The job still seems to be a go. I talked to the people at our CCB (Community Centered Board - the organization that distributes the federal and state funds earmarked for the support of people with developmental disabilities), and they said that M is too young for their regular job support program, and we couldn’t use any of their funds to “pay” M for his work.

 This wasn’t surprising to me, the CCB really isn’t much support at all… that’s why I set this program up independent of them! I only checked into it because the owner of the restaurant M will be working at wanted to go through the regular job support program (so M could be paid by the CCB). I have a meeting with  our support coordinators (from the CCB) tomorrow and will find out the bottom line then. After that, I’ll call the owner and make sure he’s still willing to hire M, given that it won’t be part of the county’s established job support program.

Anyway… things still look good for M starting his job soon. We just need to tie up all the loose ends first.

It feels like I’m rambling… hopefully that made sense. I woke up this morning with a cold and my head feels fuzzy… time for some vitamin C, I suppose.

In terms of my OTHER wild man, Tucker, things are much simpler…

I’m working with him 3-5 days a week, and he’s making pretty steady progress… I can now work with him in the pasture, instead of having to lock him up in the small pen to get anything done. It’s pretty easy to get the halter on and off, to brush him, and touch him all over (except his legs). I’m still working on him accepting touch on his legs, once he does that I’ll work on picking up his legs and cleaning his hooves. Hopefully we’ll reach that point soon so he can get his hooves trimmed.

We’re also working on leading, which is slow going. He’ll follow along with me for awhile, and then suddenly get spooked by something, and take off. Chuck (donkey trainer) told me to tie Tucker up at our tie up post, and just leave him for an hour or so… that that would help him learn that pulling on the lead rope doesn’t work. (Unfortunately… the message of that whole lesson is just an illusion. Pulling on the lead rope, when it’s attached to the tie up post, doesn’t work…. but if he pulls hard when I’m on the other end of the lead rope, there is no way I can hold him.)

Anyway, I followed Chuck’s suggestion and tied Tucker to the post. It turned out to be an excellent lesson for me into the donkey thought process.

At first Tucker just pulled a little at the rope, testing to see if he could pull free… Next he put some real muscle into it, putting his head down and digging in his hooves while pulling backwards. There was never any panic, he just seemed to be moving from one idea to the next… He pretty quickly figured out that that pulling wouldn’t work. Next he tried unwrapping the rope… trying to walk around the pole to loosen the rope. Needless to say, that didn’t work either, and he ended up VERY close to the pole and had to walk backwards to “unwrap” himself.

Then he just stood there… I thought he’d resigned himself to standing there until I untied him. But no… he was just thinking. After standing there for several minutes (my donkeys seem to be very slow… but deep… thinkers), he walked back around the pole to the knot and started trying to untie it with his teeth! He got the end free (thankfully I tied him very securely), and spent the next 10-15 minutes pulling on the end, and working at the knot, trying to get it loose. I’ve been told that donkeys are smart, but I was pretty amazed that he’d figure out to pull on the end of the rope.

Eventually I rescued him, untying the lead rope then unhooking it from his halter. Surprisingly he didn’t dart away, but just stood there for awhile before slowly walking away.

Here are some pictures…

Tucker, tied to the post (he’s not really tied to the post as tightly as it looks, if he backs up a little he has about 2′ of rope).

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Working on the knot…

Pulling at the end of the rope (I couldn’t get in close for this one, he’d stop pulling when I got close to him.)

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Taking a face scratching break…

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“Would you please come let me go?!”

I love working with Tucker, in a funny way it reminds me a little of martial arts… I LOVED martial arts when I studied it, it was the only sport I’ve loved enough to stick with for an extended period of time. I think the reason I liked it so much is because it’s such a combination of mental and physical skills. Working with Tucker is like that… I have to concentrate when I work with him, paying very close attention to what he’s telling me (with his body language). Even something as subtle as him turning his head away, or tightening his leg muscles, requires me to adapt my behavior in some way. But working with him is also very physical… quickly backing (jumping) out of the way when he swings around in a mini-panic over something, holding onto the lead rope when he starts darting away, keeping up with him when he takes off up the hill. I’m starting to trust him not to kick me (unless I do something he REALLY doesn’t like) but he could still hurt me accidentally. He’s about 600 lbs of panic sometimes, and I don’t want to get in the way of that! 

Oh gosh, I think I’m rambling again…

So anyway Lynn, there you have it… things are still going well in terms of M’s job and Tucker…thanks for asking.

