THE BLESSINGS OF MIRACLES
We are forever grateful for the many miracles we have seen occur on this farm. Miraculous stories of amazing healings and of lives that have forever touched ours. We may be the human caretakers for these incredible beings, but they are the teachers. We have learned so much about faith and hope and never giving up. Below are some of those stories. We hope they touch your heart the way they have touched ours.
- Bella - 2 year old Rat Terrier with severely broken leg - A Miracle in Progress.
- Barak - seriously injured cat with a miraculous recovery
- Grace - puppy with cerebellum disfunction - A Miracle in Progress. Meet this amazing being.
- Mack - Border Collie of Glen Highland Farm - A Miracle in Progress - Spinal Fracture with bowel and bladder incontinence.
- Calico - Calico cat with paralysis and bowel and bladder
incontinence.
- Ramone - Cat with broken back - unable to walk, bladder and bowel incontinent, and now lives a completely normal life.
Bella
Update: 2/13/10 - Bella's surgery went very well and we are hoping that she will have a full recovery. But there is a long road ahead of her with rehab first. The next 12 weeks will be critical to be sure these bones will porperly heal. She is on a very restricted activity level, difficult for a young terrier! But she is doing well and is in very good spirits.
Bella arrived at our facility the last week in January. She is a 2 yr. old Rat Terrier who had the tragic misfortune of having one of her front legs slammed in a door. The injury is a complete break of both radius and ulna. She is going to an orthopedic surgeon to see if the leg can be saved. Our bills will easily reach over $2,000 when all is done. But the hardest effort is still to be made by Bella herself as she heals. We will post updates as to how she is doing. Donations toward her care are greatly appreciated. With a dog this young, she has her whole life still ahead of her and we want to be sure to give her the very best care we can.
Barak
Barak was a barn cat at a local farm. One day in May, he wandered into the barn in horrific shape. Something had attacked him, badly cutting his neck open from ear to ear, as well as many other puncture wounds all over his body. The wounds were not fresh and were probably several days old. Infection and decay had set in. He was brought to SFC as part of a feral cat spay/neuter program. Barak was semi-feral. He would come around people but not let anyone touch him. An immediate decision had to be made whether to euthanize him or to try to treat him. Dawn was called in to see what Barak wanted to do, and two vets began to try to at least examine the extent of his injuries. He was first sedated, and then they began clipping around his wounds so that they could determine how bad he was injured. It was bad. Not only was the wound to his neck severe, but he had many others all over his body and infection and necrotic tissue was already setting in. But even with all of that, Barak told Dawn that he wanted to give it a try and he wasn't ready to end his life just yet. We knew it would be a long haul if he were to recover and we would need his full cooperation to treat him. He signed on so we did too.
The veterinarians cleaned him up as best they could. He was put on antibiotics and pain meds, and he was also put on a 6 month rabies watch, as we did not know what had attacked him. The rabies watch added an additional level of concern. He would have to live in isolation with only our senior staff members handling him. Again, we went to Barak, and again he still wanted to try. What happened next was nothing short of a miracle.
Barak did not want to be handled. But his neck wound needed to be treated and examined daily. The vets thought that he would require plastic surgery to eventually close the wound. But first we needed to see if we could stop the infection. Our staff treated him by using a long flexible "wand" with a gauze pad taped to the end. Barak would let them do that and amazingly it worked. But a few days into treatment, it was clear that things were not looking good. We changed course and began treating his wounds with a homeopathic regimen. The effect was almost immediate. Daily we could see the wound changing from dead tissue to new living tissue. And soon, right before our eyes, the wound began to close. When the veterinarians examined him 2 weeks later, they could not believe their eyes. The remarkable healing journey of Barak was well on its way. The photos tell it all.
Six months later, a healthy and gorgeous Barak, was taken off of rabies watch and integrated into our feral cat room. He spent the first couple of weeks hiding but today he is starting to come out and move about the room. We have seen him lounging on the top of a cat tree, and spending time with his new cat companions. He clearly is happy and content and very happy that he made the decision to stay. We are amazed and honored to have helped him. To many, he was just a feral cat that should have been euthanized. But to the veterinarians who wanted to give it a go, to our staff who dedicated so much time to treating him, and to all of us here at the farm, he is a wonder and a precious being, as deserving as any other being for a chance to live his life.
Here is Barak the day he arrived at Spring Farm.
(We will not show you pictures of the wound on his neck as they are far too graphic.)
This is Barak, today, 6 months later, living in our feral cat room.
