 Lloyd and Hoss at the farm. Anyone who has recently adopted a puppy, whether from a breeder or a rescue agency, knows what a time-consuming commitment that is. There is the house training, the manners training, the crate training, the tricks training, etc. Sometimes those who adopt older dogs must go through similar training if that older dog was never house trained or maybe the new dog has bad manners or *gulp* no manners at all. Either way, bringing a new dog, whether pup or adult, takes adjustment and commitment on the part of the humans. That said, you can commiserate when I tell you I’m training three pups simultaneously. In some ways it makes it easier because they have each other and that’s a great thing, but the hard part is determining if all three are learning the tasks or if one learning first and covering for the others. For example, I’m training the pups to ring a set of jingle bells when they need to go outside to do business. One will walk over and sit by the bells while the others follow then jump, attack style, to ring the bells. I need to video this because it really is funny to watch the teamwork. This isn’t a training blog, so I won’t go into detail about how I “fix” the issue; for training hints via a blog or to just look at some great dogs photos, please visit my Spanish Water Dog website www.spanishwaterdogtexas.com.
 Jack, at the park, training to heel. My three pups-in-training are Lloyd, Jack, and Hoss. All are male Spanish Water Dogs. Lloyd is smaller and is white with a black face mask and a couple black body spots. Jack is about the same size as Lloyd, but it varying shades of brown. Hoss is larger and brown with a bit of a strapping gut to haul around. He does not want for food, I promise you, but he doesn’t skimp at meal time either. Lloyd, Jack, and Hoss are training to be diabetes alert dogs. In a nutshell, these three dogs will be paired with an individual with type 1 diabetes and who is also hypoglycemic unaware AND who may have allergies or have a family member with allergy issues. Spanish Water Dogs don’t have the under coat that most other dogs have which makes them virtually shed-less. In addition to that, their demeanor is conducive to being an alert service dog. Both the beauty and hardship of training these thre is that there are thre of them. For the next year to year and a half, these wonderful boys will be at my side. Yes, there will be times when I must take them out one on one, which actually makes things a bit more difficult, but still manageable. It’s difficult simply because I want them all to experience as much as possible and sometimes I can’t get them to the same events. In the end, it’s not that big of a deal. They will have ample opportunity to experience a myriad of places, sounds, sights, and smells. It really boils down to me wanting more for them and for the service dog recipient to receive the best dog I can possibly provide. For more information on my Spanish Water Dogs, please visit my website www.SpanishWaterDogTexas.com. You can also follow me on Instagram (@machellegrimes), where almost daily, I post the antics of these three.
Earlier this week I spent five hours with an incredible family in order to learn techniques used and to toss around ideas, pros and cons of using other methods for training alert dogs for people with diabetes. There are four family members who train full time. Each person has from one to three dogs each depending on the stage each dog is in. Not just these four members, but this entire family has committed to breeding, raising, and training diabetes alert dogs. Their entire lives revolve around dogs. Wow! Talk about inspiring!
The first thing we discussed was why these dogs are so important. Obviously I had heard of type 1 diabetes, but I never heard of a subset of people with type 1 who are hypoglycemic unaware. In a nutshell, when our blood sugar levels drop, we feel the effects of it. People with type 1 diabetes who are also hypoglycemic unaware do not feel the symptoms and that can have deadly consequences if there is no one around who knows how to recognize what is happening or who knows how to help them.
The hardest part of training doesn’t even involve the dogs. It’s acquiring the saliva samples that we use in training. When our volunteers check their blood sugar levels and the numbers are within our parameters, the volunteer must get a cotton swab and swab saliva from the inside of their cheek. Without touching the tip, they carefully place the swab in a freezer-safe, sealable plastic bag. Then it must be double-bagged, labeled with the date and blood sugar level, and immediately put in the freezer. At no point can there be contamination of the tip of the swab lest the whole thing not work at all.
We need a cheek swab from a person with type 1 when their levels are just beginning to go high or go low. For example, we train for blood sugar drops by using a sample from when a volunteer’s level is between 60-70 on their glucometer. These samples are almost priceless for our training. We are lucky enough to have a few people willing to take the time to swab, seal, and label when their levels are within our parameters, but we do need more. At this point the longest a sample has been frozen and is still viable is three months. We don’t want to take a chance on losing the few samples we have, so testing beyond that three month mark will only happen by accident.
As a trainer, I know how much work goes into training a dog. I knew there would be extra work once I committed to training a diabetes alert dog. What I never considered was the necessary extras such as the network of volunteers with type 1 who are willing to give us samples and just how valuable those samples are. We wouldn’t be able to train these fabulous dogs without our volunteers.