I don’t care what the calendar says, or that the days are hot and the grass is green… I’m going to call these last few weeks of warm weather “pre-Fall”.

Summer was fun but after four major family events (and several smaller occasions) in three months, I’m ready to be done. I wouldn’t even mind being snowed in for a few days by a freak blizzard… but I’m guessing the chances of that happening in August are pretty slim.

We did have some wild weather yesterday though, and spent an hour or so in the basement after I saw this…

… coming out of the clouds. See the little tornado trying to form?

The kids handled it remarkably well (both are VERY afraid of tornadoes), they sat glued to the TV, yelling updates to me while I cleaned the basement. Yeah, it was probably a weird time to clean, but there was no way I could sit still. DD#1 had just called, letting me know she was stuck on the highway with all three kids in the car, watching a tornado touching down just a mile or so away! Luckily it was a weak one, only touched down in open fields, and went back into the clouds without doing any damage (except to my daughter’s nerves!).

Unfortunately, being stuck in a basement, waiting for tornadoes to pass isn’t nearly as much fun as being snowed in by a blizzard.

It’s not even close…

The really big news though, isn’t the weather…

… it’s M’s 16th birthday.

It’s hard to believe he’s 16 already… He’s such a funny mixture of teenager and little boy. He’s just an awesome kid.

His party was Saturday, and it was wonderful… I think everyone had a good time.

M enjoyed himself tremendously… dancing, eating, and hanging out with his friends. He loved all of his gifts, and was excited to get some money and several gift cards too. The only thing that marred the day was that his “girlfriend” couldn’t make it…

In case you’re wondering, “Rose”, my difficult neighbor, didn’t come. The morning of the party she emailed saying they couldn’t make it. Her reason for not coming was obviously an excuse (one of those “I have to wash my hair…” kinds of reasons) but the email was friendly, so I’m pretty happy with the way that situation turned out.

Here are some pictures of the party… 

I set the party up out front because one of M’s friends who uses a wheelchair was coming, and because we needed a big flat space for the dancing. (But then the friend, the girlfriend’s brother, didn’t make it after all!)

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I saw several sweet little cowpokes…

J, my grandson…

…granddaughter, R…

…and little friend G.

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Time to start the dancing!

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Grandma and Grandpa even danced (they are so amazing… Grandpa is 80, and Grandma is getting very close, but nothing seems to slow them down!). E and B, my oldest girls, are next to them…in the black shirts.

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 We also did some line dancing…

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It was so much fun….

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I’m a really bad dancer, but I danced too. You can tell from the look on my face that it was taking all my concentration, AND watching K (dd#3), to figure out what I was supposed to be doing!

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 M cracked me up, dancing in his mud boots!

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There was even a dance you could do sitting down!

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 I’m not sure what kind of a dance this was… They all seem to be following the caller, but doing something different…

R and S even composed a song for M’s birthday. Then they got up in front of all those people and sang to him. Without a single giggle. It was about the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen…

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I think the party was a success…

… it was a great way to end the summer.

 Loren… I don’t think I’m brave enough to speak so openly to Rose, although, if things thaw out a little I’d be very comfortable talking to her about getting some support for herself, and how it might help get her through the rough spells.

Steve, Leslie and everyone else who thought I should get M’s input about whether or not he wants them at his party… He isn’t good friends with these kids, so he wouldn’t care if they were there or not. He does seem to feel unsettled and a little anxious about how Rose is acting though, and would probably feel better if he could see that she was acting more normally towards me.

Theresa, your verse helped put the situation in perspective for me… thank you so much.

And Granny… I loved your verse too… the part about feeding your hungry enemy spoke to me… since M’s parties are all about food! You’ll be happy to know (and luckily for Rose) there will be no burning coals available at the party, our grill is gas.

 Andrea, and everyone who said I should invite Rose and her family… that’s what I did.  I took the invitation over to the house but didn’t talk to Rose, her husband came to the door and was marginally friendly. He didn’t say if they would be coming to the party or not… I guess I’ll be surprised.

Here’s the invitation, I thought it turned out cute…

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Ahhhhhh!!!!!!

Where did the years go?!

How did we go from this…

…to this…

…so quickly?!

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Well, regardless of how we got there, it’s time to celebrate

MICHAEL’S 16th BIRTHDAY!

(and then it goes on with all the details, directions, etc)

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Ok, shifting gears, (this is going to be a very disjointed post…)

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A HUGE thank you to Tigger for awarding me this awesome award:

 I am honored Tigger, and I will get busy passing the award along…

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And finally, could you please keep M in your prayers today?