And, yes, we are sure its the same cat!
Amazing Grace
Update on Grace - Now age 13 weeks
September 17, 2009: Grace has continued to live up to her name. Grace has a disorder affecting the cerebellum of her brain. The exact cause is not known but it appears that she has had it from birth. See her story below and a video of how she was doing at 6 weeks old. This is our update.
For the past 6 weeks, Grace has had chiropractic, cranial sacral brain work, Ttouch, energy work, and of course lots of love from us. It is astonishing the change in this puppy in the past 6 weeks. A picture being worth a thousand words, below is the latest 3 minute video of Grace playing in our yard. We will continue with future updates.
“Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.”
William Hazlitt
“I’m coming back as a golden puppy and am bringing a friend who needs help.”
Jason, yellow lab, told to Dawn just before he passed away January 1, 2009
When I got the email about a litter of pups that were Golden Retriever/Border Collie mix, there were two pictures included with the post. One was of an all golden puppy, and the other a tri-color Border Collie looking pup. When I heard that there was only one all golden one in the litter, I drove out the next day to meet them. I knew when I held the 3 week old male that it was Jason, just as he promised. I also remembered what he said about bringing a friend. My friend Lillie who runs a Border Collie rescue had called me while I was driving to meet the pups and told me, “I get a strong feeling about the little tri-color. If you feel a connection there, why don’t you bring that one back and I’ll take it.”
As I set the golden male down to go to his mother to nurse, he veered off to the side, threw his head back like a little miniature wolf, and let out a howl the likes of which I’ve never heard from a tiny puppy. As he did that, the little tri-color female stopped nursing, ran to his side, sat right next to him, threw her head back and howled with him. None of the other pups even paid attention. I was clear with what they were showing me, this was the friend he brought with him.
I named him Tucker, as that is what Jason told me we could name him when he came back. They came home at 5 weeks old, way too young, but that’s when they were being sent off. We decided to keep the two siblings together for several weeks so that they had each other for companionship. The tri-color needed a name and not having spent time with her yet, nothing was jumping out at me. So I decided to ask Tucker what his sister should be called. Without a moments hesitation, he said, “Her name is Grace.”
We knew immediately the first day we got them home that something was not quite right with Grace. She couldn’t eat solid food yet, although we had been told that she could. Her mouth seemed oddly uncoordinated. We immediately got puppy milk replacer and began to feed her an oatmeal type gruel. She very eagerly lapped that up. But by the second day, we started seeing that little Grace just wasn’t as sharp as her brother Tucker. We wrote it off to her young weaning and the fact that she was the runt of the litter. But within a week, it was clear that something was very wrong. Grace stumbled, wobbled, and fell all the time. Although she was eating well and seemed to be feeling well, this looked to be neurological in nature. We immediately got her to our veterinarian for a thorough exam.
Since then, Grace has been to a specialist and her case has been reviewed by two neurologists. We will never know what caused Grace’s problem but we do know that it is something affecting the cerebellum of her brain. It could either deteriorate rapidly, leading to her demise, or it could be that what deficit is there now, will always be there, but never get worse. The news was very hard to take. All of 6 pounds, cute as can be, and sweet beyond measure, we were looking at Grace and realizing that she was indeed in need of our help. The veterinarians told us there was nothing medically we could do. But the specialist mentioned that it is possible that her brain could compensate some and teach itself another way of operating.
Ahhhhh!!!! Now that was something we knew how to do! We have had a fair amount of experience with spinal injuries and neurological deficits that have had miraculous outcomes. Why couldn’t Grace do the same? Who says the best we can hope for is that she won’t get worse? We sprang into action.
At first, it is easy to get hung up on needing to know what causes 
something. Sometimes, the cause indeed is important, but other times it is just a red herring. In Grace’s case, the cause could be a birth defect to the brain, even undetectable by an MRI, or it could be the end result of a disease exposure in utero, such as distemper for example. Maybe it even could have been a cervical injury at birth or just after. There was just no way to know. We had to bypass that step because the answer was not going to be found, and even if it was, it would not change anything that we would do to help her.
We set out to do what we know how to do. The easy part is to love her and care for her and give her a safe place to be. Tucker is there with her and that is a big help for her. At least she wasn’t weaned too early and sent off on her own by herself someplace. Next, we began our holistic approach for brain and cell reprogramming. We have so many tools to help with this. We used TTOUCH which is proven to have an amazing effect on the neurological system. We also started doing energy work to help with any needs there. We had our chiropractic vet adjust her to address any structural abnormalities. It was found that some of her cervical vertebrae were way out of alignment.
