Missoulian, Dec. 13, 2003
Puppy love: Thanks to the care of ranch owners Steve Smith and Alayne Marker, a young dog who came to the couple blind has a new vision of life.
By GINNY MERRIAM of the Missoulian
 At the young age of 12 weeks old,
Cody, a border collie mix adopted by the Rolling Dog
Ranch near Ovando, has had an incredible journey. After
being born blind, a successful operation on the puppy's
eyes has restored his sight. |
OVANDO - When a 12-week-old border collie mix puppy named
Cody arrived at the Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary east
of Ovando in September, he joined right in with his 25 new
dog friends. He ran and jumped and tried to herd everybody
else around - energetic, very loving and very confident, say
his caretakers.
But he couldn't see. His eyes were milky white with juvenile cataracts. He had been set to be killed as unadoptable at the Idaho Humane Society in Boise. Luck landed him at the Rolling Dog Ranch, where its owners, Steve Smith and Alayne Marker, gave the time, the hearts and the money to bring him a surgery that would let him see.
"He was happy, he was confident, he was loving life," Marker said. "Now, you can see that puppy sparkle in those brown eyes. It's a wonderful thing, to see the gift of sight."
Smith and Marker, a husband and wife team, saved their money, gave up good jobs at Boeing in Seattle and started the Rolling Dog sanctuary three years ago up the North Fork of the Blackfoot River on a quarter section of land on Kleinschmidt Flat. They hold down jobs, too: Marker is a lawyer, and Smith has a marketing and advertising firm with a partner.
All the animals at the nonprofit Rolling Dog are discarded by humans because they are disabled or old. The ranch population has grown to 26 dogs, 11 cats, 10 equines, seven pigs, three sheep and six cows. They're blind, deaf, three-legged, half-paralyzed or mentally disabled. They've come from around the country.
Eleven of the sanctuary's dogs are blind. The couple didn't intend to specialize in blindness, but they found the need for the care of blind animals was great.
"Of all the disabilities that I could possibly get as a human, the thing that would scare me the most would be blind," Smith said. "So I can only imagine what it must be like for an animal to be blind."
They can't take every animal people ask them to take. But when they hear "blind," they have a hard time saying no.
"The thought of an animal being put to sleep just because it's blind is something we have a hard time living with," Smith said.
So when a kind volunteer at the Idaho Humane Society wrote to them about Cody, "I was wondering if you would consider taking this puppy?" the answer was "yes."
A friend of the volunteer who was moving to Missoula drove Cody to the KOA campground, where Marker met them.
"She walked up and just handed him over to me," Marker said. "Bless his little heart, he just licked my face.
 Cody's caretakers, Alayne Marker
and Steve Smith, tend to 26 dogs and numerous other
animals at their rescue ranch. |
"You look at these animals, and you think, 'Gosh, they were going to put him down.' And he's just a little love."
Cody went for a checkup by the Rolling Dog's small-animal veterinarians, Brenda and Britt Culver in Helena. It appeared that Cody had functioning retinas behind the clouds. That meant surgery, by a veterinary ophthalmologist, could work. How much would that cost? About $1,400.
"That's a lot of money to spend on one animal," Smith said. "It was a difficult decision."
During the past year, the sanctuary's $43,739 in expenses included more than $15,000 in veterinary bills. A week rarely goes by without one of them, usually Smith, rushing a sick animal 70 miles to Helena. The ranch runs on donations.
"We never want to be in a position where we jeopardize the other animals by helping one," Smith said.
But then they looked at little Cody.
"We decided in the end that we've never had a blind animal that we could restore the sight to," Smith said. "What an incredible gift. He's 5 months old. He has his whole life ahead of him."
"He's perfectly healthy, and bright. To us, it was a Christmas gift we could give him."
Smith and Marker made an appointment with the closest veterinary ophthalmologist, Bill Yakely in Spokane. On Dec. 1, Smith entered the office with Cody - and a knot in his stomach. First, the puppy's eyes had to be tested to make sure the surgery would help in a test called an electroretinogram. Yakely told Smith only about half of the candidates for the surgery pass.
"He has to pass this test to get the surgery," Smith said. "There's a 50-50 chance. We've driven to Spokane. I'm on pins and needles."
Cody's eyes were off-the-chart functional. Yakely and his assistant scrubbed up.
In the two-hour surgery, Yakely used a technique called phacoemulsification. In the procedure, which is also used on human eyes, he inserted a microsurgical instrument through a slit in Cody's corneas. Ultrasound waves pulverized the cataracts, which are extra protein in the eye, washed them from the eye and sucked them up.
First the cataracts were hard, then they were breaking up, then they were soupy and then they were gone, Smith said.
"You could look into his eye," Smith said. "The cataract was gone. I could see his brown eye."
Smith and Cody returned to their motel room while Cody was still groggy from the anesthesia. Smith called Marker back at the ranch to let her know how it went. While they were talking, Cody woke up and came out of his crate.
The dog sat at his feet, staring at him.
"He looked up at me," Smith said. "I looked down at him and knew he was seeing me for the first time. It was incredible."
"I was thinking, 'What are you thinking now?' " Smith said. "His eyes were just locked on my face."
 Cody, now known as Conehead the
Barbarian, is now able to get a good look at the residents
and visitors to the Rolling Dog. |
Then Cody's head started following Smith's arm as he gestured while talking to his wife about the excitement of the moment.
"Just stop to think," said Marker, "He doesn't know what anything looks like. A tree, a person, another dog."
The next day at the doctor's office, Yakely tested Cody's sight with an obstacle course of traffic cones.
"He just maneuvered around perfectly," Smith said. "He could see."
Back home, the lively puppy is supposed to stay indoors with no vigorous exercise for two weeks to keep his blood pressure down. He has to wear the veterinary Elizabethan collar resembling a lampshade to prevent him from pawing at the eye and get eye drops multiple times through the day through February. He'll be checked by his Helena vets every week for four weeks.
Keeping him quiet is something else. His new nickname is Conehead the Barbarian.
He will need eye drops twice a week for life. But by about March, he'll be a normal dog with a normal life ahead of him.
"It's clearly a case where he can be adopted and free up a space for another animal," Smith said. "It'll be hard to let him go."
Smith and Marker already have a collection of amazing stories of animals whose suffering has been eliminated by veterinary care and a safe life at the ranch. Pappy, an old German shepherd who has become their signature companion and "chore patrol" dog, showed up emaciated at a local video store, dehydrated and apparently ready for hospice care. The Culvers found he had a dislocated hip, with bone grinding on bone when he walked. Pappy was immediately happy after surgery and has lived at the ranch since. He rolls in the meadow, smiles a lot and weighs 101 pounds.
But giving an animal sight is something else, Smith said.
"In terms of being able to transform an animal's life," he said, "I've never seen anything like it."