He developed some stiffness last night which could be just more of the neurological side effects he always struggles with, but could also be a different, potentially dangerous side effect (NMS, you can read about it here…) NMS is very serious, would necessitate taking him off his antipsychotics, and could even be life threatening. 

He’s still asleep so I’m not sure how he is doing this morning, but the pdoc has given me things to watch for, and wants me to check in with her later today.

Thanks…

 Evening update: M seems to be ok.  He’s still complaining of stiffness at times, but he doesn’t seem to have any other the other symptoms of NMS, so I think what he’s experiencing must somehow be connected to the tardive dyskinesia, not anything more serious. (It just goes to show how tough the past year has been that I’ve begun lumping TD with the ”not serious” stuff!) Anyway, I talked to the pdoc, and she asked lots of questions, but didn’t insist on seeing him right away, which was reassuring…  Thanks for the good thoughts and prayers.

This is kind of a long story, so you might want to make a cup of tea, and hit the bathroom before you settle in for the drama.

We love where we live, but it’s probably a very good thing the houses are far apart, because my across the road neighbor is a little unstable (and yes, I mean that in a clinical sense).

Until about a year ago we’d been acquaintances, and then became friends. Rose (not her real name, but I get tired of using initials, and she kind of reminds me of our goat Rose… prone to crankiness) and her husband have two kids, a little boy and a girl just a few years younger than R. R and the girl (maybe I’ll call her Betty, after our good natured goat) used to visit sometimes when they were both up on the road getting the mail, and they got to be friends. Rose started asking me to watch for Betty’s school bus and keep her here on the days that she wasn’t able to get home in time to meet the bus. I didn’t mind helping her out, and the girls enjoyed playing together.

Rose and her family went out of town last spring and she asked me to water her flowers while she was gone (their yard is like a park, absolutely perfect, with at least an acre of blue grass!), which I did…and they brought back some little gifts for the kids in return.

They invited us over for the 4th of July last year, buying hundred of dollars of (illegal) fireworks and setting them off (while I prayed that our animals weren’t panicking too badly with all the noise and smoke, and that no stray sparks would end up in my pasture!).

I knitted her some dishcloths, and taught her how to sew. Last summer, when Rose decided to make poodle skirts for all 15 girls invited to Betty’s birthday party, I pulled out my sewing machine and she came over after the kids went to bed and we sewed.

I thought we were friends…

She was always kind of a difficult person though, with an abrasive way of talking to people. She said she had worked with people with developmental disabilities before, and wanted to do respite for me. But I wasn’t comfortable with the patronizing, slightly disrespectful, way she talked about, and to, people with DD, so I never asked her to do any respite. Fortunately, at the time she was asking to do the respite, our funding hadn’t come through yet and I could honestly tell her I didn’t have the funds to pay for respite yet… and by the time the funding came through, she was no longer speaking to me.

It all started with a little stray dog her husband brought home one day. Pie was a puppy, about 8 months old, and had been running loose for ages. Rose wouldn’t put up a fence or dog run, (she told me it would make her yard look “trashy”… ouch! We have lots of fencing… but I told myself not to take it personally) and she would just train the dog to stay on their land.

But the little dog wasn’t easily trained… It would run down to our place each morning when I went to the barn, and jump on me. If I wasn’t careful it would dart into the stalls and our little pasture, and bark and nip at Grant and the goats.

Rose got a shock collar for Pie and if Pie would run down to the road, she would “shock her into coming back”.

It didn’t work. Pie learned that my house was out of range of the shocking device.

Pie dug into my backyard and jumped on Quin, often leaving Quin (with his deformed hips and legs) in pain for days. She’d jump on the kids when they were outside, and run into my house when they tried to come in.

I called Rose several times asking her nicely to come get her dog… I tried to talk to her about dog training, keeping Pie on a leash until she understood where she lived, or putting up a temporary dog run. Rose told me she’d been around animals all her life and knew what she was doing.

Sometimes I’d feel sorry for Pie (she was getting nothing but screamed at by Rose) and let her hang out in my backyard.

Once when Pie was up on the road, some people stopped… thinking she was a stray… and put her in their car, going to take her to a shelter (or home… who knows), but I went out and explained that she was my neighbor’s dog, and kept her in my house until Rose got home again. Rose wasn’t happy with me, saying she didn’t think she wanted the dog and I should have just let those people take her.

After several months of this dog, things were starting to get strained. I was seriously tired of working around this wild, ill-mannered dog, and Rose seemed to think I was somehow encouraging Pie to come down here.

