Rolling Dog Farm

Firewood

2012-01-27T12:28:45-05:00

I took this photo yesterday when Kate and I were moving another load of firewood from the big pile on the ridge above the farm (this is directly to the west of the house and barns). We have a large woodshed (8' deep x 32' wide, or 2.4 m x 9.7 m) right next to the outdoor wood boiler, but it can't hold all the wood we use, so periodically during the winter we have to restock the woodshed from this pile. We started off with 24 cords of wood, and at this point I bet we end up going through almost all of it before we finally shut down the boiler in April. (A cord is a stack of wood 8' wide, 4' high and 4' deep, or 2.4 m x 1.2 m x 1.2 m.) One of the very nice things about our outdoor wood boiler is that I don't need to split the wood before using it; I can put these big log pieces right in the firebox. That saves a tremendous amount of time and labor.

Since I took that photo, we got a couple of inches of snow overnight, followed by freezing rain this morning and then just plain old non-freezing rain on top of everything. It was a lot of fun doing chores outside in that mess!

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The new Shelter Challenge started Monday, January 9 and ends at midnight on March 18. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM. State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Ice

2012-01-25T11:14:17-05:00

We're having one of those challenging winters where it doesn't snow enough, and yet doesn't warm up enough to melt everything. The result is a thick layer of ice everywhere ... on the drive and in the pastures, as you can see in the photo above, in the dog yards, on the walkways and ramps ... in other words, everywhere there is a flat surface. The entire farm is just coated in ice that is an inch to two inches thick.

Needless to say, getting around to do all the daily chores is downright treacherous in these conditions. We don't step outside without wearing cleats. We used to have long stretches of icy conditions in Montana, too, and over the years we tried every kind of ice-cleat on the market. We found that all of the rubberized slip-on kinds routinely slipped off while doing farm and ranch chores. They might be okay while shoveling your suburban sidewalk or walking out to the curb to get the mail, but for real outdoor work -- feeding hay, climbing off and on tractors, carrying buckets of grain or lugging water jugs, fixing fences -- those slip-on kinds would slip off far too often. And most didn't have enough real gripping power anyway.

We finally found the ultimate stay-on ice cleat -- Stabilicers. This is a shot of my cleated boots this morning that I took while I was out getting the photo of the icy drive:

For heavily trafficked areas like the ramps, doorways and gates, we also spread wood ashes -- an old-time "ice remedy" that provides instant traction and is a lot cheaper than commercial deicer products. (Yes, we could use sand but then we'd have to pay for the material and pay someone to haul it in.)

Of course, in these conditions the dogs are outside for the bare minimum, and the horses stay in their corrals.

At this point we are longing for either two feet of snow or a very early spring!

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Wilbur had his dental surgery yesterday and is doing fine -- I will be picking him up from the clinic later today.

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*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM. State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Wilbur's Eye Exam

2012-01-23T09:13:25-05:00

Last Monday Alayne took our new arrival Wilbur to our vet clinic, Whitefield Animal Hospital, for his initial screening. In the photo above, Dr. Nancy Lefavour is using a Tono-Pen to check the eye pressure in Wilbur's bulging eye. (The Tono-Pen belongs to us and we have loaned it to the clinic, since they didn't have one. Most clinics don't have this particular diagnostic device.) Much to our surprise, his eye pressure turned out to be well within normal range. In this next photo Nancy is looking at the reading on the Tono-Pen:

Yet his eye is clearly bulging out, and blind, so if glaucoma isn't the culprit, what is?

At the moment, we don't have the answer. We will probably next do an ultrasound of his eye to see if there is a tumor or growth pushing it out.

Nancy also did a dental exam on Wilbur. She concluded that his mouth was such a mess, and so much work needed to be done, that she wanted to have both of the clinic's vets on hand. Our other vet, Dr. Chris Plumley, was out of town last week attending a veterinary conference, so we postponed Wilbur's surgery for this week.

On the plus side, we do know that Wilbur is thankfully heartworm negative, so we don't have to do the extensive heartworm treatment before proceeding with any surgery.

Stay tuned for updates on this adorable little boy!

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*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM. State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please Welcome ... Wilbur!