And then we added a component that really seemed to help a lot. We had a cranial sacral practitioner come and work on her. One session had an enormous impact. The results were immediate, just a few hours after the treatment, she began to walk noticeably better. She didn’t fall as much, was less wobbly, and could run for longer distances without tipping over. Grace is still very much a work in progress, but we are hopeful at this time, that we are not looking at a degenerative disease. The progress she makes she maintains without backsliding. Some days are better than others, but all of them are now good. She eats normally, is more coordinated in her entire body, and her eyes are finally starting to look like there is life in them. Previously, they were just as dull as could be. She romps and plays with Tucker like a normal puppy. Now 10 weeks old, we are seeing sure signs of improvement.
Grace is most certainly amazing. She is precocious, funny, sweet, and can be pretty tenacious when she wants to be. But most of all, Grace is loving. She is, as the quote says at the beginning of this article, the "outward expression of the inward harmony of her soul.” I could not think of a more appropriate name for this wonderful being. Grace, our next miracle in progress. Stay tuned!
Below is a 4 minute video of Grace at 6 weeks old. We will be adding an updated video soon so that you can see the progress she is making.
Healing by Heart
This story is a work in progress. It is the story of how many hearts came together to help one in need. It is a story of cooperation, of combined effort, of working for a common goal. But mostly it is the story of how one dog is touching many lives and offering healing to us while we are trying to help him to heal as well. Above all, this is a story of love and hope.
MACK UPDATE - APRIL 13, 2009
As it turns out, Mack has found his home. (See his story below.) Mack let us know in no uncertain terms, that he found his work and his mission in life, and he found it here at Spring Farm CARES. Together with Glen Highland Farm, we will construct a living area for him that will be conducive to his special needs. We also hope to continue to see Mack's physical condition improve. In fact, it has improved tremendously already but is still far from normal, making a "normal" household setting not suitable for his needs. At Spring Farm, he has a whole staff of caretakers who look after him and make sure he is always comfortable, occupied, and clean. He has fallen in love with them and they with him. All of us taken by the special heart of this amazing being.
For us, we watched with tears in our eyes as 
Mack discovered his "work". We had a tour of 100 kindergartners and brought Mack out to meet them. He took one look at them and went right to work, walking among them, letting them pet him, and stopping to give them a piece of his loving energy. He was most incredibly attentive to a group of special needs youngsters. As soon as he saw them, he put himself in the center of their little group, lay down, and just stayed with them. It was an amazing 
sight to behold.
Mack will continue to do work with our Humane Education program as well as participating in the Kid's Camp at Glen Highland Farm. But its not just kids Mack works his magic on. We also have groups of teen-age girl scouts who volunteer their time at the farm. On many a nice day, you can find Mack out in the dog yard playing soccer with "the girls" as he refers to 
them. He also has a fan club of college volunteers who come on weekends and have play sessions with Mack as well as more serious sit down belly rub sessions too. Mack has a fairly busy social calendar. For "down time" Mack also gets to run, play, and hangout with Dawn and Margot's rescued Border Collies. He is pictured below with friend Faith who also has had a myriad of health problems that she has overcome.
We want to especially thank our small 
animal staff, his caretakers, who work exceptionally hard at tending to Mack's special needs. They continue to make it possible for him not just to have a life, but to have a full life, working on a mission he came to work on, and a life that he loves. All beings are deserving of such care, but when you meet Mack, understand his story of what he's been through, and see the group effort that sustains him from Glen Highland Farm to Spring Farm CARES, you can't help but feel his gratitude, and mostly his love for what he has, just radiate from and around him. Welcome home Mack!
Meet Mack
Mack is an approximately 4 year old Border Collie. He is temporarily staying at Spring Farm CARES, under the auspices, love and guidance of Lillie Goodrich of Glen Highland Farm, Border Collie Rescue. Glen Highland Farm took Mack in after someone found him running as a stray. As it turned out, Mack had sustained a spinal fracture just above his tail, rendering him bowel and bladder incontinent. In fact, it is amazing he is able to walk. No one is certain how long ago the injury occurred, but the folks at Glen Highland have since learned that Mack had been spotted running lost for at least 6 months before someone was able to catch him. Many rescues or shelters simply would not have been able to care for the needs of a dog like Mack. There is no guarantee even that he could ever recover any bowel or bladder control. But Glen Highland Farm, and their supporters, knew that Mack deserved a shot. Knowing we had worked successfully with spinal injuries before, Glen Highland Farm asked if we could work with Mack for a month or so to see if we could do anything for him. Mack has been seen by the best orthopedic surgeon in our area, as well as a team of veterinarians at Cornell University. Glen Highland Farm saw that he got the best care available to him.
