Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary

When Only The Best Will Do

2009-11-05T20:17:03-07:00

I know, this is another impossibly cute Dachshund photo. But the point of this post is not to showcase another impossibly cute Dachshund, but rather to highlight his expensive and fancy bed. Yes, a $5.99 plastic laundry basket.

We discovered a while ago that the new favorite sleeping spot in the house was a laundry basket next to the washing machine -- and whether it had dirty clothes in it or not, they didn't care. We would come through the back door into the laundry room and invariably find a dog sleeping in the laundry basket. So we'd pick up the dog, pull the dirty laundry out and place it temporarily on the floor, put some clean bedding back in the basket, and replace said dog. And it could be any of the dogs -- they all decided this was the best bed in the house.

Doing the repeated laundry swap-outs got very old very fast, of course. Rather than swim against the tide, we bought a couple more of these cheap laundry baskets, filled them with fleece blankets that our friend Margaret N. in Seattle sends us, and distributed them in strategic locations.

When I walked into the house on a recent evening, there was Dexter poking his head out of the basket in the dining room. He also thinks that this is a great spot to hide out in before we have our dinner, because somehow we might not notice him buried in the bedding ... and then he won't get placed on the other side of the Barbarian's Gate. Thus he can pop out in time to pester us at the dining table. Dexter T. Dickens indeed.

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Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for the ranch every day in The Animal Rescue Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. Thanks to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the animals in the previous contest. Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the $20,000 grand prize! Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana, and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote. Please ask your family and friends to vote, too. Thank you!

Jack Hanna's Program On The Ranch

2009-11-04T18:08:47-07:00

Jack Hanna's Into The Wild show featuring the ranch will air beginning this Friday, November 6. Depending on where you are, the program may air on Saturday or Sunday, rather than Friday, and at different times on different networks. To find out the exact schedule, please check the Into The Wild Web site here. It is not a national network program so it is not broadcast in every community. In Montana, for instance, it is airing only in Helena, Missoula, Butte and Great Falls ... at 7:30 on a Friday morning! On the schedule we're listed as Episode 306. We have no information beyond what is posted on the show's Web site.

Rainbow Cottages

2009-11-04T17:41:29-07:00

Here's our latest installment of scenes from "Rainbow Flat." Alayne got this shot the other evening of another beautiful rainbow spanning the animal cottages next to our house. We'd just had a rainstorm move through, going from west to east, and it was still shrouding the mountain range to the east of us behind those cottonwoods.

Speaking of which, we never really had fall colors out here this year with the cottonwoods -- the subzero cold we had a few weeks ago just killed all the leaves on the trees outright, turning them brown, so we missed the gorgeous yellow and orange colors we often see this time of year. I guess our rainbows will have to make up for it!

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Still No. 1!

I Know I Look A Little Funny, But ...

2009-11-03T19:14:45-07:00

This is blind Gabe, who is very happy finally to be completely finished with the side-effects from his radiation treatment -- and best of all, he is cone-free now! You can see the hair loss on his face from the radiation field. I had emailed a photo of Gabe's face several days ago to his oncologist at WSU, Dr. Janean Fidel, so she could see if this looked "normal." She emailed me to say, "This does look pretty normal. Gabe seemed to be a late bloomer with his reaction in that it all developed after he left." As for regrowing of the hair, she said, "It will take awhile and it may not all grow back. It tends to grow back lighter in color and sparser in texture." Dr. Fidel added that in the areas that had the worst effects -- near the corner of the eyes and along the suture line in Gabe's case -- hair may not grow back. But everywhere else, she said, "It will start to grow soon -- it won’t be complete for 6 months or so."

Gabe is just relieved that in the meantime, he still has all that luxurious hair to cover his big ears!

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Still No. 1!

Is She Home Yet?

2009-11-02T18:57:11-07:00

I've posted about this once before, quite a while ago: blind Goldie's habit of patiently waiting outside for one of us to come home. It doesn't matter whether it's Alayne or me who's away from the ranch -- she knows her "pack" isn't complete if one of us is missing, and she wants to stay outside, listening for the sound of the truck coming down the drive. And she knows where the gate by the road is, and that's the direction she faces. On Friday evening, I noticed her sitting by the front of the house, looking towards the gate, waiting for Alayne to get back home from New York. As usually happens, I had to insist she come in out of the cold, damp weather; when she's on "sentry duty" like this, she becomes oblivious to the weather.

Yes, she's still wearing her camouflage foam e-collar; when we removed it recently, she went right back to working on the surgery site on her leg. Oddly, she almost acted lost without her e-collar after we took it off her. She seems to actually like the confounded thing, and uses it as a personal pillow for napping whenever she chooses. Even better, it's great for blocking other dogs who may get in her way or impede her efforts to stay near Alayne (she's like Alayne's shadow). It's kind of like the shoulder pads that American football players wear, but instead of making a "crunching" sound on contact, it's more of a soft "whoosh" sound as she brushes away the other dogs.

But the only sound I heard when Goldie finally greeted Alayne that evening was "smooch!"

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Still No. 1!

Did I Miss Halloween?

2009-11-01T16:49:21-07:00

Alayne got this photo of blind Cinder on Saturday afternoon, looking somewhat worried ... as if she might have missed Halloween. Fortunately, Alayne assured Cinder she hadn't missed out on any festivities, and that her black cat costume would be perfect for trick-or-treating that evening.

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Still No. 1!

Please keep voting for us every day in The Animal Rescue Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. Thanks to your votes, we came in third nationwide and won $3,000 for the animals in the previous contest. Now we have a shot at No. 1 and the $20,000 grand prize! Enter "Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana, and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote. Please ask your family and friends to vote, too. Thank you!

At The ASPCA

2009-10-29T18:47:03-06:00

One of the ASPCA's media relations people was kind enough to email me late today this photo of Alayne at the event in New York with the award. Alayne said the luncheon was very nice and everything went well. Prior to presenting the award, the ASPCA showed a video they had produced about the ranch, and the highlight of the piece was a clip of Charlie our once-blind Beagle admiring himself in the mirror.

Alayne almost didn't make it to New York -- yesterday's trip was a real ordeal. Her flight on United from Missoula to Denver was cancelled because of weather in Denver, and then a back-up flight on Delta/Northwest from Missoula to Minneapolis was postponed by several hours, making it too late to catch her connecting flight to La Guardia. Finally the ASPCA's travel agent got her out of Missoula late in the day to Salt Lake City. She then spent several hours in the airport there before leaving at midnight on a red-eye to New York that arrived at JFK at 6 a.m. this morning. With events starting at 10 a.m. -- egads. So she is naturally exhausted from the trip and looking forward to being back home tomorrow evening!

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As Alayne was literally walking out the door yesterday for the airport, the phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID, which showed a 202 area code phone number (Washington D.C.) and the listing as "Democratic Sen." I picked it up and said, with our usual greeting, "Rolling Dog Ranch, this is Steve." The caller said, "Steve, it's Max. How about that award!"

Now, if you're a Montanan and a guy named Max calls you from Washington, there's only one Max it can be ... our United States Senator, Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. And as busy as he is, he took the time yesterday to call and congratulate us on the ASPCA award. This is actually the second time Senator Baucus has called. His first call came a few years ago, after someone had told him about us and he looked up our Web site. He was calling then just to let us know that he thought we were doing a great thing here at the ranch. This kind of 'personal touch' is one reason he's serving his sixth term in the Senate.

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Still No. 1!