Three of the little guys I'm training.
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If you follow me on Twitter (@machellegrimes) or on Instagram (MachelleGrimes) then you know I breed, train, show, and sell this amazing and beautiful breed known as the Spanish Water Dog. If you don’t know anything about this breed, or even if you do, please peruse my dog website www.SpanishWaterDogTexas.com and discover why I love these dogs. This past year, a dog breeder/trainer friend of mine brought a new group of dog people (no, not half dog, half human) into my life. These people train service dogs to work as alert dogs for people with Type 1 diabetes. It’s a relatively new thing where service dogs are concerned. I watched and observed what was going on, asked questions here and there, and discussed potential dog scenarios with my husband. My husband and I even attended a fundraiser to benefit both a camp for kids with Type 1 diabetes and to offset that cost of training these alert dogs. Like I said earlier, I think the SWD is an amazing breed. It’s not well known in the US and is considered a rare breed, but they share many of the qualities that make the usual breeds (Labs, Goldens, German Shepherds, Belgian Malinois) great service dogs AND the SWD can go one better - they don’t shed. The Spanish Water Dog, in addition to its many natural talents (I have placed pups who are actively working as herd dogs, duck retrievers, agility competitors) is great for families with allergies. In working with and observing the training of these alert dogs, I discovered an unfulfilled niche. Many families who have a kid with type 1 diabetes, also have allergy issues in the family. What a great match! I held back half of my last litter to test for service dog aptitude (I already test for temperament to make placement easier). I had five that passed the first round. Obviously I can’t train five pups, so I held them a week longer and tested again. I’ve narrowed down to three. I’ll work with these three for another couple of weeks before making my decision on which one will be trained. An alert dog needs an interesting combination of qualities, but that’s information for another post. I’ll be updating on my progress/journey in training a diabetes alert dog via this blog. It’s a long term commitment, but I’m excited about the adventure. Read more about Type 1 at these websites: http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-1/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001350/. Check in for my training updates. They’ll interspersed with other topics that I find interesting. In fact, I’ll probably be more regular with them than other topics.
I have many family and friends who do not agree with me on many things - the fact that I’m ruining my children’s future by homeschooling them, the fact that I’m contributing to possible epidemics and endangering the lives of other children because I chose not to vaccinate my kids, the fact that I choose to not push religion or a particular belief system on my kids, and including but not limited to the fact that I support same sex marriage.
For the sake of this writing, I’m taking God, as in the Christian God, out of the equation for a minute. Boy that stops half of them right in their tracks because they can’t have a discussion about LGBT people without pulling scriptures out of their pockets to throw at me. But humor me, just a bit, and let God take a small break from this discussion because this is about basic human rights. Period.
Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to look back at this and compare it to black people being denied voting rights, women being denied the right to vote, black men not being allowed to marry white women when a white man could marry a black woman - basic human rights as guaranteed in our Constitution. Just read the first paragraph:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence {sic}, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The United States of America, famous for being a melting pot, grew to prominence because of our diversity and in spite of our historical tendencies which have leaned toward puritanical. I don’t mean this in the strictly religious way, but in everyday life. We’ve always chosen particular groups to step on so we can feel superior. Catholics and Jews were discriminated against; the Irish, Chinese, Italians were all discriminated against, and whereas marrying outside your ethnicity was frowned upon, it wasn’t illegal, unless you were African American.
Let’s take a little trip down memory lane. In 1664, that’s 348 years ago, Maryland passed the first law that banned marriage between whites and slaves. It went so far as to order the white women who married black men to be enslaved. Other states soon followed suit. Pennsylvania led the way to full interracial marriage recognition in 1780 by repealing it’s 1725 law banning interracial marriage. Though several states were taking that first step toward true equality, the U.S. Supreme Court landed a blow to interracial marriage in an 1883 ruling that lasted more than eighty years.
Why do we care? Over 100 years later, opponents of same sex marriage used this Supreme Court ruling as a basis for argument. Their foothold was in this particular wording as written by Justice Stephen Johnson Field for the Court: …the punishment prescribed in the two sections is directed against the offense designated and not against the person of any particular color or race… The opponents’ claim is the there is no discrimination on the basis of sex because heterosexual-only marriage laws, just like the laws written to ban interracial marriage, technically punish both men and women. Both are punished, therefore there is no discrimination.
It wasn’t until 1967 that the US Supreme Court discovered that do to the wording in the fourteenth amendment, state bans on interracial marriage violates a person’s civil rights. A portion of the fourteenth amendment is as follows: …No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws…
For that 1967 ruling, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the court:
"There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy ...
