Sawyer and Service Dogs

I know a family that has a four year old boy that can not walk named Sawyer. Sawyer has a disability called CP Cerebral Palsy that holds him back physically. He has the ability to speak, but at four years old and seeing his older sister run a round for his whole life, he has a yearning to be as physically capable as the children around his age. He has recently been offered an amazing gift that would change the course of his life forever. A 40 grand gift to be exact, called a service dog.

With the dog comes a best friend, a family member, and an inspiration that would turn him into “the kid that has a cool dog” instead of “the kid that has a wheelchair.” Dogs have a way of understanding the human mind better than we ourselves do. They decode every emotion we let off, every movement we take, every signal our brains let off and react accordingly. Dogs know when we are sad before we even shed a tear. Dogs can pick up signals of stress and anger. They can even detect a health problem in a human before the human them self.

I own a 8 year old, purebred but unpapered, golden retriever. She is my best friend above all. Until about two years ago she was just the typical dog that knows basic commands such as sit and stay. I then developed an interest in horse jumping and not owning a horse or knowing where to take lessons, I trained my dog to jump instead. Over the course of two years-worth of training, she’ll jump three foot with only a flick of my hand as a cue. No treats to bribe her. No leash to force her. Only trust and an amazing relationship between dog and human. The most amazing concept about it in my eyes, is that I know she would do just about anything I asked her to do. I know for fact, that she would jump on three legs if I asked her to.

There was a time that I wasn’t doing too well. I found myself feeling that almost everyone that I loved and cared for was leaving. I was separated from seven people both permanently and temporarily. I began to develop what I like to call a condition of separation anxiety that affected me in extreme ways. I had a migraine from every other week to once a week for about two months. I would have near-sleepless nights where I would just sit there, rocking myself back and forth crying unstoppably. I truly believe that what made me hold on the most, was the relationship I had with my dog. The reality of how much my existence meant to her, made me feel all that much more loved. She may only be a small part of my life, one being out of the thousands that I’ll meet, but to her, my dad and I are her entire life.

When I was only seven or eight years old, I jumped in the way of a trailer that was about to run over my dog. This was before I had even had her for a very long time, before a relationship as strong as the one we has now was formed. And I risked my life without thinking twice to save that of my dog’s. Even though neither of us were hurt, it wasn’t the most “fun” experience for me. It traumatized me, but I would do it again.

The family that I was talking about earlier is still considering whether or not they should take the responsibility of a service dog. It is a lot of work to own a dog and just in general they are a large responsibility but a service dog is much more. Wherever you go with your special needs child, the dog goes too. There’s no leaving the dog home or taking him to doggy-daycare. He or she has to be with you 24/7. I understand why they would see this as a problem, but they have already made the decision to take on a special needs child (they did not panic and put him into the adoption system like some people would) they made the life long commitment to keeping him happy and to provide all he will ever need. So in my opinion, why not excel in that commitment, make their son’s life change in ways that nothing else besides a dog would be able to do. When Sawyer goes through a rough patch, which like any kid, he most definitely will, he may not know how to communicate it to his parents. But this dog would be able to register what was happening without Sawyer even trying to tell him or her. I know very well how it feels, to have somebody care more about me than themselves, and I can only hope that my dog knows how much I love her. I love her like I love my mom and dad. I love her more than my life itself. I love her in a way I will never love anyone else. And this love is life saving. This love keeps me breathing. This love drives me safely through the hell that our world can cause. This love keeps my feet on the ground. This love is invincible, it would keep any kid, in any condition, a happy one, guaranteed. This love is better than any human love will ever be. This love is a love I will always chose before any other. This love, is a dog’s love.

This photo was taken by me in Moab, September of 2015.

Work Smart, Not Hard

“Work smart, not hard” is my dad’s favorite thing to say to me aside from “I’m going to be cleaning my guns when you bring a boy to this house.” Well I’ve been applying that quote of his (the first one) to my future. Working smart, career wise, would be getting a well paid job. But I have not yet found a job that brings money in with ease and would make me genuinely happy to do. I do know what job I want. I want to train and professionally compete horse. But the money that goes into that and the money that comes out, aren’t compatible.

So I will have to make a decision between worrying about the bills or not being completely satisfied all of the time. Or I could marry rich, but I can’t count on that. What I have come down to is that my job needs to have something to do with animals. Every one always says “Then be a vet” to that, but I don’t think that would necessarily be my ideal job either.


When is school going to teach me to balance my happiness and my success? When is school going to teach me anything significant to my life ahead? When is school going to stop asking me "What would be your ideal job?" and start telling me what different jobs are out there?

