GRADUATION!!!!!
It's official! We had our public access test this morning, went back to 4 paws this afternoon and went over the paperwork, etc... and then......graduation!!!! Hooray! The staff had a "ceremony" for the kids and the dogs graduating from the program with cake and all the fixins'!!!
Blitzen is definitely checking out the "new" house. Poor guy was just adjusting to being at the hotel!! He very quickly layed with Hannah in her bed as they rested. Now he is happy on his mat watching us.
We will go get our pets out of the kennel tomorrow and introduce them to Blitzen. Then we plan on going to the bus garage at school to show Blitzen what the big yellow bus looks like!!! Saturday we are going to the school to introduce it to him without any kids in it. We will show him her classrooms, cafeteria, etc.... Hopefully, he will go to school with her on Monday. It is hard to do seizure work if he isn't with her!!!
It still seems surreal that we are actually home with him. A year long process came down to bringing him home today!!!! He is an amazing dog. Even some of the staff were crying to see Blitzen go. It must be very gratifying for the staff, but sad at the same time.
By the way, we found out why Blitzen's litter all had Christmas names....His mother was at the humane society and scheduled to be euthanized on Christmas eve. The 4 Paws staff couldn't stand the thought of that so they brought her and the puppies to the center. 4 of her puppies are now service dogs!!!!! Amazing to think about.....
How this journey started....
Hannah was born prematurely at 34 weeks gestation. She was a relatively healthy preemie; initially having difficulty maintaining body temperature and needing to grow. She weighed 4 pounds 9 ounces at birth. When she was four months old she began to drool, non stop. We were told the first year she was "teething." At 18 months old, we really started searching for reasons of why her shirt was always soaking wet. We saw various specialists who always sent us to another specialist, saying "everything looks okay." She spent years in oral motor/feeding therapy to help her not to drool. It wasn't until she was four years old and in preschool that we started to get some answers. Her preschool teacher commented one day that she wasn't reponding when her name was called. I took this information to her pediatrician who then orderd an EEG, "just to rule it out." Much to our shock and amazement, the results showed, she was having seizures. That is the day our journey REALLY began. Once she began taking seizure medication the drooling almost stopped completely. (She will still drool to this day when she is having seizure activity). Since then, it has been a roller coaster; countless medications and medication changes. She has never really reponded well to any medication.
About two years after she was diagnosed with epilepsy, the doctors noticed that her blood pressure was running high. After many tests, she was diagnosed with hypertension. We still are not sure why, but her cardiologist feels her blood vessels are thicker than normal.
About this same time, we also began looking into why Hannah was such a horrible sleeper. She would thrash, talk, move every which way, during her sleep. The sleep studies revealed that she has alveolar hypoventilation sydrome, which means she has too much carbon dioxide in her system when she sleeps. To help this, she wears a BI-PAP at night. This has been monumental in giving her more effective and quality of sleep.
Every day is a challenge for Hannah and our family as a whole. Blitzen has been an absolutely wonderful addition. She calms herself sometimes just by petting and loving on him. He has been trained in behavior disruptions and will sometimes be able to stop a meltdown from getting out of control.
It has been extra hard on the whole family since daddy is deployed to Iraq. He has been gone since January 09 and will gone until Jan 2010. We get to talk with him by phone and on the web cam; which is nice, but not the same!! Blitzen has helped to make his absence go just a little smoother....
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