Finally last fall, things came to a head. The farrier was here trimming Grant’s hooves, and some neighbors had ridden their horses down for a visit. One of the neighbors, a little friend of R’s, was on her new horse… a feisty Arabian mare. Pie kept barking and nipping at the mare’s heels and the girl’s mother was getting very upset, yelling up at Rose’s house to “come get your dog”. Rose sent her kids down, but they couldn’t catch Pie, so finally the farrier stopped his work and caught the dog for them.

Winter came and we still saw Pie, but not nearly as often. During a bitter cold spell I found her on my backporch, shivering, and called Rose asking her to come get her. By that time Rose was obviously angry, and barely speaking to me.

Each time our cars passed each other on the road, I continued to smile or wave, but she just looked away. (Yeah, I’ll admit it… after a while I waved and smiled just to bug her.)

As winter went on, we stopped seeing Pie as often, although I still found her out at the barn sometimes in the mornings, waiting to jump on me. Once when coming in from the barn, she tried to run in the house with me… I reached out to grab her collar to keep her out and she nipped my hand (well… she nipped my work glove), I had stopped calling Rose to come get her dog (since it seemed to just make her angrier) but I called that time and told her what happened. I thought it was ridiculous that their dog was trying to bite me on my own front porch!

In the spring I had to go around to survey all my neighbors about a paving project that was being proposed. I hated the thought of going to Rose’s,  she’d been extremely rude to me at Christmas… barely speaking to me when I took a gift of Christmas cookies and treats to them, angrily telling me that she’d be down to talk to me soon because she had “things we needed to hash out” and, when I told her that we’d lost Grant the day before to colic, she coldy said that she’d seen he was sick and he looked so bad it was probably good he had died.

But I agreed to survey each neighbor, so I had to go…

I had to climb over the fence to get into their place (their acreage is gated) and I found Rose working in the backyard. She greeted me coldly, asking me what I wanted. I said I was representing the community board, and had this survey, and started to explain. She said she wouldn’t talk about the survey until we’d “hashed things out”.

Then… and this is the strange part… she collapsed, sobbing, into my arms. She cried that she just knew we were going to sue them because Pie had tried to bite me, and that she knew I was the one who called the sheriff because her dog was out (I wasn’t, although I had considered it), she could tell I was leaving my porch light on at night to “lure” Pie down to our house to get them in more trouble. (what?!) She sobbed that they couldn’t risk everything they had, risk losing it all to us in a lawsuit, over this dog.

By now, the theme song from “The Twilight Zone” was running through my head… I tried to reassure Rose that we’d never called the sheriff, weren’t planning on suing them, and the porch light was left on some nights only because I’d forgotten to turn it off.

She said she’d taken Pie to the shelter earlier that week, but now she couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop crying, and was spending hours each day at the computer,  looking at Pie’s picture in the “adoptable dogs” part of the shelter’s website, trying to determine if she looked well fed and happy.

She was truly falling apart. I told her that if not having the dog was that upsetting to her, she should just go get it back. She said they wouldn’t give it back to her. I offered to go adopt the dog myself and give it to her. (Yeah, I know… I’m such a chump!)

She cried on, and at, me for over an hour, and I started thinking that maybe she was finally starting to believe that I hadn’t done any of the things she thought I’d done. It sounded like she might be headed down to the shelter the next day to try and get her dog back. As we left, M, six months early, invited her to his birthday party (Oh M, I wish you would have not said that!) and she said yes, “unless your mom is mad at me and doesn’t want me to come”. I said no, of course not, and let the matter drop.

Guess what happened next? During the time Rose was falling apart, crying to me in her backyard, someone adopted Pie. By the time she got back in the house to check the website, Pie was gone.

I check the website too, and knew what had happened, and I wasn’t sure what that bad timing might do to our newly mended friendship…

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that she had stopped speaking to me again. If I corner her at the mailbox, she’ll be civil to me… but nothing more. Even during last month’s heat wave, it was frosty between the two houses…

So… here’s my dilemma (Are you still reading? If so thank you… you deserve an award!) Michael’s birthday is coming up. We’re having a square dance out in front of the house (the only spot big and flat enough), do I invite Rose and her family? I’m inviting our other close neighbors, and she’ll see we’re having a big party. If I don’t invite her she will probably assume I’m angry at her (which I’m not). On the other hand, after inviting R and M to Betty’s party last year (the year of the poodle skirts!), she did not invite the kids this year.

