Friday, October 28, 2011

We Love CT Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services ...

And they've asked us to do another in-service training in their NW Region. We'll be talking to their staff on November 17 about the rights of their clients/consumers to Emotional Support Animals (pets) in no-pets housing without deposit or fee and about Psychiatric Service Dogs.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Maeve's Friend Indeed

Today was the one day out of 100 I absolutely need Maeve with me in the woods.
This is day two of a migraine. As expected, the pain and nausea were significantly less than day one's.
What was not as expected were the more unusual neurological symptoms. We were two and a half miles into a four and a half mile hike when I realized I shouldn't have gone into the woods.
Maeve handled it like the pro she is. She slowed her pace and led me down the trail. She trotted back to touch me periodically, which helped me ground myself and focus on the trail. Without her I would have been likely to walk off the trail or take a wrong turn.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Maeve Goes Walkabout

Maeve really earned her kibble today. This week has been hard. The new Maevemobile has been delivered to Freightliner, but they've had some difficulty doing their alterations. This means we're stuck camping in our minivan for a longer time. We had to come back to Connecticut from a beautiful weekend at the beach in Rhode Island a day early to make decisions about the work on the Maevemobile. The last two days in Rhode Island I had a migraine. Yesterday we went back to camping in Rhode Island, but it rained heavily again and again. This morning I woke with another migraine. I'm also fighting a swing into depression and I'd slept almost 12 hours--both a sign and an amplifier of bipolar depression..

Maeve decided we needed fun. She started lobbying me as I made my morning coffee.  First she came up and leaned on me to get some affection. Then she kept pawning my knee (which is how she tells me she needs something). I tried taking her for a short walk so she could poop, but she was having none of it. She jumped, twirled, bit the leash, and started to growl and "attack" me.  This is her way of saying, "No, stupid Joanne. We need POODLE FUN!"

I made her wait while I had a second coffee to help tame the migraine. I put on my pack and we headed out to the Walkabout Trail that begins and ends at the George Washington campground in Rhode Island.. While the CCC worked in this campground during the Great Depression, we were going to benefit from the work of idle foreigners. The Walkabout Trail was built in 1965 by a shipload of Australian sailors who were waiting for their new vessel. It's a 6-mile circle trail, but has several trails that cut through it to allow shorter circuit hikes. I fully intended to use one of these trails to shorten our hike, but Maeve "talked" me out of it. We did the whole circuit.  There were almost no hills, but we had to hike through several swamps where the trail was flooded due to all the rain we've had.

I'm physically tired and my hips are aching, but as a result of our "Walkabout" I had the energy to cook my favorite dinner and to write this post  tonight. Thank you Maeve!