Mack has been with us now for one month. We are doing a combination of things with him. Besides the treatment from the Pain Management team at Cornell, he is getting acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic, TTouch, energy work, and a lot of TLC and specially designed exercises for him to make the connection between his brain and his bowel and bladder. He also has animal communicators Lillie Goodrich and Dawn Hayman helping with his emotional healing as he deals with his recovery, and the effects of having been out looking for the person he was lost from for so long. We are seeing successful results. In the past month, he has regained 1/3 of the feeling in his tail. His tail tone and rectal tone have dramatically increased. He is starting to have awareness of when and where he poops and we are now seeing improvements in his bladder control as well. He is far from normal, but, he is further along than what he originally came with. The progress appears to be steady and continual.
Mack is an amazing dog. He is a normal active Border Collie with a heart of gold. Everyone who meets him is mesmerized by his loving nature, his sense of play, and his wanting to just share with all who come to him. He equally loves to chase and run and play with his toys, as much as, sitting and cuddling in someone’s lap. He is a dog on a heart mission for sure. And he has a team of humans cheering him on. From everyone at Glen Highland Farm and their angel donors who sent money to help support Mack’s care, to our staff, and volunteers, Mack is receiving the kind of support that can only be given from the heart. The results are undeniable and even scientifically measurable. It is hard to measure the strength or greatness of a miracle. Each and every miracle is huge to the being who receives it.
Mack is where he is on his path today because many people got together and said, “Let’s give the guy a chance.” Organizations who joined up together on a common mission, offering the best of what both had to offer, to help this one dog who in turn is helping so many people to understand what loving and heart connections can do. He is grateful for everything he receives and always lets all of us know it.
If you are interested in joining Mack’s angel support team to help cover the high medical costs of Mack’s recovery, please go to the Glen Highland Farm website for more information.
The following photos show a little of Mack's progress over the past few weeks. The one on the left was taken on January 31, 2009. At that time he had very little tail tone or movement. The one on the right was taken 3 weeks later and you can see that his tail has more tone and lift.
The Story of Calico
Calico is another miracle story. Her first major miracle happened when she was just a wee kitten, on a dairy farm, where she was found very ill and taken in by a former SFC animal care worker. It didn’t look like Calico was going to make it but she pulled through against amazing odds. The lady ended up keeping her and she became an indoor/outdoor cat at a small farm with horses. Calico was a healthy and vibrant girl until one morning when her person came out to the barn and found Calico dragging her hind end. Fearing she had been stepped on by a horse, she took Calico to her vet. It was determined after a day that Calico could not stand or walk and she was bowel and bladder incontinent. She would either need to be euthanized or a place found for her where she could be possibly be outfitted with a wheel chair and taken care of for the rest of her life.
We agreed to take Calico in to evaluate her, to see the extent of just what her injuries were, and to see what she herself wanted to do. Two vets felt that she most likely had a broken spine. However, Calico proved to have something altogether different. We took her to an orthopedic surgeon and radiographs showed that there were no visible injuries at all to her spine. While this sounded like excellent news, the ramifications were sobering. There is a very high chance that she has lymphosarcoma and that a tumor is pressing somewhere on her spinal cord. The only way to confirm that diagnosis is with a MRI. The cost of that was nearly $2,000 and we would not have done any different treatment than what we were about to try. So we decided to treat Calico with a steroid injection to see if we could buy her some time and possibly regain some use of her legs at least.
We didn’t give up there however. We had worked with spinal injuries 
before with cats and knew that there could be things we could do to help, regardless of the cause. Our staff moved into high gear with their ingenious ways of helping Calico to balance with enough weight off of her legs to walk. Calico took to the regimen right away. Margot started working with Calico using TTouch. We employed some homeopathy and energy work. And most of all, she got high doses of TLC. She also had one more thing, a job.