So….do I invite Rose and her family? She’s made it very clear that she’s upset with me. Is it stupid to invite her? Or would not inviting her just reinforce for her that I’m a terrible person. (Honestly though, her thinking was so confused the night she fell apart, that I’m not sure she’s able to think rationally about me and the whole situation anyway.) She’s unstable enough that, even if she were talking to me, I’d prefer to keep my distance from her…

Thoughts? Opinions?  Tell me what to do please!

 We had some exciting news today… It looks like M will be starting work at our local Chick-Fil-A very soon. Remember my “internship” idea? The one that got put on hold for almost a year because M developed tardive dyskinesia and I ended up spending the past 9 months adjusting meds? Well… M still isn’t as stable as I would like him to be for this (we are STILL adjusting meds!) but I decided not to wait any longer and just move ahead with the idea anyway.

So a week or so ago I approached an acquaintance I know who works for Chick-Fil-A (she also volunteers at the same library we do) and told her about my idea. At first she seemed hesitant… She said she knew of other Chick-Fil-A restaurants that had hired people with developmental disabilities (in a supported work type situation), but our local restaurant never had. She said she’d talk to the owner about it and get back to me. I ran into her again today and she said that the owner said yes, and was very excited about Michael working there. She said the owner had been wanting to start working with the DD system in terms of hiring kids, he just hadn’t taken the first step. So M will be that first step…. cool, huh? M is so excited, he can hardly stand himself. We have the application here and we’ll fill it out together and get it back to them ASAP.

 Not much else is going on here. I got most of the things on my agenda done the other day… it was an awesome day. We’ve been getting school done regularly again, and life just feels like it’s getting back to “normal” (or what passes for normal around here) again after our extremely busy summer.

Have I mentioned the little twin fawns that live up on the hill behind our barn? We’ve had so much fun watching them grow from tiny things (twice I’ve had to stop the car on the road in front of the house because the babies decided they needed to nurse, immediately, and mama deer stopped right in the road to nurse them! The other day I watched them playing on the hill that goes down to the gully… It was so much to watch them jumping around (and on!) each other.

 Here are a few pictures I’ve taken lately of mama and her babies…

 Here’s mama, her babies are close, so she’s watching me very carefully. 

The twins, heading across the driveway…

…and the whole family down by the neighbor’s barn.

Can you see the twins? It’s not a great picture, but I just loved the way they were eating side by side… (my new “deer-proof” garden fence is working beautifully, so far no deer have been in the garden since we put it up although, as you can see, they are grazing as close to the garden as they can possibly get…

 Better go, quiet time is over and I should get moving.

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My Agenda - August 13, 2008  

1. Stay home

2. Enjoy children

       a. get school done

       b. watch a little of the Olympics 

       c. play some bingo

       d. watch R ride Blaze

3. Enjoy animals

      a. sit on porch and watch the funny interactions between Blaze, Tilly and Tucker

      b. work with Tucker

      c. spoil Tucker with sunflower seeds after working with him

      d. spoil Blaze and Tilly with treats too, as long as I’m at it

      e. sit under the big tree and brush out Quin and Emma, remind R to brush out Sweetpea

4. Enjoy being home

    a. knit when I feel like it

    b. nap a little when the kids are in quiet time

    c. sit outside and watch the mama deer and fawns that have been grazing out front lately, notice the bunnies and hawks that are always around but I often get to busy to notice… also watch for hummingbirds, maybe try and get a picture of one.

Ok, I think that’s it. It will be a grueling day, but if I stick with my schedule I think I can get it all done.

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Seriously though, I’m so looking forward to a quiet day at home. The past few weeks have been just TOO busy for me!

There has been good stuff going on…

We went to the big family reception for dd#1’s wedding on Saturday and had a great time. (They had a reception in Las Vegas right after the wedding, but since most of the family couldn’t make it out there, they had another reception here.) Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the reception to share… I forgot my camera at home that day, and was having such a good time I probably would have forgotten to take any pictures anyway!

Then on Sunday we went to a wonderful Special Olympics party… The kids swam (there was both a swimming lake and a pool there), paddled canoes around the lake, played volleyball in the sand, and just had a great time hanging out with their friends.

R and her friend in a two person canoe…

M loved paddling around… it made me wish we had a lake or pond close enough for him to get to do this regularly.

The kids are still working on their money/attitude program. They have slowed down some with all the work, but are still excited about the program and have been learning how to do some new, more grown up chores around the house… and earning money and good attitude “tokens” (for lack of a better word!). R was the first to earn the fun of  choosing a dessert and making it for the family. She make a triple chocolate cake, following the directions with just a minimum of help… It’s been fun having cake when it isn’t even anyone’s birthday!