2012-01-15T18:30:47-05:00

This little 8-pound Chihuahua mix arrived a few days ago, sent to us by Rebecca Y. at Becky's Bridge, a rescue group in Shreveport, Louisiana. She had pulled him from a shelter in Garland, Texas, the week before. The lady who transported him for Rebecca described him as "really sweet but filthy - wet with urine and feces." When he got to Rebecca's place, she found he also has a mouth full of rotting teeth, many of which were black and green.

You get the idea -- along with that bulging eye, you can tell this boy has been the victim of real neglect.

When Rebecca took him to her vet clinic for the interstate health certificate for his travel to New Hampshire, the vet was actually pulling teeth out with his fingers during the exam. They were that loose and ready to fall out. That's how bad his mouth is. We have a vet appointment for him on Monday for a dental and to remove the bulging eye; we planned to do it as soon as he arrived but our vet wanted him on antibiotics for the oral infections to keep them from spreading via his blood during surgery.

Rebecca had named him Wilbur because he's round and sounds like a piglet. Yes, he snorts and grunts all the time. In fact, when we introduced him to some of the blind dogs on Thursday, they weren't sure what he was. This tiny, grunting thing didn't seem like a dog. We suspect the snorting may be from a fistula, or hole, in his mouth that opens into his sinus cavity. So whether he still sounds like Wilbur the pig after his surgery remains to be seen.

He is blind in his left eye but seems to have limited vision in his right eye. I did both a pupillary light reflex test (shining a light into the eye to see if the pupil constricts) and a menace response test (by moving an object quickly towards the eye to see if he blinks) and he passed both, so we know there is some vision there. Yet Wilbur does seem to be surprised by certain movements, and occasionally bumps into things, so it's not clear what's going on in that eye. We'll know more after his medical appointment.

He is a sweetheart -- a cuddlebug, very quiet, who is content to lie in his bed in the living room all day, curled up under a fleece blanket. He's not only the newest member of the gang at the farm but also the smallest -- even Clyde, Fuzzy and Daisy dwarf this little guy.

And with that, Wilbur would like to excuse himself. "It's been nice meeting you," he says, "but I need to get back to napping":

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Blog Break: I will be traveling the rest of this week to visit family and will not be able to post on the blog until the following week. Alayne and Kate will be here. I'll have an update on Wilbur then.

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*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM. State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Eggs. And Lots Of Them.

2012-01-11T15:22:54-05:00

I've mentioned before that we have a free-range flock of hens, and wow, do the dogs love fresh scrambled eggs! I took this photo on a recent evening, just before getting ready to scramble up the 109 -- yes, I counted 'em up as I washed them -- eggs you see on the counter.

(In the background: the blender is what we use for Travis's food; the food processor is for the veggies we chop up for them; the toaster is for us; and the coffee maker is for Widget, who prefers either Colombian or Ethiopian, but occasionally will enjoy a stiff cup of Sumatran. Just kidding.)

As you can imagine, it takes a while to wash, break open, mix and then cook that many eggs, but watching the dogs relish them makes it well worth the time. Our biggest problem is just finding big enough bowls to mix them up in and pans to cook them in. Sometimes we use two large frying pans, other times I use a big stock pot. Here's just that one colander worth of eggs, ready to be beaten:

Here's a view of the portable "eggmobile" from this past fall:

It's built on an old trailer chassis and is on tires, so we can hook it up to the tractor and pull it wherever we want to take it. In Montana we used to move it around the pastures every week following the cows as we rotationally grazed them -- the chickens break open the cow pies to get at the fly larvae and other bugs they like to eat, and in the process they scatter the cow dung and work it into the soil for us. Here at the farm in New Hampshire we don't have that kind of level ground, and the predator pressure is actually greater here (because we have the woods all around us), so for now we found it's better to leave the eggmobile in this one large, safely fenced paddock.

Our hens are Delawares and Barred Plymouth Rocks, both heritage breeds and very nice birds. Currently we have about 30 girls -- the Delawares are older and starting to slow down egg production, and the Barred Rocks are in their first year of laying and starting to really get into the swing of things. We get on average 20 to 22 eggs a day right now, which will go up further when we get to spring. We have one Barred Rock rooster with the hens, because we want to be able to hatch out our own chicks this summer.

