Natasha Baydakova In this photo released by Natasha Baydakova on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2011 showing a Welsh corgi dog named Ole that showed up at a Cooke City motel four days after the dog and its owner were swept up in an avalanche. The dog’s owner died. The dog returned to this motel where they had been staying before going backcountry skiing. (AP Photo/Natasha Baydakova)

By BRETT FRENCH Billings Gazette | Posted: Friday, January 6, 2012 6:00 am

BILLINGS - Assumed to have died in an avalanche that killed one of his owners on Saturday, an exhausted and hungry Welsh corgi lay down Wednesday by the door of the Cooke City motel room that the family had occupied four days earlier.

"The family is super excited," said Mark Staples of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center, which investigated the incident. "It's one bright spot for them."

Robert Weinstein, owner of the Alpine Motel at Cooke City, spotted the dog around noon Wednesday.

"I just saw it outside sitting by the room, which is pretty amazing," he said.

He fed it and began calling around to make sure that the dog was the one he thought it was.

"I wasn't 100 percent sure because I'd only seen it once or twice," he said.

The dog, named Ole, was with Dave Gaillard, 44, of Bozeman, who was buried by an avalanche while skiing with his wife, Kerry, on Saturday. They were skiing along Hayden Creek, southeast of town, at an elevation of about 9,200 feet and just below Index Peak.

When the avalanche broke high atop the mountain, most of the slide was funneled into the narrow creek drainage where Gaillard was skiing, filling it 12 to 14 feet deep with tightly packed snow. Kerry Gaillard was on the edge of the avalanche, hanging onto a tree to avoid being swept away.

She told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that her husband's last thoughts were for her safety.

"His last words to me were, ‘Retreat to the trees.' I think he saw what was coming from above, that I did not see. That reflects Dave's amazing quality - thinking of others," she said.

Search and rescue personnel saw no sign of Ole at the site, and it was thought he had been buried in the slide. But if Ole was buried, he managed to dig his way out and then walk four miles on stubby legs back to Cooke City in temperatures that dipped into the teens at night.

Cooke City businessman Bill Whittle, who volunteered to drive the dog back to his family on Wednesday, said Ole appeared to be in good condition despite his ordeal.

"It's a miracle," Whittle said.

When he first approached, Whittle said, Ole was nervous and scared. But when he called the dog's name, Ole came right over.

"He was real hungry and thirsty," Whittle said. "We fed him twice."

Whittle is a member of the search and rescue crew that helped retrieve Gaillard's body. He called the area a "bad spot" in difficult terrain.

Ole's survival and return are all the more amazing because Corgis are not large dogs. They were bred short to avoid being kicked as they herded livestock. On average, males stand a foot and a half tall and weigh about 27 pounds.

"How in the world he made it, I don't know," said Kay Whittle, Bill's wife. "If he could just talk - who knows what he did from the day of the avalanche until today?"

Sidney resident Jody Ray Verhasselt, 46, also died Saturday in an avalanche in the Cooke City area. Verhasselt was snowmobiling on a northeast-facing slope in Fisher Creek north of Cooke.

Kay Whittle said the two New Year's Eve avalanche deaths took a toll on the small mountain community. Many residents respond in emergencies such as avalanches.

"It's been real rough," she said.

"We needed this," Bill Whittle said of Ole's survival. "It kind of cheered everyone up."

BOZEMAN - All the dogs around Nancy Tanner were on edge.

They had suffered what she termed major trauma either at the hands of people or another dog. As a result, the dogs were not able to relax. They had lost their ability to trust and to function outside their homes.

"They had met evil," Tanner said.

The dog owners had brought their pets to Tanner, owner of the Bozeman dog-training center Paws & People. She was leading a class - Relaxing Your Reactive Rover - that teaches owners the skills necessary to handle their tense dogs.

It was a tricky class, Tanner said. They began trying new things, adding calming sounds and calming objects.

And then Tanner introduced calming scents to the class.

She started with aromatherapy products made for humans. People started relaxing and the dogs relaxed some along with their owners. But the scent was too strong for the dogs.

"They would hit their nose a little bit or touch the ground or back away from it," Tanner said.

She turned to her family garden, where her family has been making their own salves, lip balms, tinctures and essential oils for about eight years. Tanner started mixing lavender blends, backing off emulsifiers and preservatives used to amplify scent for human noses.

With distilled water and plant-based essential oils extracted from lavender plants in her garden, she was able to come up with an aromatherapy scent for dogs and brought it back to the class.

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MICHAEL GALLACHER/Missoulian A year after being rescued in failing health from the Montana Large Animal Sanctuary near Niarada, these donkeys have been nursed back to health, thanks to people like Marie Andersen of Missoula. Andersen adopted three of the 31 donkeys that were among the 1,200 large animals rescued from the defunct sanctuary.

MICHAEL GALLACHER/Missoulian When the donkeys were rescued, their hooves were curled like Persian slippers. Today they appear normal and the animals are able to walk around their new home free of pain.

MICHAEL GALLACHER/Missoulian "I went to get one and came home with three," says Andersen. "They were bonded into little groups and I couldn't split them up."

By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian | Posted: Monday, December 26, 2011 10:30 pm

Editor's note: As 2011 draws to a close, the Missoulian is updating a few of the stories that graced our pages in the past 12 months.

In the Bible, Ruth exemplifies devotion and initiative. An equine version of the story here in Missoula does her justice.

Ruth the Donkey barely stood a chance a year ago, when she was a refugee from a failed large animal sanctuary in Niarada. Her hooves curled back like Persian slippers and her coat was matted and sparse when she appeared in the Missoulian last January.

Marie Andersen was one of dozens of area residents who offered to help.

