Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary

Now I Hear They're Worried About My Kidneys

2010-03-09T18:04:36-07:00

After blind Helen had a terrible experience with gastrointestinal hemorrhaging last December as a side-effect of her chemotherapy, our vets decided it was time for a "chemo holiday." It was going to be only for a few weeks, but the hemorrhaging really took a lot out of Helen, and she just wasn't herself. So we elected to extend her chemo holiday until she seemed to have enough strength back. Finally, about a week ago, I took her to our vet clinic in Helena for a baseline exam before restarting the chemo. Amazingly, the chest X-rays showed the cancerous nodules in her lungs had completely disappeared; this didn't mean there was no need for further chemotherapy, but it was proof the treatment had been working better than anyone expected.

But her bloodwork came back showing that one of her kidney values, the BUN, was elevated. The oncologist at WSU who's been directing Helen's cancer treatment told our primary care vet, Dr. Jennifer Rockwell, that renal insufficiency can be a side-effect of the chemo drug we had her on, but the elevated BUN could have been from a number of other things, too. The oncologist wanted us to do an ultrasound of her kidneys to see if there was any kind of tumor there, as well as do a specific type of urinalysis to measure kidney function.

So today I took Helen with me to Missoula to see our internal medicine specialist there, Dr. Dave Bostwick, for an ultrasound and a urine sample. Dave scanned her kidneys, spleen, liver and other organs and found no evidence of any tumor involvement. Whew! It will take several days for the urinalysis results to come back, but based on the ultrasound, we are very encouraged by her prognosis. Honestly, when we first saw the nodules in her lungs last year, we didn't think she would have made it this far.

Once we get the urinalysis back, Jennifer will consult with the oncologist again and map out the new course of treatment. In the meantime, Helen had this to share:

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Please vote for the ranch in the Shelter Challenge -- and you can vote every day! We're currently in third place, putting us on track to win $3,000 for the animals. Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT, for Montana, and it will bring up our listing.

Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Outtakes

2010-03-08T17:17:10-07:00

I've been working on our spring/summer newsletter, and the very last photo I needed was the one of Alayne and me for the "ranch letter" on page 2. We always have an animal in the photo with us, and we generally pick one that will, well, cooperate! So we thought Madison would be a great candidate for this photo shoot -- she's an older, quiet girl, very calm and well-behaved. I figured she'd sit nice and still while our awesome volunteer, Laura W. from Helena, took the photos this past Saturday.

Except ... she didn't. I don't know if it was because there were all these new and fascinating smells in the hay barn where we were taking the photos, or whether she just had ants in her pants -- but Madison was one squirmy little thing. She was in constant motion the entire time, and we could barely hold on to her. So I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the outtakes from the photo session! In the photo at top, Madison decided she'd rather give me a kiss than look at the camera.

Here it looks like I might be examining her lymph nodes, but I was actually trying to get her to turn her head back towards Laura:

In this one I've completely lost control and Laura caught me in the process of saying, "Wait, she's going airborne on us..."

We also tried having her sit on the ground, but that didn't really work either:

But finally, somewhere among the 75 photos Laura graciously took, there had to be at least one that would work, right? And there was ... here's the one we will use in the newsletter:

It wasn't "the" photo I wanted, with her looking at the camera, but I'm old enough and wise enough to realize when it's time to declare victory in animal photography. Madison was even more relieved than we were that the photo shoot was finally over!

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Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Don't Let It Go To Your Head

2010-03-07T17:44:25-07:00

We were eating lunch the other day when Alayne looked over and saw blind-and-deaf Spinner sleeping in an entirely new position -- head down and off the chair. Daisy was below her on the cot, apparently unaware of ... or at least unconcerned about ... Spinner's seemingly precarious position right behind and above her.

I don't know if the increased blood flow to her head in this position would improve the quality of her sleep, or make her dreams more vivid, but for whatever reason, she seemed perfectly comfortable like this and totally zonked out. We have noticed that our blind-and-deaf animals sleep very, very well in any case -- with no light or sounds to disturb them, who wouldn't? But maybe Spinner found a way to make it even better.

And no, she didn't fall off later. She woke up, changed positions, and went back to sleep.

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Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

I Can Do This, Too

2010-03-04T17:31:31-07:00

After seeing some of the blog photos of our dogs having wrapped themselves completely inside blankets, Julie S. in Olympia, Washington, emailed us this photo of Charlie, our once-blind Beagle that Julie and her husband had adopted from us last fall. Julie wrote, "He got in the blanket that way himself. It was NOT staged!" And we can believe it, because we see the "burrito wraps" that some of our dogs get themselves in and we wonder, "how did they do that?"

I told Julie that I didn't think it was possible for a dog to get more comfortable than Charlie was in that photo.

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Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Beach Bum

2010-03-03T17:48:07-07:00

I got this photo of little Bailey this past weekend, soaking up the sun along the front wall of our house, which faces south. We have a big, wide gravel pad there in front of the house we call "the beach," and you can see how the sun has begun melting the snow, exposing more and more of the beach. We've been enjoying some freakishly warm weather recently, and when I took that photo of Bailey, it was probably in the high-40s -- and even warmer in the sun against the wall.

Bailey is one of the original sun-worshippers here, and he loves being outside, no matter how hot it may be -- as long as he has a little shade. But he couldn't believe his luck this weekend, with bright sun and warm temperatures in the middle of winter. So soak it up he did!

