Thought Wheel

Ann Chiappetta

Full Circle 💗

| Filed under blindness Relationships

Full Circle

 

How much do we know about a person?  I consider myself a private person but also a person who believes  sharing a personal success or a  challenge could help someone else. I am sharing the following audio vignette  produced by the Hadley Institute called Insights and Sound Bites and hope it helps you or someone you know struggling with depression or vision loss.

https://hadley.edu/podcasts/insights-sound-bites/i-came-full-circle 

💗 What to Love about a Human’s Best Friend 💗 🦴 🐕 

| Filed under blogging Guide dogs pets and people

 

After raising two kids and doing the parent thing with the pediatrician for all those years, I thought my husband might like helping out with our pets once in a while. I am proud to say Jerry has become a wonderful pet parent and takes our pet dog, May to all her appointments. We adopted her  in  2020 and love her sweet and sassy personality. She is smart,  protective but not territorial, and solves problems  quickly and efficiently, just like a good German Shepard should. While she has a bit of Rottweiler , as proven by a DNA test, she’s  got  a GSD body type  and traits  and the only part missing is pointy ears. She has derpy ones that flop over and stick out perpendicular to her head.  Do not let this fool you.

 

At first we house trained her, which took a few months. She was already crate trained.  It took a while for her bladder to mature.  She learned how to unlock the metal safety gate, you know the child-safety ones with the lock cover and the sliding , recessed latch?

 

My yellow lab guide dog, Bailey and May love one another, play together and love to share space, which is good. She also  loves our cats. She does poke and play with them but  taps down the chasing and while this took some time,  the darned cats like to be chased, so we gave up trying to stop it. A few swats  from  the kitty pins and she learned to respect them. When we brought in a kitten, May’s  mothering instincts blossomed, surprising us. She raised it, groomed it and  now they all sleep together. April, my daughter,  who convinced us to adopt May and who has been  a huge part of caring for May, has been able to help  with most of her doggie dislikes, like the ear drops. April is great at relaxing May for  a two or three  toenail trim. But it does take a few days because May won’t tolerate more than one foot at a time. The groomer  must hate it when she comes in for a spa day.

But these aversions  are within the normal spectrum for a pet, right? Let me go on to what is challenging . sometimes she reverts into a demon, thus her alternate name, Mazikeen. Anyway, her Shepard came out, she is such a drama queen. First, to tell us her ear hurt she jumped onto the bed, flopped between us and kept us awake by whining and shaking her head all night . Then she hurt her ear more by scratching it and when we tried to look at it she screamed like we were cutting it off.  So, off to the Vet to take a look at the ear. Then, Jerry gave her the anti-puke pill because she gets car sick in the truck. Well it didn’t work but we have a blanket  for that and an extra seat cover just in case. Then, they can’t take her temp anally because she turns into a whirling dervish in the exam room so they have to do it under her leg. That went okay, so did the ear inspection. But when they wanted to take a blood draw to check  basics from taking the allergy pills, they could not do it. She became a manic mess and sprayed blood all over them from jerking away. Three times, even with cheese whiz and three people to help distract her.  So next time we have to  fast her in the morning, run her until she is exhausted because a tired dog is a good dog in the exam room,  give her the anti puke pill two hours prior and maybe Jerry can avoid a mess in the truck   and the vet tech can get some blood. Oh, they want a urine sample. Well, that is not going to happen, She won’t let anyone sneak up and put a pan under her ass.

 

All this is frustrating and I am thankful it is Jerry and April facing the challenges with May. Oh, yes, I almost forgot to mention she punishes herself by running into the dog crate and facing the wall after we discover a chewed slipper or something she’d taken off the kitchen counter, like an oven mitt.   How could you not love this dog or be amused when she does this?  Talk about operant conditioning, lol.

 

The best thing about May is  the way she lowers her head  and leans into you or lap asking for affection, exposing her neck as if to say I trust you so much I want you to scratch me where I can’t reach. What could be more endearing than this?

 

May  on the dog bed with her bones and toys

May the dog on her dog bed with her toysMay the dog on her bed with her bones

 

The Tooth about Aging 🪥

| Filed under Guide dogs Relationships

 

Have you ever had the feeling you were forgetting something as you walked out the door? Well, folks, if you haven’t already gotten the hint, once you are past fifty, the forgetting increases and making a mental list isn’t enough.

Case in point: Yesterday I got the text message from the paratransit provider about my confirmed ten-minute window and pick-up time . I put on my  guide dog’s harness, my jacket, slung my bag over my shoulder, and grabbed my support cane and  tromped out the door into the pouring rain with the niggling feeling I’d forgotten something.

 

I soon put it out of my mind as the driver and I talked. We arrived, my dog guiding me from the bus into the office building and into the PT waiting room.

 

It wasn’t until I was halfway done with my routine that the forgotten thing was exposed.

“Where’s your tooth?” asked the physical therapist.

All I could do was take it  as gracefully as I could considering it is a front tooth  that is gone.

“I left it at home,” I said.

 

 

by Ann Chiappetta | tags : | 0