What I want most in life is to find and thrive in my happy place. But my happy place is too expensive for me to not have to stress about bills. And the second thing I want most in life, is to not stress about bills. The only way I am finding that I could possibly pull off both is if I found a well paying job, probably not animal included, and then train and compete in my free time. And still have time for a family and sleeping and eating.

Why does happiness seem so hard to find in this world? Why am I fourteen and already stressing about my adulthood?

Sorry for ranting but I feel the need to express what’s going through my head right now.

 Photo courtesy to Annika Amilie

What's Wrong With The World?

Though Earth is only one in an infinite amount of planets out there, it’s the only one we know of that can host the survival of creatures like ourselves. But people seem to think that the world is the same thing as the Earth and that the world is what is wrong with us.

world |wərld|
1 (usu. the world) the earth, together with all of its countries, peoples, and natural features: he was doing his bit to save the world.
(the world) all of the people, societies, and institutions on the earth: [ as modifier ] : world affairs.

“All of the people, societies, and institutions on the earth” the world is not what’s wrong with us, we are what’s wrong with the world. We our very selves, are the world. We are the world as we know it, living our day-to-day lives on the Earth. We are not the Earth, we are the things ruining the Earth. And in doing this, we are ruining the homestead of our world. So when it comes down to it, we are ruining, destroying, ourselves.

Now, I am not proposing a solution. I do not believe that there is a solution. For every star that there is in space, there is a solution to this problem. The most simple one would be to kill off every single human being on this planet, but that’s not the most self-satisfying one. The problem is, every single human on this planet would have to contribute in their own ways, and that is just not going to happen. I have absolutely no faith that that many people would care. Hell, I don’t even care enough to do something. I have ideas of things I could do, but I have no time to do them. Even if I did have time, I’m too lazy. This is the problem for most others in this topic too. I know I’m not alone. No matter how many commercials, seminars, ads on billboards, and etc. I see, I will probably never decide to actually go and make a change. I hate myself for it, but it’s true.

That right there is the problem with the world. The fact that we are too caught up in our own lives to even think twice about going out and cleaning up our societies. We are the problem. We are the heart and soul of our own disastrous world. We are the reasoning for the tears we cry. We are the reasoning for depression. We are the reason for suicide. We are the reason for rape. And what are we going to do about it? We are going to put our heads down and act like nothing has ever been any better.

Photo courtesy to: Athenaeum

The Plain Out, Uncultured Truth of Why School Sucks

Adults seem to have this twisted view of why exactly their kids complain 24/7 about school. “Oh, she just dislikes school because of the homework” or “He doesn’t like school because he’d rather be gaming than learning.” This is not the case for many of these students.

School is cringed upon not because it takes effort or because we have to do home work at night. Kids actually want to learn. They want to have something to do. They want to have something to get better at. School is shamed upon by them because of the way it is set up. The way it is scored. The way it is taught. The way it is shoved into our brains as hastily as a toddler pokes the buttons on a remote. School is hated for its standards.

Standards are set by highly educated, fully matured, adults. The problem? These standards are for kids, not adults. So take the standards crafted by highly educated, fully matured, adults and add these to parent standards. Do a sport, be smart, be successful, do your chores, go to bed at a decent time, and have a social life. And then add the sum of highly educated, fully matured, adult standards and parent standards to sport standards. Sport standards differ due to what sport the child pursues but by high school it’s typically this: two to five hours of your sport at least two to five times during the school week, do well in competitions, condition at home, get good grades in school or we’ll kick you out. Oh, and have fun! If that doesn’t seem hard to you then great! Because there’s one last thing that everyone seems to forget about. Ready for it? Us students have standards for ourselves. Wow! Who would have thought? We have goals? Yes, we all have goals. I have goals, ones that are just as important to me, if not more important, than school standards. WHAT?!
Nope, nope, nope.
That’s not allowed.

School is more important than the way I view myself.

School is more important than what I want for myself.

School is more important than my happiness.

School standards, the standards made by people I don't even know for me and the other 1.436 billion students in the world are more important than my self-standards.

Strangers are deciding the path of my life.

And that’s the plain out, uncultured truth. Strangers rule me. Strangers tell me what to do everyday. Strangers tell me to shut up, glue my eyes to a white board for eight hours, and complete what wasn’t finished in the previous eight hours at home. Strangers tell me to not care about what other people think. And then they tell me to care more about what they want for me than what I want for me.

This is what parents don't get to see. This is what we are told to obey. This is school.

