Max and Brody

As some of you know, Max isn't the only dog we have.  We also have our family pets that we adore and rescued from a shelter in Kansas about 4 1/2 years ago when they were only 7 weeks old.  They are wonderful dogs and they adore the kids.  Brody James is our big boy ~ there's just something a little extra special about him.  When he was a baby, he always reminded us of a polar bear prince:)  Not that Cooper Todd or Felicity Hope aren't special too; they are of course, but Brody has just always been more engaged and attatched to the girls.

Well, it's always been our desire for Max William to work in with our other dogs but we realized early on that Cooper just would not ever accept him.  And, not wanting to have any problems that would interfere with Max's development or his education and training for his service duties, we just really put this desire on the back burner.  I've always felt confident however, that Brody and Max could be worked in together and end up being good friends.  Several months ago, our trainer helped us introduce them and gave me a little confidence in how to handle the situation.  I've decided that now is the time to really work at fostering the relationship between my two boys and I'm pleasantly surprised at how well they are getting along.

Yesterday, I needed to walk both of them and decided to recruit some help so that they could take a walk together.  Eventually, I think that I'll be able to put them on a double lead and walk them together myself; but, these are two very big boys and there's just no way I felt confident enough to try that yesterday.  If they decided to go in two different directions, I would have had a problem;)  They did AWESOME!!!!!  Max totally loved having a buddy along and Brody showed great patience with his younger buddy's curiosity.  After we finished our walk and returned home, I let them play in the backyard together.  They both showed their manners and did really well.  They even decided to curl up together for a little R&R in the dog house:)  I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship and am thrilled that Max can have the companionship of another dog.

On a side note: Max has always been a vocal dog.  He voices his opion all the time.  I realized yesterday that he really does think he's conversing with us and that he actually "speaks" in full sentences;)  Yes, my boy cracks me up and makes me laugh all the time:)

Vacation Bible School

I'm getting brave... I decided that the benefit of having Max William along during VBS this week, outweighed the inconvenience.  You see, I'm volunteering for snacks which means that Max is part of the snack crew too.  Thankfully, he's pretty darn good about paying attention to me and what I'm doing since I tie his leash to my belt loop on my jeans for the three hours I'm there.  That said, he is a chow hound so a week on snack crew is a big challenge for him to get over.  400 kids dropping bits of food on the floor can be hard to pass up for a 10 month old puppy.  Oh, and it can be positively too tempting when I sweep up at the end of the day and he is tagging along behind the broom.  All in all, I have to say that he did really well today.  He even alerted to Gracie's high blood sugars 3 times during the morning while she was upstairs doing her VBS thing and he was down on snack crew with me:)

Celebrating Gracie and Max

Song: Angel By My Side by Francesca Battistelli

The little mommy

Gracie LOVES her dolls. She is an amazing little mommy and takes care of her babies as tho they are real babies. Here's a few pictures of her boys this morning:)

Drum Roll Please....

The results are in and once again, thanks to Max William, Gracie's A1c has shown amazing improvements.  She got an 8.3.... unbelievable!  Just think, this child has always been between 10-13.1 since her diagnosis and now, thanks to Max William, she is right where she is suppose to be:)

A1c is the blood test done on diabetics every 3 months to find out how well controlled they are.  It measures the amount of glucose in a diabetic's system for the prior 2-3 months.  For a child Gracie's age, they want to see them in the low 8's like she is right now.  By gaining good control of her blood sugar on a daily basis, we can help to prevent the long term, life threatening side effects of diabetes such as heart disease, blindness, etc.  With Max's help we are giving Gracie a healthy life now and a hope of a long, healthy future as well.

Before Max arrived, we tested Gracie every two hours around the clock, but we knew we were missing a lot that was going on in her body in between these checks.  Now, Max lets us know when something is going on ~ by testing with him rather than a clock, we are more effective at keeping Gracie in her healthy range.  Without Max, Gracie would drop dangerously low with no warning and many times so quickly there'd be no visible symptoms.  She doesn't always feel her lows either.  Max, however, let's us know when she's headed down and we can prevent her from crashing.  He also helps us keep her from skyrocketing too, which is vitally important to warding off those long term effects down the road when she is an adult.

Max is a HERO and he saves his girls life every single day.  Insulin isn't a cure; it's Gracie's life support.  Without insulin, Gracie would die.  Max is her guardian angel, watching over her and making sure that she stays well and healthy while on her life supporting insuli, since we can't always know if she's getting enough or if she's getting too much for any given moment of any given day.  Max is Gracie's miracle:)

If you would like to help us pay for Max William, you can make a donation in Max and Gracie's name to www.GuardianAngelServiceDogs.org or call (804) 883-6931.  We have a way to go before Max is paid in full, and when he is, we'd like to help other families have the blessing of a diabetic alert dog as well.  Thank you all for your continued encouragement, prayers and support:)

Gracie's fingers

As many of you know, Gracie gets her fingers poked 14-17 times a day so we can know what her blood sugar is and treat her appropriately. That's a lot of pokes over the past nearly 7 years. A couple of months ago she began to get random infections in her fingers; not from all the blood tests though so we aren't certain what's causing this. She's been on a few rounds of antibiotics but it never completely clears up. So today, we are at Children's hospital trying to figure out what's going on. The concern is that the infection may have go to her bones. We won't know for a couple weeks exactly what's causing this but hope to have answers soon. Heres a couple pictures of her getting X-rays. And, of course one of Max William as he's listening to what the doctor has to say about his girl:)

Crazy.  Crazy.  Crazy... we are only days away from dance recital.  There's sparkles, tulle, feathers, satin ribbon, dance shoes and glitter galore scattered all over my house.  Max is soooooooo tempted to snatch a tutu, but he's been pretty good  we've managed to keep them away from him and his chompers.  Dress rehearsals begin Friday and go till an hour before recital on Saturday night.  That's a lot of trips across town; delivering our little dancers, making food runs since they always seem to be starving, and me continually saying "don't let anything drop on your costume!"  Yes, I've done this enough to know to bring some old tee shirts to slip over them when they're munching to save their costumes:)  Saturday and Sunday are the performances, then it's truly summer break.  Aaaahhhh... I think this mama needs a little mom only vacation after it's all said and done.  One that involves nothing but movies, spa treatments, sinfully yummy food, lots of R&R surrounded by a body of water and nobody talking to me for a couple of days;)