When man and dog team up...

Many of my readers know that I have permanent disabilities and permanent and chronic health problems. I was told life could never get better and I just had to learn to live with it. Accept it.

More chronic health issues develope every year that I laugh and say, 'Just tack it to my list.' I use humour and positivity as much as possible and I call it fighting the dragon. When the dragon comes and attacks and batters and bashes my mind and body, I fight back as hard as possible, but the dragon leaves me in a battered heap.

Sometimes I stay in this heap mentally and physically, so exhausted that I feel like I will never regain my strength again, but I've gone through it so many times that I know they day will finally come that I will be able to come above my disabilities and health problems and not let them control me.

There used to be a website that was dedicated to a person who lost his battle with the dragon and finally out of desperation took his own life. My faith in God doesn't allow me to get to that point, but instead makes me stronger. The poem was called The Dragon Grins and I wish I could find it once again.

My writing this is not for you to take pity on me. That's one thing I DON'T want is pity. Understanding yes, but pity NO!

The reason I am even writing about this, is because I just do not have the words to express how much my life revolves around Shasta and how she gave me new advantages and independence in life so incredibly that that I have proved all the doctors wrong.

It's true the problems I have are chronic, but because of a puppy American Pit Bull Terrier, she has shown me how to live in the most rewarding way ever. I'm no longer a prisoner in my apartment and relying on friends for my every needs. No longer am I issolated with my fear of strangers. No longer am I limited to walk only as far as a friends car in pain walking to the parking lot, if I were even able to walk that far filled with anxiety even with a friend. That wasn't living, that was surviving from day to day, but the day this tiny little pup came into my life, my life changed more than anyone could imagine and each day taught me more and more. She is my LIFE! She is my best friend, my life line, my physician, my therapist, my courage and confidence. She is all the things that my body or health won't permit and above all, she is my gaurdian angel that each day is a blessing to me.

Yet, as I write, I find I still can not express all that she means to me and her to I. They say dogs are dogs and don't think like people. While this is true, it doesn't mean thy aren't smart and can learn on their own. I never taught her to wake me when I'm in a flare and sleeping through my medication times. Instead she gently nudges me with her nose softly to wake me up and sure enough, she's so close to the right time to me needing my meds.

I never taught her to alert me for attacks, or if in them how to bring me out of them. She found a way that works for both of us. She tried to alert my girlfriend before she was diagnosed with cancer 2 months later. I wake up to her constant licking when I get bit by a spider bite that swells my tongue and narrows my throat.

But I came across a video that explains more of the bond and oneness that a human/dog team that brought tears to my eyes as it reminded me so much of Shasta and I.

Please watch Skidboot and understand just a little bit more how teams work together.