure feels round in the middle, so we'll be taking her in for an ultrasound.  We're just hoping the schoolkids were feeding her too much!

(Click on photos for larger image.)