Photo courtesy: Friendship Circle

Stress Pt. 1 (6 Tests, One Day)

Okay, let’s talk about stress. I don’t mind small amounts of stress, in fact, I think that small amounts of stress are good. I would actually rather have minimal amounts of stress than no stress at all, stress keeps me from falling over in life in some ways, but in others it causes me to want to fall over and stay there.

I had six tests today. Six. SIX (please notice the amount of emphasis there.) Let’s go back in time for a moment. Two days ago, October 20th, I began to come down with a cold, I felt dead, literally, and it was the worst cold I have ever gotten in my fourteen years of life. That night knowing that I had a math final and a Spanish exam the next day, went to bed at eight o’ clock, with minimal study hours and my homework unfinished. When I went to bed I began to get a stomach ache. It got so bad to the point that I was physically shaking in bed, teeth chattering, and tears close to shedding. This kind of stomach ache had happened to me once before, we are not ascertain of the cause but it usually lasts twenty-four hours. The next day I typically am unable to walk and it is hard for me to straighten out my abdomen without an abundance of pain. ‘I’m screwed’ I thought to myself while lying in bed probably about five hours later, still wide awake. I got probably around three hours of light sleep that night and my mother didn’t even bother to wake me up at the usual 5:40 AM. That means from 8:00 PM to around 9:00 AM, I spent ten hours miserably in bed out of breath from shaking so hard. The next day, I was on the phone with my dad and he suggested that it might be caused from stress. And he must be right, there’s my little frenemy visiting me once again…

So I stayed home with my favorite reality TV show, Heartland, playing in the background (I was not watching it, I just played it in the background so that I didn’t feel so alone, okay) and studying for all of the tests I would be participating in the next day. First I did some math, then some geography, then back to math to switch it up and keep my ill brain from losing focus. By the time I had finished studying for math, I got a text from a group conversation named “The Hood *insert eggplant emoji here*” which read “I failed the math test” and I immediately started panicking again. Some one who I view as vert good at math is saying that she did extremely badly on the math test which is 100 points in the grade book.

So when my mom gets home I make plans to go to my dad’s house so that I can get extra practice for this apparently really hard math test that everyone I’m talking to is high Cs to low Bs on. I was planning on going to Dimple Dell for a nice trail ride on Cadenza, but little did I know that I was going to have to stay after school to make up a spanish and math exam and won’t even have time for a regular lesson afterwards. Riding is usually my time to unwind and get rid of some stress, but I wasn't even going to be able to have a moment of that. So I’m stressed as all get out is my point, and it’s not healthy. This was pt. 1 of my “stress stories” so stay tuned to that label.

Photo Courtesy to: Free Big Photos

I (Don't) Love You

“I love you,” an abused, but powerful statement. To love something is to have a deep understanding and bond for another. You do not love a friend that you hardly see, you do not love a waffle, you do not love a pair of freaking shoes. Okay?

The word love is supposed to find a point in your emotions and make them somersault, cringe even. My lungs feel as if they had caught fire when I hear it. You should not be able to roll the term off of your tongue as if it’s something you’ve recited thousands of times. “I love you” is to your family when you are leaving the house in the morning. You don’t know if you will ever see them again. Your mom or dad could die in a car crash on the way to work, and the last thing you said to them would either be a phrase you use when passing sort-of-friends in the hall, or something special, something you only use for the people that actually make a daily impact on your life.

When I was five or so my mom used to ask me to give her hugs and kisses or say “I love you” all of the time. And I remember if I had already kissed her once or twice that day, I would say “I’m all out of kisses for today mama.” She would tell me that nobody ever runs out of kisses, hugs, and I love you’s, but recently I realized that I was quite smart for a five year old. Though it’s true that you will never run out of those three things, the meaning in them will dim. Eventually a hug won’t be warm and enlightening, it will just be yet another time that a person wrapped their arms around you, and a kiss will just be considered nothing serious, and “I love you” will just be a threesome of words thrown around to whomever you please.

Don’t say “I love you” to someone that you do not love. “I love you” is a beautiful term, created with intention of a unique essence that you only feel with certain things. In my school, countless people have said “Ashtyn, I love you” to me, people that I barely know, people that I only consider as acquaintances. And what do I do? I freak out, full on flip out. I have anxiety from it, one time I almost started crying. You may think I am insane for that, obviously they were just kidding around. But that’s exactly the point. There are people in my life, that I will not directly name in this blog, that I say “I love you” to, I say it with meaning and whole heartedness, and I don’t get it back sometimes. A person that I have so much respect for, so much affection, so much love for, ran out of “Ashtyn, I love you’s” but some random person in class hasn’t? If you don’t love a person don’t say it. Because otherwise they will find themselves constantly thinking, ‘you said you loved me.’