"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men ... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."
From this point on, interracial marriage is legal throughout the United States. I quote Chief Justice Earl Warren in order to make a point. Let’s substitute same-sex marriage in the place of interracial marriage and see how it reads. I’ve underscored or struck through the changes.
"There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious sexual discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that any state prohibits only marriages involving persons of the same gender demonstrates that the gender classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain Heterosexual Supremacy ...
"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men ... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the gender classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious homosexual discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of the same gender resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
"From this point on, same sex marriage is legal throughout the United States."
It doesn’t read terribly differently does it? Not until the year 2000 did the state of Alabama, the lone hold-out in all the union, officially legalize interracial marriage although the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the ban thirty-three years prior. It took 220 years for all of the United States of America to fully legalize/recognize interracial marriage. Wow. That’s a lot of discrimination. Is it going to take that long to correct the injustice served to our LGBT citizens? It’s the diversity in America that makes us great not Hitler-esque discrimination. Ours is not a free society when we deny persons of one sort that which is allowed for another sort.
Hypocrisy and Christianity. That’s really too narrow. I’m sure there is rampant hypocrisy in every religion, but Christianity is the one with which I’m more familiar and it happens to be at the core of a current events issue in the United States.
I’m fine with disagreeing with people and their points of view. That’s their right as it is mine. After all, freedom of religion was one of the founding principles of this country.
Excerpt from the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Excerpt from the Constitution of the United States of America:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In the DoC, we know the the use of the word “men” is to include all people (men and women of all ethnicities or gender preferences), and the use of “creator” to mean whom you believe your creator to be.
In the CoUSA, I think the key phrases for my point is “insure domestic tranquility”, “promote the general welfare”, and “secure the blessings of liberty”. The word domestic can be interpreted many ways from the CoUSA including but not limited to the country as a whole as well as each individual household.
Now, all that said and clarified, I support Chick-fil-a’s RIGHT to their opinion. This is not to say that I AGREE with their opinion. I don’t agree with their religious doctrine, but again, it’s their right as guaranteed by our founding fathers, and I will defend their right to have their beliefs. What I will neither defend nor agree with is their hypocrisy and what I believe to be outright lies.
They will have the general public believe that the reason the Muppet toys no longer being available at their restaurants is due to Chick-fil-a’s safety concerns. I believe the REAL reason is because A) The Jim Henson Company would no longer pursue future endeavors with Chick-fil-a and B) Lisa Henson, CEO of The Jim Henson Company, and a supporter of gay marriage, directed her company to donate Chick-fil-a’s last payment to GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).
So tell me Chick-fil-a, is LYING a Christian attitude? What would Jesus do?
I am lost. It’s day three of my kids’ week and a half long visit with their grandparents. They are in another state, but still only a few hours away. Today I want them home. Right now. I miss them. I truly enjoy spending time with my kids. It’s reason #463 that I homeschool.
My world doesn’t revolve around my kids, it includes them, and when they are gone, my world is a bit off kilter. By and large I enjoy being alone. I can go without talking on the phone, texting, emailing, etc. My husband and close friends are all nodding their heads. I value my alone time, I love having time alone. But not necessarily all day every day for weeks on end. I also love having my kids around and in the middle of everything I do, but I know it’s healthy for all involved for them to be able to go off on their own - even if it’s just to the grandparents’ house.
I get teased that I will become majorly depressed when the kids leave the nest. I don’t doubt that at all but I also know their leaving is a part of how we all interconnect and make this thing called life work. If I’ve done my job right, I’ll have weaned myself just as I’ve weaned them. We won’t grow apart. We’ll actually grow stronger and closer. Yes the time apart may hurt a bit, but the time together will be even sweeter.
The reason I bring this up is that I am constantly amazed at the number of people - strangers, acquaintances, etc, who readily admit to me that their kids drive them crazy and that they can’t stand to be around them. I know we’ve all said that a time or two and even joke about it on a regular basis. I’ve responded to these statements with an “aw shucks, we’ve all been there” only to be stopped and have these people reaffirm that they really can’t stand to be with their kids for short periods of time, much less all day. These people dread weekends, summer, and vacations because for whatever reason, they don’t enjoy their kids.
Without getting into the why’s and wherefore’s, it never fails that I stand there in shock, total disbelief at the confession. I have to snap my mouth shut and hold it tightly in place because I know the next thing out of it could cause problems depending on how well I know the person. I understand that kids don’t come with an owner’s manual, but seriously, if you don’t like kids, why did you have them? And if the pregnancy was an accident, give them up for adoption (which is a whole other entry) because I guarantee you, there is someone out there who would love to have your problem of having to spend time with your child.