We’ve had our little friend S here off and on the past few weeks too. I love having her here, but it’s also difficult… having three developmentally delayed adolescents in the house is complicated and not much gets done… but she is so sweet (when she’s not having an attitude) and loving that it makes up for the extra work and supervision she brings with her.

The Three Musketeers (M looks a little scary, I think…hope… he was just making a face!)

The serious….

…and not so serious work of bingo.

Note: Since she is still in foster care, I’ve (reluctantly) edited these photos so S’s face can’t be seen.

I also have spent more than a few hours lately agonizing over whether there is any way we could take her if her current foster care placement disrupts. (Which has been looking imminent) It’s been very tough trying to sort through the complexities of the situation… to think with my head as well as my heart. I’ve been spending a lot of time on my knees over this… Fortunately it’s looking less likely that the placement will disrupt, and I’m thrilled that things are looking up for S and her foster family.

So that’s what we’ve been up to, and today we are staying home… just me and two (not three!) kids. I’m so excited…

Well, it’s getting late, I’d better get busy, my agenda is waiting…

I hope not, because I have a few more…

This past weekend was a fun, but busy one for us.

It started with M and R planning a camp out in the big pasture. R and I shared one tent, M had another. It was a beautiful evening, and the kids did really well. There was some concern over coyotes, but we never heard them and I knew they wouldn’t bother us anyway.  It did get very cold by the middle of the night though, and with each hour that went by the ground seemed to get harder and rockier. I didn’t sleep much, but it was fun.

Here’s our little campsite as the sun was going down…

And the campers…

And yes, both R and I slept in that little Fisher-Price tent… it’s taken me days to recover! :)

Then on Sunday we had some very exciting company. Some folks from Longhopes Donkey Shelter came over to help us with Tucker.

 I’d talked to Kathy, the founder and director of the shelter, several times about our donkeys… getting advice and trying to learn more about the best ways to take care of them. The kids and I visited the shelter a few weeks ago, and were hugely impressed with the work they are doing to save these wonderful animals. 

I came home from that visit with some DVD’s about donkey training and lots of enthusiasm. I’d been working with Tucker, trying to gentle him, but the progress I was making was very slow… And each time M had a rough spell and I couldn’t get out to work with Tucker for a few days we’d lose the progress we made. So I called Kathy and asked for some help.

She and Chuck, the trainer who works with her donkeys (and who was the trainer on the DVD’s I’d been complusively watching!), drove over just a couple of days later.

It was absolutely incredible watching Chuck work with Tucker. There was never any force or fear used, but by the end of the day Tucker was accepting touch, wearing a halter, starting to learn to lead, had his vaccinations, had his teeth checked, and had gone through some de-spooking exercises.

Chuck worked with Tucker for 5 hours on Sunday, stopping only for a quick lunch, while Kathy checked Tilly out, gave her some needed vaccinations, and checked her teeth (she’s going to come back and float them for me). We also shaved Tilly’s neck where her BLM brand is and Kathy is going to try and track down when and where she was rounded up (just for curiousity’s sake).

Here are some pictures of Chuck working with Tucker…

Chuck “walking down” Tucker, at this point Tucker won’t even allow him to get close to him or touch him.

 Just a short time later… accepting touch.

 Fast forward a couple of hours (and some endless walking on Chuck’s part) and Tucker is finally accepting the halter! This is a huge milestone for him. Later, by checking his teeth, they determined that Tucker is 5 years old…  and in all those years he’s never been trained, and probably has never even been handled.

 Fast forward an hour or so, starting to learn to lead…  Chuck is still just as relaxed and calm as when they started, even though he’s been working with Tucker for hours by then, and it was almost 100 degrees out!

 Fast forward another hour or so, doing some de-spooking…

 Isn’t this just an amazing little donkey? Even Chuck and Kathy were surprised at how far he came so quickly!

Tucker REALLY didn’t want to walk over that tarp. He eventually did though, but it took a lot of coaxing and patience on Chuck’s part. (Tilly is checking out what they are doing to her boy, and probably counting her blessings that it’s him and not her having to walk across that scary tarp!)

My little “wild man” isn’t looking quite so wild anymore, is he?

Anyway… I can’t remember when I’ve had a more fun and interesting day. It was fascinating to watch Chuck and Kathy with our donkeys, I am so thankful that they came and spent the day with us.

