A New Addition

This is Mac  a grey and white Newfoundland that I am training as a therapy and service dog. It is my hope to use him to bring more joy to the participants of the friendship club that is run by my church. This is a group of special needs adults that meets for fun and fellowship through the church I attend.  He is also being trained as a service dog . His journey with us began when we picked him out at the age of 5 weeks and he returned home with us at the age of ten weeks old. He is very lively and intelligent and I have high  hopes for him. My husband and I are so grateful that the Lord let us have this bundle of joy to bless others. Here are some pictures of our new addition.

 

On Vacation

Hi Riley here my mom told me we are on something called vacation. I don’t really know what it is all about but after today I think I am going to like it. She got up a 6:15 am to let us out and she let me run with my best friend chase than she brought us in for breakfast boy it was good. I guess my mom was still tired because she fell asleep on the couch. I wasn’t worried because my belly was filled so I had a nap too. Than Dad came down and woke mom up and she went back to bed for a while but after a few hours I heard her walking around upstairs and I was calling to her in my loudest bark to let her know I was ready to go out with her. After a while my mom came back down I told her very loudly that I was ready to go anywhere. She always tell me to be quiet but I know she loves my ROO ROO bark I do it just for her because we are like Peas and Carrots we just go together. Finally mom was ready and we went for a drive in the country. I had my nose out the window and I could smell the lake, grass trees,cows and the swamp. I love the swamp. Than we stopped for lunch at something call a chip wagon I had no idea what it was but it smell so good I put my head out the roof of the car to get a better smell of the food coming out of that truck with wheels. My mom said I could have some treat cause I we were on vacation. I had some fries and she gave a taste of her back bacon on a bun and I loved that and she let me lick on the ice cream bowl as a treat. I was so happy. Well I have to catch up on my sleep so I will be able to do more vacationing with my mom! Oh I almost forgot there were some other people there at the picnic tables and they got out there cameras when I had my head out the sunroof while waiting for lunch to come. They took my picture and said they were going to put my picture on instagram does that make me famous? Anyway I have to go rest tomorrow because my mom says tommorow is vacation day as well and I want to be well rested so I can love every minute of it lol.

I Think We’ve Found A Home

We finally found a dog friendly church that makes me feel relaxed about working with Riley. I used to be so uptight that she would make a mistake she would start alerting the second we walked in to church . We have been going to this church for a while and Riley is now so relaxed she will lay down on her side and flake out during the sermon. When we went to church this morning I was not feeling good and several times last night Riley kept getting on the bed to snuggle with me because I was in so much pain. Every time I drifted off she would get down and when the pain woke me up she would get back into bed with me.When we walked into church this morning I was standing up and singing Riley alerted and I ignored her but then she sat back on her haunches wrapped her to big furry paws around my arm and pulled me to a sit. This is an urgent alert by her that I might get dizzy and fall. I sat down for a few minutes than stood up for a song and this time she let me but when the sermon started she alerted again and that’s when those weird pains in my head started again she climbed into my lap and hugged me for a while and they start to go away. When she got down  she insisted in laying in front of me where she could see my face. Later in the sermon I felt comfortable enough to answered an alter call. Which means they invite anyone to come  up to the front of the church to be prayed over and anointed with oil (me not the dog) I was feeling comfortable enough to go to the front with Riley and while they were praying over me Riley decide to go behind me and climb up on the pew and sit with her back against mine looking out over the congregation while I was facing forward. I could not move because we were praying in a circle and holding hands. To be fair to Riley we have been working on block and cover. And cover is when Riley walks behind me and sits behind my legs so no one can get near my body. Normally when we do this there is space behind my legs to come behind me but this time the back of my legs were against the pew so Riley thought in her own mind that she should just get up and walk along the pew until she could sit right behind me. Now she is supposed to wait until I give her the command but there was a lot of people up at the front with me and I guess Riley felt compelled to protect my back because she knew I was sore But I would have prefered her not to use the front pew as a seat. When the pastor finished praising God everyone said Amen and Riley gave her best happy bark and the whole congregation cracked up. Later they all praised her for saying Amen at the end of the service. It’s so nice to be at a church that just laughs and take it in stride when your service dog makes a  big mistake lol. Thank goodness there was no one sitting in the front pew lol.

 

 

 

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Finding a new beginning

I know it has been quite awhile since I have blogged partly from being busy and partly from being  really discouraged. I think only someone who has dealt with chronic illness can understand how I have been feeling over the last  four months.

I have taken a break from my family which is really a painful thing to do but it seems I upset them by just being me. My sister and my father have admitted to me that they resent the way my illness had interrupted their lives when I was younger and they  no longer want to be inconvenienced  by me any longer. As my father so aptly put it was the only relationship he wanted with me is a casual visit once or twice a year. Despite hearing this I did still tried to keep the relationships going untill I found out they were no longer inviting me to birthdays because my work schedule made it to inconvenient for them to include me

I was shocked to hear this confession but what can I do I can’t change the way I am .

My church family was upset with me because they were all into faith healing and they were angry with me because I could not be healed. They started telling me I was full of sin and that’s why I could not be healed not even the pastor would come to see me in the hospital even though he visited others when they were sick. When my doctor prescribed a service dog for me the pastor refused to let me bring her even though there was another person in the church with a service dog.

Since that experience It has been hard to find another church that I feel comfortable in. I still believed in Jesus Christ but I am not so sure about his church . It seems that I am losing faith in my fellow-man but at least I still had my husband who I love and my service dog. I was once an outgoing person who loved God and the church but I have been so ravaged by poor health and unkind people that I have little desire to go back to the outside world and interact with people again. I think what has hurt me the most is how angry people are that I can’t live up to their expectations no matter how hard I try . And to tell you the truth I am sick of trying.

We have finally found another church that is very accepting of my service dog so I will attend and see how it goes. One good thing about having Riley as my service dog is at least when people approach me they focus on the dog and not me which makes conversation a bit easier.

When I was sick the drugs I was on made me gain a ton of weight which really changed the way I looked and I could not believe how badly my fellow church family handled it. Even when I explained to them I was not gaining weight because of what I was eating some people still would not believe it. I even had one person come up to me and say I am praying for you to change your eating habits. I was so embarrassed. I felt so bad about the weight that I stopped looking in mirrors and when I approached people I knew I could actually see the shocked look on their faces so I stopped looking up and just kept my head down when people walked by.

Now when I go out Riley helps me to walk but she also is helping to heal another deeper wound. I had lost all confidence in myself and interacting with others had become hard. Now when I am with Riley people are happy to see her and they smile which makes life a little bit easier for me.

This is a picture of me after finishing off  a final round of steroids and it will give you a bit of an idea of how swollen my face  was although when this picture was taken a lot of the swelling had already gone down. The red little dots you see under me eyes at the top of my cheeks is blistering rosacea which I developed and still have from coming off the steroids. They are painful little sores that can itch and bleed though the cream they gave me does make it better.

The next picture of me is with Riley near Christmas. Even though I am finished the drugs the weight is very slow in coming down and because walking is so painful and I am having trouble breathing exercise is very hard but with Riley I am trying ! Together we are starting over, a new beginning if you will. One in which I hope to learn to love myself and focus only on pleasing God and not worrying so much about what others think of me. And with God’s help this might lead to a new kind of peace for me and a new way of life.