Beauty can be found even in the most unexpected places. All we need to do is look for it.
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Guest blogger Lorie Sheffer: Observe
Category: Guest Bloggers
Guest blogger Lorie Sheffer: Lessons from an old dog
I’m learning some things about life from an old dog. She is given heart medication four times a day, hidden in a piece of potato roll that she sees as a treat. Her eyes are milky with cataracts and she has a crazy little tooth- one of the few that isn’t missing from her mouth- that juts out to the side. This summer she will be 16 years old, which is at the top of the life expectancy for a terrier. She is apparently unaware of all that.
I watch her tail wag from excitement as she stands by the door, ready to go out on our daily adventure/walk. She has the enthusiasm of a puppy. She bounds down the porch step and driveway, head held high. This old dog has not lost her happiness for life; she either has no concept of age or else she just doesn’t care. She’d rather be out exploring than napping in one of her soft dog beds. She never has to be coaxed to get up get moving. Always learning, always exploring, always ready for a new adventure. Maybe that’s her secret to feeling so young.
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Guest blogger Lorie Sheffer: Prevention
Breasts are much prettier than colons. Trust me, I’ve seen both. A colon looks a bit like a garden hose made of raw liver. While there is such a thing as a tasteful and rather sexy display of décolletage, there really is no socially acceptable way to display the colon. Breasts are used to feed children, sell products, and attract the opposite sex. Colons are full of, well, you know.
“Cancer” is a word that none of us want to hear. We often gather together to form a kind of army against possible invasion. We have awareness campaigns, we see ribbons on cars and clothing and packages of food. We’ve all seen the bumper stickers with the “cute” sayings like “Save the TaTas” and “Feel Your Boobies”. But there are certain things we just don’t discuss in polite company. We don’t talk about bowel function. It’s gross. We aren’t supposed to talk about things like shape of bowel movements, excess gas, abdominal pain and blood in the toilet bowl. And so we are silent. We’ve all heard the sophomoric jokes about “silent but deadly” in reference to those quiet passages of especially odorous emissions, but in this case our silence literally can be deadly.
Colon cancer was the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States in 2010. It begins with abnormal polyps that take from TEN to FIFTEEN YEARS to develop into a malignancy. A colonoscopy is a test that can PREVENT us from developing cancer. PREVENT. While it can also catch cancer in its early and most treatable stages, it can PREVENT us from ever having the disease in the first place! When then test is being done, if any polyps are seen they can be removed rather easily right then and there and sent to the lab. Most are benign. But if they are the type that will eventually become malignant, they are now GONE.
I watched my grandfather die of colon cancer. I watched my brother- my only sibling- go through surgeries and chemo for colon cancer. Thankfully his outcome was good. Still, the process is not something anyone wants to deal with. I met a young woman who had just graduated from college and was ready to begin her graduate studies when she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She is still only in her mid twenties and struggles with the aftermath of her surgeries and treatments.
If everyone would learn the symptoms, if everyone would get the screening, this could be a disease could in fact not only be taken out of second place, it could be almost totally eliminated.
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Guest blogger Lorie Sheffer: Feral
Last week I had a conversation that stunned me. The person with whom I was conversing is reasonably intelligent. And yet………
The subject: Feral cats. I live in a suburban neighborhood in South Central Pennsylvania. As I am typing this post, I can look out and see neighbors walking their dogs. There are also a few cats roaming around, collars and tags visible. Clearly, they are someone’s pets. My two cats are collared, tagged and micro chipped; they are not allowed outside. There is also a group of cats roaming the neighborhood that belong to nobody.
Last week we took the first of the feral females to our vet to be spayed and vaccinated. There’s another female and one male in the wings, waiting their turn. A large dog crate is set up as a recovery area in our garage, which I clean and restock with food and water each day, until next week when I can release her back into our yard. The cost of this endeavor will mean our beach vacation fund is gone.
The conversation went something like this:
“Well yeah, I did notice some cats out back. So you’re saying you had a neighbor’s cat spayed?”
“No. The cats are feral.”
“Didn’t your vet check to see if they have chips?”
“Yes. The cats are feral.”
“How did they get here?”
“They were either dropped off by someone who didn’t want them or they were born to a feral mother.”
“Don’t they have collars and tags?”
“No. The cats are feral. They have never had human contact except for me. I had to work really hard for many months to get them tame enough to get them into a carrier and take them to the vet.”
“Why didn’t you just let them go? Someone would take them in.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice? I hope that happens. Until then, each female can have about 3-4 litters of kittens a year, with 2-8 kittens per litter. That’s lots of cats for people to take in. If they remain outside the kittens that survive will eventually start to reproduce. And right now the SPCA in our area has about 600 cats waiting for homes.”
I’m not doing this because I’m some selfless patron saint of cats. I’m doing this because I do not relish the idea of netting drown kittens from the bottom of my pool. I do not wish to clean up the remains left after the raccoons have their nocturnal feast. I’m doing this because my two cats, my beautiful spoiled pets, were the only two we were able to rescue out of the 29 kittens (that we are aware of) their wild, unapproachable mother gave birth to in the year she roamed the fields behind my parent’s house.
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Guest blogger Lorie Sheffer: All ears
We learn so much more when we listen than we do when we speak.
We learn so much more when we reach out to people who aren’t like us. What insight do we gain when we only surround ourselves with like-minded people; people who support the views and opinions we already have?
We may not end up agreeing, or changing our view or even understanding. But at least if we listen, we will almost always learn.
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