I’ve worked with Tucker a few times since then, and he’s allowing me to touch him, and put the halter on. I’m working a little on leading and having his legs touched (so eventually the farrier can trim his hooves!)

The kids and I hope to start volunteering at Longhopes, and R may soon be riding donkeys as part of her volunteering! (And if you are looking for a very deserving non-profit to make a donation to, Longhopes is it… check out their website, they are doing some very good work over there!)

So anyway, that was our weekend… It was a lot of fun, but it’s also kind of nice that there isn’t much of anything on the calendar for this week…

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edited to add: I heard back from Kathy today about Tilly’s BLM brand. It turns out she was rounded up in March of 1995, in Nevada. At that time she was a three year old (so she’s 16 now, a little older than we thought). She was adopted by someone in NE. and it’s anyone’s guess what happened to her after that. Here’s part of Kathy’s email:

“So think of poor Tilly. She was born wild, and was rounded up at age 3. She was probably in a couple of holding facilities before being shipped to Nebraska, then somehow got to another owner in Colorado and now to you. And you wonder why she is so calm and happy having the home with you? She is glad to have landed in a safe place.”

We’re all very glad she “landed” here too!

She’s started taking him out of the pasture for some trail rides lately, something that’s fun for him and more challenging (and fun!) for her. I decided to record the last trail ride in pictures…

Before she left the pasture she decided to try rounding up the donkeys just for fun. It’s something she’s done before on Blaze, but it’s a bit of a challenge…

The donkeys weren’t in the mood to cooperate this time though, and were getting ornery, and she was anxious to get going so she let them go and headed for the gate out to the pasture.

A new trick she and Blaze have figured out is opening the pasture gate without her dismounting. It’s obviously something Blaze was trained to do at some point before we got him, but it’s still pretty amazing to me to watch them working together so beautifully.

She’s heading over to the gate, and getting him lined up just right…

…then Blaze side-steps, getting close enough to the gate…

…for R to reach down, unlatch it, and start swinging it open.

Little by little she swings it open, as he takes small steps forwards, sideways and sometimes backwards… to allow the gate to open.

Out they go! (While I quickly shut the gate again to keep Tilly and Tucker in…)

I love watching them wander through the big pasture…

She dismounted to lead him down the deer trail into the gully.

 Once she got down there and needed to get back on him, she was wildly excited to discover that she’s finally grown tall enough to get her foot into the stirrup without needing a leg up or having to stand on a bucket. For the first time ever she was able to mount her horse with no help at all!

 They wandered through the gully for awhile…

…then back up the hill again.

Time to turn around and head for home…

LOL, she’s not having fun or anything!

It’s amazing to me that just a few months ago she was thrown so hard from a horse that she suffered a severe concussion, lost months of memory (most of it eventually came back), and insisted she would never ride again.

Little by little Blaze has taught her how to trust again, and I think… little by little… she’s teaching Blaze, who hasn’t had the easiest life, to trust again too.

 I’ve turned the blog I started for the pdoc into a place more for me… a place to write more openly then I can here about the ups and downs of parenting M. It’s a good thing I think, especially during these rough days, and I’ve been writing a lot there. (Note to Loren, No I doubt I’ll ever write a book about my experiences raising M… I’m not a very good writer, and have almost no attention span, both are things that are probably prerequisites for writing a book. Hmm… maybe Steve will ghost write it for me?!)

 I’ve also been working on a project that my friend L and I came up with. L also has “complicated” kids and totally gets it in terms of how difficult even everyday things can be sometimes… everyday things like money.

M perseverates on money. He gets totally stuck asking for money, wanting to buy things, wanting to sell his things so he can buy other things… it’s been a loooooong term problem and one that has gotten extremely old.

Because of this intense perseveration on money he’s had much less experience with money than he should have… it’s been such a trigger for him that I often just avoid it completely.

So…. L (who has similar issues with her kids) and I worked together and came up with some very cool ideas for an allowance/money management kind of program, designed to teach not only some money skills, but also work on some daily living skills.  We used a lapbook type format to organize everything and it came together really nicely (if I do say so myself!).

Here’s how we did it… We made job cards and assigned each job a value (tokens that correspond to quarters), the tokens are collected through the week and traded for real money at the end of the week. The job cards  include a range of jobs, easy to hard, some physical, some academic, and on the back of each card is a step by step list for how to do each job (daily living skills!). We also included an “attitude” section where the kids can collect different tokens for attitude… helping without being asked, noticing things that need to be done and doing them, finishing what they start, etc. The attitude tokens can be used to buy the opportunity to pick a dessert for the family and make it themselves.  I stocked up on cake, pudding and brownie mixes, etc, easy things the kids can make pretty much on their own.  They are very excited about making dessert for everyone!