"I went to get one and came home with three," Andersen said. "They were bonded into little groups and I couldn't split them up."

So Ruth brought along Naomi and Boaz, a little donkey clan whose fellowship gives Andersen comfort and solace every day after she takes off her robe as Missoula Municipal Court judge.

Unlike the Scripture story, Ruth is the oldest of the trio instead of the youngest. But she's also the group's leader and the one who's displayed the most fortitude in recovering from hard times at the sanctuary where so many animals were left untended - in some cases, for years.

"If you'd seen them six months ago, you wouldn't believe they'd still be here," said neighbor Ron Marks, who proposed the names. "They were skinny, hair coming out, skittish. Now they're to the point we can pet them. They're survivors."

Andersen has long been a volunteer at the Humane Society of Western Montana, providing foster care for dogs too traumatized to live in the shelter. She's also taken home barn cats too feral for adoption, allowing them to mouse about at her South Third Street West pasture.

"She had her own little preserve here," mother Mary Ann Andersen said of Marie. "But these guys - she hadn't got into rescuing big things before. It's fine with me. She has the room and it's what she likes to do."

And thanks to Ron and Nancy Marks next door, Ruth, Naomi and Boaz have even more room. Andersen contributes a case of beer a month in rent, and the donkeys get to roam among the neighbors' apple trees all the way to the Clark Fork River.

"I was a little worried about the noise," Ron Marks said of the potential braying. "But for the first two months, they didn't make a sound. They just ate."

More than 100 horses, llamas and donkeys were abandoned when the Niarada large animal sanctuary owners unexpectedly closed the operation. Many appeared to have been seriously neglected for up to two years, resulting in nutritional problems as well as physical deformities. Dozens were adopted by people across western Montana last January and February.

Despite their ill treatment in Niarada, Andersen's donkeys remain both courageous and kind. They don't fear the occasional bear that also comes to raid the apples, and Andersen's three-legged dog Kintla gets much more tolerance than two strangers with clanking cameras. Andersen said its possible they think a pair of men showing up at the fence means another visit from the veterinarian (Ruth still has to be sedated before having her hooves cared for).

Incidentally, Missoulian readers may also remember Kintla under another name. She was formerly Chin-Chin, a rescue dog who came to the Humane Society last year severely beaten and pregnant with nine puppies. Once almost too scared to leave her kennel, Kintla now greets visitors with a wary sniff and a wag.

"I work with people all day," Andersen said as Ruth, Naomi and Boaz munched through a bucket of apples. "Here I just deal with animals. I'm thrilled with having them."

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Sandy Bolinger has been taking care of Buddy since last year. The horse was one about 80 rescued from a defunct large animal sanctuary at Niarada last year.

By PERRY BACKUS Ravalli Republic | Posted: Thursday, December 22, 2011 10:30 pm

STEVENSVILLE - Last January, Sandy Bolinger planned to spend a few hours helping volunteers care for horses rescued from a defunct large animal sanctuary at Niarada.

She certainly had no plans to bring home another animal to add to her herd just southwest of Stevensville.

One of the first horses she saw at the Corvallis facility where the horses had been transported was a Morgan named Buddy.

He was standing on hooves grown so long that they looked like miniature skis. He was skinny and his teeth were bad.

He didn't look like he much cared if he lived or died.

"Buddy was standing there in the snow with a pile of hay just a little ways in front of him," Bolinger remembers. "It hurt so bad for him to walk that he wouldn't take a step so he could eat."

As she walked up to him, Buddy looked up at her and nickered.

"I knew I shouldn't have gone," she said.

Bolinger was part of the four-person crew who spent 20 minutes encouraging Buddy to walk 25 feet into the barn where a medical team waited. She comforted him as the veterinarian used a Sawzall to cut off the excess hoof and cared for his teeth.

And when all the medical work was done, Bolinger put a blanket on Buddy's back and loaded him into her trailer before taking him home.

The care didn't stop there.

His hooves were so malformed that the damage could never be reversed. She puts therapeutic boots on him every day that are lined with special pads that soothe his hooves.

She soaks Buddy's hay in water to remove most of the sugars from the feed. He is resistant to insulin - a malady similar to diabetes in humans. And each day, she gives him medication to control the Cushing's disease that threatens his overall health.

"He's a horse with amazing heart," Bolinger said, as she reached up and put a halter around his head. "A lot of horses would have just given up and died."

Buddy was one of nearly 100 horses and donkeys that were transported to Ravalli County last year following the closure of a large animal sanctuary in Niarada.

Shannon Alexander of Western Montana Equine Rescue and Rehabilitation of Corvallis said the animals all seem to be faring well in their new homes.

"I think they are all doing really well," Alexander said.

Some of the animals needed more medical attention than others.

"It was really heartbreaking when you think about what happened there," Bolinger said. "It was all so unnecessary. People would have helped if they would have just been asked."

Buddy's previous owner left a five-page note with the sanctuary owners that outlined the horses' needs. All of that care appeared to have been disregarded when the sanctuary fell on hard times.

The veterinarian told Bolinger that nothing had been done with Buddy's feet for up to two years for it to get as bad as it was.

"It really was awful," she said. "There was a Fjord who came with feet that were as bad as Buddy's. It ended up having abscesses and had to be put down.

"Buddy has been lucky all the way around. He still has good days and bad days, but he's a lot better than he was. He's just such a sweet guy.

"I don't regret at all that I took him. I've learned so much from him. He's such an amazing horse."

Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 363-3300 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/woman-continues-to-aid-horse-rescued-from-niarada-animal-sanctuary/article_6d3ad9ba-2d13-11e1-a3bf-001871e3ce6c.html#ixzz1hNtlZFOk