As I write this, about noon on Wednesday, we've already hit 50°(10° C). We can't recall it ever being this warm this time of year. While we -- and all the animals -- are enjoying it, the shrinking snowpack in the mountains is a major concern. As of February 1st (the last reported data), snowpack in the Blackfoot River basin where we are located was only 68% of normal, the fourth lowest on record ... and that was before we had these recent incredible warm spells. That increases the risk this summer for forest fires, for fish in rivers and streams, and for irrigation.

Fortunately for Bailey, he doesn't have to worry about any of that stuff -- all he has to do is enjoy the warm sunshine. And now that the "shoreline" along the beach is exposed, we've put cots and beds out there. But no beach umbrellas yet.

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Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

Timmy Update

2010-03-02T16:12:17-07:00

Last week when I took Widget in for her eye surgery, I also had our new arrival Timmy along for his initial exam with our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver. It was clear when he first came that his front leg was a problem for him -- he can't move it, and it hangs off of him like a dead weight, so when he tries to run or scamper about, it throws him off balance. We'd watch him lurch downwards every time he hit his stride on that side of his body. In other words, when he would have put a normal leg down on the ground in the course of walking or running, instead it causes him to lurch, and the foot sometimes smacks the ground in the process and bounces off. Then he has to try and recover by pulling himself back up while maintaining his gait. It makes him look like he's stumbling.

We had thought when we first saw him that he might have a contracted biceps tendon, like our dog Jasper (long since adopted out to a wonderful new home). When Jasper wanted to run, he would pull his leg up, tuck it under him, and take off like a rocket. But we quickly realized this wasn't like Jasper's leg at all. In Brenda's orthopedic exam, she found there isn't anything left to work with in terms of surgical repair or rehab -- the leg is too far gone, and there is radial nerve damage which may still be causing him pain. This is the result of trauma of some sort, and we can see the scars on his foot.

Brenda's recommendation is that we amputate the leg. But that's going to have to wait, because he turned out to be heartworm positive, which makes surgery risky. So this past weekend he was at the clinic being treated for heartworms, and will spend this week there on cage rest. Once he returns to the ranch, he will have to be on strict cage rest for another month. It will be at least another month after that before Brenda will be able to take care of his leg.

It's an odd thing, but all of our three-legged dogs have always been among the fastest, most athletic animals here. While it's too soon to know how fast Ella will be, I have no doubt that Timmy will be racing around soon enough.

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Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!

The Twine Of Our Times

2010-03-01T18:14:41-07:00

This post is probably going to get me in big trouble. But let's take a brief break from animals and discuss a subject that is always entertaining if occasionally dangerous to bring up: gender differences. Now, before anyone suggests when reading this post that I might be sexist, please know that I truly believe the world would be a better place if it were run by women. Absolutely. Men have had their hand on the proverbial wheel for several thousand years and -- would anyone dispute this? -- usually make a grand mess of things. I suspect the world would be much improved if men were confined to the useful trades while women ran the show.

But there is one difference between the sexes where women just don't do as well as men: They don't pick up their twine after opening bales of hay. That's right.

Now, I'll admit I haven't run a double-blind scientific peer-reviewed study comparing 1,000 women and 1,000 men, with observers watching through two-way mirrors to see who is and who isn't picking up their twine. But in my limited experience with the 9 or so women who have worked here over the years and the one guy (that would be me), I can quite authoritatively say that in general, women don't pick up their twine and men do. Why this is I don't know, but my 9-to-1 sample is pretty convincing. Alas, even my (much) better half is a frequent no-picker-upper. And unfortunately, now that she is the sole remaining woman here opening bales of twine, if there's bale twine lying about, I have a pretty good hunch who left it there. (I have never fallen for the line that "Smudge the barn cat pulled the twine out of the trash can and carried it back to the hay to play with.")

I have, in years past, been accused by various women here of being a crank on this subject (what?!?). You see, the superior gender believes it's better to cut the bale open, feed out the hay, and then go back to get the twine later. Except ... they don't. They move on. They forget. They leave it to the one solitary guy to pick up their twine for them.

Once I stood in front of three women (two employees and the better half) in Lena's Barn one afternoon a few years ago, clutching an arm-load of baling twine I had picked up, and asked who was leaving the twine behind. They all stared at each other, each insisting that she picked up her twine as she went. Of course none of them were picking up their twine. (You should have heard the muttering behind me as I left the barn that afternoon. Oh, goodness me.) The most common answer I get from the fairer sex, when I'm pointing to twine lying on the ground, is: "Well ... (long pause) ... well ... (staring at feet) ... I was going to go back and pick it up when I finished feeding."

Hmm.

This is what usually happens ... twine cut and left on hay:

This next one is better, because the twine was actually removed from the bale and balled up as if to stuff in a pocket but then, inexplicably, left on the ground:

Oh, well. At least points were awarded for balling it up.

Sometimes the twine makes it all the way into the barn but not into the trash can:

Trash can was full, apparently. Or maybe Smudge the barn cat ... oh, never mind.

Of course, if the trash can is full or one isn't available, there's really only one acceptable place for twine:

Yep, that's a self-portrait, in case you were wondering. I mean, who else would have twine in their pocket, eh?

[The better half points out that "twine" and "whine" rhyme. As if they were meant to go together.]

Perhaps, if women should indeed be running the world, it is only fitting that men are left to pick up their twine.

UPDATE: After reading this post, Alayne says I will live to see another day. Though she's not sure why.

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Vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Last year we won $3,000 in the first round and then won the $20,000 Grand Prize in the second round, so your votes really do add up and make for a wonderful gift for the animals here.

Thank you!