(rolling dog ranch from john.woestendiek on Vimeo).

For Steve Smith and Alayne Marker, the dream was to retire early from their jobs at Boeing, buy a ranch in Montana and start a sanctuary for disabled animals.

The problem was, even early retirement was a ways off, and they were getting tired of waiting for it, especially once they secured the ranch, on 160 acres near Ovando.

“Back in Seattle, we were spending every waking moment thinking about being here,” said Smith.

So they ditched the jobs – he’d been in the communications department at Boeing for 10 years, she’d spent 17 years as a lawyer for the company – and got on with the dream, moving to Montana and naming the ranch Rolling Dog, after the way their own dogs gleefully rolled in the grass there every time they visited.

Rolling Dog Ranch is not a place where animals stay until homes are found, or until illnesses are overcome, but one where, most often, they come to live out the rest of their days. They are animals so severely injured or disabled that many people would assume they had no quality life ahead.

But daily, the dogs, cats and horses at Rolling Rock Ranch show just how wrong those people are.

Like our friend Henry, the three-legged cat we wrote about last month, the animals at Rolling Dog Ranch don't just survive, they thrive.

The ranch opened, slightly earlier than planned, in 2000, when Steve and Alayne were asked to take in a blind horse. Seven years later, it serves as home to 80 animals – 40 dogs, 10 cats and 30 horses, 25 of which are blind.

It is funded through donations from the public.

“People assume a ranch with 80 disabled animals is going to be a sad place, but when they come they’re really quite captivated,” Steve said.

“People tend to transfer their human emotions onto the animals, so a lot of people think a disabled animal can’t be happy, which is so far from the truth,” Steve said. “We tell people not to feel sorry for these animals, because they don’t fee sorry for themselves.”

Not Blanca, a nearly blind, totally deaf Great Dane from Mexico; not Evelyn, a blind labrador who, through scent and sound, can fetch a ball nevertheless; not Tyler, a deaf English pointer who came from a puppy mill in Ohio; not Patty who lost both eyes after being assaulted with a shovel, but doesn’t seem to hold a grudge against humans.

You see no self-pity, no anger; they just accept their condition, adjust and move on, sometimes with awkward gaits, as in the case of those with neurological problems. But behind even those spastic movements lies more grace than I -- or most humans – will show in a lifetime.

The couple – they met on a hiking trail when Alayne’s dog brought them together – had been adopting special needs animals for several years. Steve adopted his first after seeing her photo month after month in a published listing of animals in shelter in the Seattle area. Her name was Dolly – the same name as his childhood dog. He adopted her, then another, named Dylan. By the time they left Seattle, Steve and Alayne had six dogs and six cats.

They saw the ranch/sanctuary as a way to make a bigger impact on the number of animals who -- deemed useless, too different, or too much trouble -- are euthanized each year in America.

Horses, though not part of the original plan, have become a major focus. Because they are often seen more as working animals than companions, are even more likely to be euthanized, Steve said. “Once these animals go blind people don’t want to put another dollar in them… Breeders just want the animal gone – today. They don’t want anyone to know they had a disabled foal.”

To change that way of thinking the couple has started a website called blindhorses.org.
Both Steve and Alayne work 14 hour days at the ranch, and they have one employee to help feed and medicate the animals, and transport them to veterinarians when necessary. The ranch can spend up to $40,000 a year on vet care alone.

To contribute to Rolling Dog Ranch, or learn more about its animals, visit its website: rollingdogranch.org.

The slide show above is made up of photos I took during my visit in September -- except for the one of Widget and Alayne. It was just too cute not to include. It was taken by Ashley McKee, a journalism student at the University of Montana, and was provided courtesy of Rolling Dog Ranch.