_ I've decided I need a dry erase board in the shower. I have some of my best ideas in there. What is it about the shower? Is it the water or the shower itself?
I've got a great shower room, area, whatever you want to call it. My completely fabulous DIY husband took out our super small plastic shower cell as well as the plastic bath tub and replaced them with an enlarged shower area complete with floor to ceiling travertine and two shower heads. Oh yes. Be jealous! Two shower heads people! It's a beautiful thing.
So the atmosphere is indeed conducive to allowing one's mind to wonder, but truth be told, I had some great ideas in my old shower too. That brings me back to the water although I'm not sold on that theory either.
I've lounged on sun-soaked beaches with my toes dangling in the water yet my ideas then were never as good as the ones in the shower. Okay, maybe the adult beverage of choice had something to do with that, but the fact still remains that my best ideas have come while I'm in the shower.
I'll go a step further and say that I have clarity of thought while I'm in the shower. I can completely make sense of my plans for the day, week, and even month while I'm in the shower. But the moment I step out, I'm blank. Why? Why, why, why?
I don't know that I'll ever get the answer to that question, so I must move on to the next best thing which is to put up a dry erase board in my beautiful shower. I wonder if the super-DIY-husband can make it blend with a frame or something. It's either that or some kids bathroom markers. It'll be just my luck that the water will deflect and spray off one of my incredibly fabulous ideas, but even then, I'm ahead because at least I'll still have some notes scribbled across my shower. Then I can quickly dry off, pick up my notebook, and transfer my shower notes to a more permanent locale. Hmm, I may be onto something and I wasn't even in the shower.
_List-making is an attempt to organize chaos. I've always said I live in organized chaos, but even then I use that term loosely. I am not an organized person. To me, an organized person knows where the hidden things are. An organized person will remember there's a pack of frozen peas in the freezer. I need to see that package of peas every time I look into the freezer lest I forget it's there. In my closet, if I don't see my clothes hanging in front of me, I'm very likely to forget I have a particular garment until something triggers a memory or I find myself in need of soemthing similar and remember that I actually have that item.
Lists are for the compulsive or for inflicting pain on oneself. Why remind yourself of the things you aren't going to have time to get to? That's such a downer. I've tried the list route. I end up writing lists on top of lists or I continue adding to my list until the items left to do are three pages apart and I need to move items to a fresh list which brings me to the moment that I feel like I am spending more time staying organized than actually doing the things that need to get done. All this list-making builds and stacks on itself (quite literally) until there's an explosion and list after list floats down around me on the currents of chaos.
Rather than fretting about lost or unorganized lists, I just start over with a fresh list of things that need to be finished. I am well aware that some items may be dropped and never returned to the list, but I figure that is the universe's way of letting me know that a little bit of chaos is a good thing.
_ Laundry piles up, dishes go unwashed, dust collects on the picture frames, toilets need scrubbing, etc. A domestic goddess I am not, but I have a hard time moving into my creative place when all these things are out of sorts. One or two, even three messy items if they are well hidden, is all right. I can handle small doses of chaos.
“Set yourself a schedule,” you may suggest. That seems like the best answer, doesn't it? Here's part of the problem. Schedules are very hard for me to keep. I don't mean forgetting a hair appointment or even a dental appointment. I mean an hour to hour type of schedule. A time management type of deal. When I finally get focused, I don't want to stop to fix a meal or let the kids out of their cages.
Although I'm not one to wait for inspiration, a quiet mind is essential for me to easily enter my mental creative place, and that's a rare occasion. I usually have to work my way into creativity - butt in chair, etc. and when my entire world is tilted, I can't get my special door open. I can write and write and write and the rest of my world falls into disarray. Then it hits. The spheres of domestic chaos converge and I can't move back and forth between my creative plane and my everyday life; it becomes easy for me to get side-tracked and lose focus on the task at hand.
At that point, I can't focus on the writing. I spend the next number of days doing the laundry which of course turns into needing to purge and organize shelves either in the laundry room or in a closet. Dirty dishes expose the need to wipe out cabinets and drawers. Or a quick dusting job throughout the house turns into washing floor boards and corners. Although for some reason, I don't feel the need to scrub any more than absolutely necessary on the toilets.
But once things are clean again or “airy” as that is how it feels, I can take a deep breath and begin working on characters, plot, scene development, etc. I wish I were the type of person who could do a little each day and therefore be able to almost continuously work on my writing, but I guess that's not in my personality. So the best thing I can do at this point, is embrace my faults and somehow turn them into positives. Of course, the problem is putting that theory into action.
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