Photo courtesy: Weddings

The Deer & The Fox

Just because I am vulnerable, doesn’t mean that you aren’t weak in my gaze.
Just because I am hurt, doesn’t mean it is any safer to walk on my grounds.
Just because I am drowning, doesn’t mean you can evade my blaze.
Just because I am broken, doesn’t mean I am untouchable.
   
But don’t expect my trust to come as easy as a walk in the park.
And don’t complain when my edges get too sharp.

Because, I may be the deer and you may be the fox.
But, that doesn’t make me any less dangerous.

Because, I may be wounded from all of your games.
But, that doesn’t mean I can’t cause you the same amount of pain.

Because, I may be the shards of broken glass on the floor,
But, beware because one false step and you’ll be spending a lifetime,
picking out the shrapnels that I left behind.

-The Deer & The Fox, a poem I wrote sometime last year

Feeling Vulnerable,

This is reality. We are a constant cycle from deer to fox, you will never stay in one roll. Sometimes it’s a matter of years before you cycle to the next vulnerability rating, sometimes it’s only a matter of who you are associating with. And for me, it is only from bonds formed without a word spoken, that I am ever the fox.

But neither role is easy. In being the deer, you must learn to accept the role of a follower, the role of being in constant danger and still holding ground. You must learn to dance in a relationship where you are of the lesser. And in the meantime, be okay, be emotionally stable, with all of this. Well do that or have nights where you cry while rocking yourself back and forth. But don’t worry honey, that stage doesn’t last for long. After time, you learn to have tears without crying. After time, you will not be sad, or happy, or angry, you will be emotionless about the hell that you go through. Unless being the deer isn't hell, but we’ll get to that later.

Now you are a fox, you may not even know it. That’s the way most of them are. In the art of being a fox in a community of deer you learn that if you take advantage of your power, you will find yourself with a limited amount of people left in your life. In acting this way the only thing holding on to the left over people is an intangible, emotion driven source that nor you or the deer can touch. But if you are the fox and you take as cautious steps as the deer, maybe, just maybe, you will keep all of the people important in your life. And after time, the deer will still graze from a sunlit meadow and you will keep a stable amount of happiness. But, beware because one false step and you’ll be spending a lifetime, picking out the shrapnels that they left behind.

 

photo credits to A Lovely Lark

FOREWORD (the birth of this blog)

This blog was born thanks to Mr. Parker, my 9th grade honors English teacher, who assigned us to create a blog as our year round project. We were instructed to make a creative title, an About Me page, and a first post, or “Blog Assignment 1” that has to be 500 words for full credit. Not sure how I am supposed to have 500 words per post but I guess we’ll try. So far I’ve made a title, Classy Calico, and an About Me page, but the 500 word “Blog Assignment 1” is being quite a struggle. Also, before you judge my blog title like a normal human being would, let me explain. Calico cats are a breed of cat that only produces the under-credited females, and because I am a feminist that has a deep affection for animals, I decided that it fit.

I am very excited about writing this blog but slightly nervous that I will mess up. I will have a for sure schedule for Moral Monday's and Trump Tuesdays, but otherwise I will post at random if I have something to rant about. I will try my very best to post on those days although I do have a jumping lesson with my horse, Cadenza, on Tuesdays so I am not positive I will be able to make every one. My schedule will get even more chaotic in the winter time because I will be needing to get out to a place far far away from my house where I will be boarding Cadenza. Chances are I will also be occasionally training a gelding for my trainer to do small hunter and jumper courses so that we are at a lesser lack of horses (plus I’ll be getting more experience for myself.)

 If you were wondering what Trump Tuesdays are here’s a small explanation. Trump Tuesdays are going to be where I talk about everything in the world that sucks equally as much as Trump, Trump himself, and even things that are worst than Donald Trump… if that’s even possible. Moral Mondays are the opposite, they will be the day that I post good things that are going on in the world, things to make you happy on the worst day of the week. Who couldn’t use a nice update on great things happening in the world on a Monday morning to make your day start a little better?

My goal will be to make your Mondays a little better, and well I guess make you Tuesdays a little worse… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If I for some reason can not post I will try to get one of my better friends to log on for me and paste in the post. I don't think I'll have too much trouble finding things to post on my Trump Tuesdays because quite frankly, I have a list of all of the things that I hate that is longer than the school year. All in all, I hope that you'll get a few laughs and maybe even a few tears out of my blog. Perhaps you might even scream at your family at the dinner table after reading Trump Tuesday or one of my rants that anger you just that much. Thanks for reading!

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