We put the whole works into a lapbook, here’s what it looks like…

These are the front pages where they’ll collect their tokens, on the inside front cover is a short paragraph about what a “good attitude” is. M has already earned one .75 (blue) token.

Here are the back pages with some “Rules for Wise Shopping” and “Money Waster” tips. I’m also putting their back statements back there…

… and the job chart (each pocket has a laminated card with the name of the job on one side, and directions for how to do it on the other side).

And here’s what my house looks like… it’s an absolute beehive of activity, kids doing jobs trying to make money.

R vacuuming…

M cleaning out the car…

They’ve already turned it into a competition of course, but they are limited to only a certain amount of money that can be earned each week so I guess the only real competition will be who fills up their money chart first.

 I wasn’t excited at first about using tokens… it’s something I’ve tried to stay away from after being burned in the past with M getting more and more focused on getting tokens until he was falling apart over some stupid little token thing I made up. I’m hoping that he’s old enough now to manage this kind of system better (and even if it only works for a couple of weeks, he will have learned to do some jobs he didn’t know how to do before).

I really like that it gives the control back to the kids… When M starts insisting he has to have money, there are plenty of ways for him to earn some… and the decision of what he’s going to do (and how much he’s going to earn) are up to him.

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We finally had our hay delivered the other day, so all the heavy work in the barn is done for awhile, thank goodness!

That’s me, one last sweep before the hay arrives… (the hay behind me is the last few bales of last year’s hay)

One side of the barn is empty, ready to be filled up…

It’s full now! I love having a barn full of hay, it’s such a very good feeling…

That’s all for now… it’s getting late and I’ve got lots to do before the kids get up!

But I haven’t written anything I felt like I could post here.

Most of my writing has to do with M’s illness, and it feels like a betrayal of his privacy to write so intimately about the details of his life, here… in such a public place.

So I write, but I don’t post.

He’s doing ok right now… Ok as in mostly manageable, some days are pretty decent, some days we just kind of stumble through. No emergencies though, which is good.

 My early morning (and late night!) writing has been connected to somehow finding a way to come to terms with this being as good as it’s going to get for M, and that the pdoc has given up. For years I held onto the hope and support she brought with her. Things have changed now though, and circumstances recently have forced me to accept that she’s given up on M being any more stable than he is now, she’s moved on, and I’m on my own. That’s a tough one for me, since she’s been there for us since the beginning (I know, we’ve been very blessed by that) and he’s still very unstable right now.  But I can’t change things, so I write…

 … and I work.

I got the barn cleaned out, we have a load of hay being delivered tomorrow. Six tons of it. So I cleaned out the old pallets that last year’s hay sat on, they are broken now because Blaze, who is too smart for his own good, figured out how to open the outside door to the feed room and had a party in the barn the other day with Tucker. (I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, Blaze is 13 now and you know how teenagers are…) Bales were torn open and scattered, and the pallets he tried to stand on broke of course…

Anyway… I moved the old pallets out, raked up all the dirty hay that was on the floor (and freecycled it!) then swept real good and laid down new (old) pallets. I also laid sheets of plywood on top of the pallets, making a “floor” of sorts for the hay to sit on, but have decided to move those. I want the hay to be able to breathe, I don’t want to take a chance with it getting moldy…

By the time I was finished my joints and muscles ached, and I was filthy from head to toe, but the barn looked great and is ready for hay.

The kids had a softball tournament through Special Olympics last weekend and their team came in first! M was so excited… He’s been telling everyone (friend and stranger) how well they played. No pictures, I’m afraid…but trust me, it was a great looking team.

We (dh and I) also built a new fence around the front garden. The deer were eating my cucumbers and pumpkin plants down to the ground (evidently, eating all the blooms off my geraniums didn’t fill them up!)…

…so we put up a 5+ foot fence all the way around the garden, and dh made me a nice new gate. When we were done we set some paving stone around the perimeter of the garden. It looks so much better now, and so far the deer are leaving it alone.

The other big news this week is that we finally got some rain! After being bone dry for weeks and weeks, this is what we got…

Check out the lake in the pasture, isn’t it wonderful? Maybe now the prairie grass will green up a little bit…

Well, the donkeys and Blaze are throwing a fit outside, they think I’ve forgotten their breakfast… so I’d better run.