Just a couple weeks after Calico arrived here, we took in an 8 week old kitten found freezing to death in a snow bank. He was frightened and scared and Calico wanted to comfort him. We put them together and she mothered that little baby back to health. He also gave her more to fight for. Within 2 weeks, Calico began to stand on her own. Then, shortly after, she began to walk. Within the following 2 weeks she also began to regain control of bowel and bladder. And then eventually, she also was able to raise her tail in the air when she walked. She had recovered. She played and played and played with her new kitten friend. But after a month of that, it was time for the kitten to be adopted. It was bitter sweet as we thanked Calico for having helped him overcome so much, and by doing so, she also overcame the huge obstacle in her own life. But her job was done with him and it was time to move on. Calico was lucky to have a home to go back to. A place where she is loved and cherished and for where she lived for all but a few weeks of her life. She has recovered enough to go home and soon she will go back to her other cat and human friends. The circle is complete. We watched one heart heal the other and give the gifts they had to one another.
Ramone - The Cat who Raised the Bar for Miracles at Spring Farm CARES
Just as we were closing down one night, we got a call from one of our adoptors who found a cat that dragged himself into his gas station. He didn’t know what to do. The cat was not in good shape. Our staff waited for him to get here and found a cat who was unable to walk and was seriously matted to the point of almost not being able to urinate or defecate. They stayed late and cleaned him up. Our first assumption was that he had been hit by a car although we saw no other injuries. But he clearly could not walk. Our next suspicion was that he had a stroke. But we could only stabilize him for the night until we could get him to a specialist in the morning. He was in good weight and clearly must have been someone’s beloved friend. Radiographs confirmed the diagnosis without a doubt and the news was not good. But it also left us with a huge mystery.
Ramone, as we named him, had a broken back. His spinal cord was impaired 90%. The veterinarian also was able to tell that this was not a fresh injury. Ramone had been this way for a while. He was bladder and bowel incontinent and could not walk, although he seemed to have deep pain sensation in his legs, he did not respond at all to lighter touch. This was not good news. We knew we had to try to find his person, surely someone had to be looking for him. How could he have been out in the dead of winter in deep snow and the freezing temps and survived if this had been an older injury which clearly it was? Did someone have Ramone in their house and then realized they could no longer care for him and drop him off at the gas station? We had lots of questions but no 
answers. From a traditional medical standpoint there was nothing to do for him. It was a major quality of life issue. Would he want to live that way, unable to walk and to have to be cleaned regularly from his urine? Would we be able to care for him properly? We posed these questions to Ramone and to our staff. It was unanimous that Ramone clearly was not ready to die. And he seemed to be pretty confident and determined to survive. That’s all we needed to know. We would do whatever was needed to let him see what he could do.
Our staff became incredibly creative. They noticed that Ramone could indeed tell when he had to use his litter box because he would try to drag himself over to it. This meant that he had some kind of sensation. We began using homeopathy, TTouch, laser treatments, and a whole lot of TLC. Our staff created a litter box with an open end so that he could pull himself in. He began to use it. We couldn’t believe it. We had worked 
with paralyzed cats before and knew what we were up against. Then they began to see him try to lift himself onto his back legs but he couldn’t balance himself properly. One of our staff members had the brilliant idea to take a pair of long johns and cut holes for his back legs, creating a very long sling that they could put him in while they stood next to him. It took him only a couple of days to figure that out and he got up on his feet and he began to walk. He walked and walked and walked. And one day, much to everyone’s absolute amazement, he climbed up on one of the sofas. Then he began doing a small set of stairs that we had set up. Our staff began in earnest to start him on a course of rehabilitation that was ingenious. They basically followed Ramone’s lead. Soon he was walking in his pen without the sling. He was able to walk into his litter box and was no longer incontinent. Daily he continued improving and getting better balance and more strength. He had a fierce determination and a temper to boot. Ramone was not going to be a paralyzed cat.
Today, less than a year later, Ramone is living in the foster room at Dawn at Margot’s house. If you were to see him, other than a somewhat odd gait in the back end, he is a completely functional, normal cat. He climbs 5 foot cat trees and jumps down. He zooms around the room chasing the other cats. He is completely continent. All this, and we know that his spinal cord is 90% impaired. Obviously Ramone had other plans in life. No one told him that recovery would be impossible. He owes his life to our staff who listened to him and worked with him. These are the same people he now routinely terrorizes. We will never know what his history is or how he came to be at that gas station. But Ramone charted a course of a miraculous journey. He has been an inspiration to all of us. And he also has been an incredible nuisance (said affectionately). He darts out doors faster than you can blink. And if he doesn’t want to go back in, he feels free to use his nails or teeth or whatever he can. He hates kids, is not fond of men, and basically feels that he is here to do exactly whatever it is that he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it. And there is not a single one of us that will take that away from him. He will most likely be a permanent resident, running the farm for years to come.