Now, someone will inevitably ask about cholestrol issues in feeding eggs. Dogs do not have cholesterol problems like people do. And in fact, eggs have been unfairly blamed for cholesterol issues in people anyway. For an excellent book on how eating healthy "real food" -- like free-range, pasture-based eggs -- is good for you, see Nina Planck's "Real Food: What To Eat and Why."

Meanwhile, I have to head to the kitchen. I have some eggs to wash.

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*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM. State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

Beginning on Monday, you can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

It's Mine. Back Off.

2012-01-08T17:31:08-05:00

Now that winter has arrived, the dogs are spending more time indoors rather than outside. To make it easier on those of us who have to shuttle them in and out during the day, we moved a group of dogs who typically play in one of the large yards behind the house to the big yard in front of the house. It's not only closer, but it gives them access to the covered front porch.

On many brisk mornings, of course, they don't want to be outside, but clamor to come right back in -- and then, 20 minutes later, they will naturally go potty in the dog room. So we leave them out for a while to make sure everyone does his or her thing, and we set out plenty of dog beds on the porch for them in the meantime.

We noticed on some mornings that a bed would end up mysteriously at the end of the ramp that leads to the porch. Then one day Alayne saw the culprit: blind Willie dragging a bed off the porch and down the ramp. Once he got to the bottom of the ramp, he fussed with the bed until he got it just right, then laid down on it. Alayne took the photo above a few weeks ago, just before the holidays, after seeing Willie doing it again.

He apparently doesn't like sharing beds with the other Beagles and Dachshunds on the porch, and found the best approach is to take himself and his preferred bed for a hike.

Just a couple of mornings ago, I saw him dragging a big fleece blanket down the ramp and off onto the ice and snow in the yard (we have more now than when that photo was taken). Then he started twirling it around and bunching it up before trying to lie back down. The wisdom of camping out on the ice eluded me, the careful observer, and I knew he would quickly abandon the blanket once the cold penetrated through. I returned said Beagle and blanket to the porch, whence they came.

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The new Shelter Challenge starts Monday, January 9 and ends at midnight on March 18. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** Okay, this is important, folks: We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM. State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

Beginning on Monday, you can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

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It looks like we're out of the running for the grand prize in the Firefox Challenge but we're over the $20,000 mark -- woo hoo! Thank you so much! The contest ends on January 11, so there are still a couple of days left.

I Can Speed This Up For You

2012-01-04T11:42:06-05:00

We hope you had a wonderful holiday season! I thought we'd start off the new blog year with the show Dexter put on for us a couple of weeks ago. Alayne had just brought up a new case of paper towels to the kitchen (we go through so many paper towels we buy them by the pallet load from Costco). For some reason, Dexter got it in his little Dachshund brain that he was going to dispense the rolls of paper towels himself, perhaps thinking he could help speed things up for her.

As soon as Alayne set the case down on the floor, he ran over to the corner of it and started pulling on the plastic with his teeth. Dexter got the first roll out in a flash. He'd never done anything like this before, so Alayne picked up the camera to see what would happen next.

Here he's after roll No. 2, apparently trying to make the hole in the bag bigger:

Time to go inside and grab a roll with your teeth:

That didn't work, we gather, because he hopped on top to assess the situation further ... "say, just how many are actually in here?":

Upon further inspection, he decided to flip the case over. Presumably paper towel rolls are easier to grab with your teeth (especially if you don't have many teeth) if they are standing up vertically:

I've never tried to bite a paper towel roll with my teeth so I can't really say.

But clearly that did make a difference (who knew?), because here came the rolls:

Now he was having to burrow inside (isn't that what Dachshunds were designed for?) to grab the next one:

You go, little fella:

"Dang, there are more in here than I thought":

Please notice in all these previous photos how blind Goldie is just standing there, no doubt wondering what the munchkin is doing.

He's down to the final few:

Alayne said he got all but the last two out before giving up. He couldn't figure out how to extricate the two remaining ones from all the plastic wrapping.

I don't think he actually helped speed up the process, but much entertainment was had by all.