I'm hearing impaired and my dog is really helpful to me in alerting me to things I can't hear. The alarm clock beside my bed, someone at the door, the kitchen timer…she's a smart dog. Shasta learned to signal me with different whines and barks. On more than one occasion, she's even stopped me from crossing the street when I didn't hear a truck coming. I never trained her to be a hearing dog, she figure things out on her own. Shasta is really quite amazing.
I look at her and I try to imagine someone pulling out all of her teeth and hanging her upside down to let angry pit bulls attack her. Or tying her up, forcing mate, and deliver litters of puppies over and over again because she's a Chow Chow. That's what Michael Vick used to do to his dogs. That's what all dog fighters do to dogs. They do so much more, too. Gruesome things I block out of my mind because the image is too disgusting and nauseating.
I have to run and love on my Shasta, and I imagine the way I would harm or kill someone if they ever tried to hurt her. She loves me back and without any fear or trepidation, she exposes her belly and neck to me because she trusts me. She knows I would never hurt her. That's why this dog would die for me.
She has stood to fight and protect me when she thought she needed to. Out running one day, a group of five dogs came rushing at us, she stood her ground and started to fight, to keep them away from me. The moment was over quickly, and no one was hurt. The owner ran over, and I pulled her away from the dogs. I made it clear to the irresponsible dog owner, that he needed to know how to control his dogs. Mine was on a leash, she was doing her job, protecting me. I told him how my hand had been mauled the summer before because of dogs getting in a fight.
It was Shasta who got into a fight with a German Shepherd. I tried to break it up myself. My hand got in the way and the Shepherd clamped down on it as she went for my Shasta's face. The Shepherd shook my hand like it was a stuffed toy, but Shasta did something that got the dog to release my hand. Then, Shasta flipped the Shepherd over onto its back and went for the soft parts of its body. Finally, a neighbor helped me break up the fight. Both dogs were injured, my hand was mauled.
I still love dogs and even after that happened, I kept rescuing them every chance I could. But I had trouble with their growling for long time. Even in play, the sound of growling was a trigger that struck fear in me. Instead of giving in to that fear, I over came it because I love dogs so much. I can't stand the thought that anything about them would be fearful to me. I've always been such a whisperer with all animals.
My love of dogs, will help me overcome something else. I have to stop giving in to my hate of Michael Vick. This is hard. I've hated him so deeply since we first learned about his dog fighting. I changed my MySpace page to a sounding board and blog for very nasty things that should be done to him. Once he was put away, I also locked him away in my mind and almost forgot about him. Then, came a show about rehabilitating his dogs-- the few that were salvageable from the compound. Seeing the fear, mistreatment and physical abuse these dogs had been through bubbled all of my hatred of him to the surface again. So, I blogged and wrote more about what I hoped was happening to him in prison. Then, I locked him and the hatred away in my mind once more.
Now he's out and it's back. My hate is worse than ever because he's free. He has his freedom and he's sucking up to the Humane Society to prove the remorse that Roger Goodell says he needs to see from Vick before the felon can play ball in the NFL again. I'm finding it harder to breathe.
I read articles from sports writers and other news journalists discussing how Vick got to where he is now, and I see the skeletons of dogs buried around the dog fighting compound in my mind. The one Michael Vick put there. I see the bloody injuries of yelping dogs who don't understand why they are being forced to fight this way, when all they want to do is please their human.
I have to find a way to stop hating Michael Vick. It sickens me too much. This hatred gives my mind these images and I have to let them go.
I have finally reached a point where I don't imagine going up to him and hurting him, or doing awful things to him. I imagine walking up to him and sobbing. Just standing there, sobbing and crying in front of him. And he has to watch me. He's force to watch the pain I feel bend my body forward, and crumble me to my knees. His ears are sentenced to hearing the agony moan out of me as I cry for the dogs, and I let go of the hate. This is what I imagine, this therapy. I don't know how to make it a reality but it is what I think would help me and what I think would actually help him to feel true remorse.
If he has a heart, and he saw how much pain he caused a total stranger, who never met a single dog that touched his property; maybe he could multiply it by thousands and know how many more like me there are. So many others, like me trying to stop hating Michael Vick.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
90210 Season Finale
This week and last week have been a number of season finales. Tuesday night was the season finale for 90210. So, if you've DVR'd it to watch later, stop reading unless you want to know what's going to happen. This is what you call a *SPOILER ALERT!*
90210 ~ Well, my goodness…didn't Jen turn out to be Naomi's evil sister? Jen betrayed her sister for so little a thing as throwing a party and obviously, for throwing in her face the fact that Naomi is paying for everything. The way she lied to Liam and then used him to hurt Naomi is really going to have to come back and bite her somehow. If the writers and producers don't let that happen, their audience will never forgive them.
Rumors are that Ethan will not be returning next season, so some people are guessing that whatever Annie hit with her car will be Ethan. Or they think it will be Liam because he's getting sent off to military school and maybe he was able to run away. Anyway, there is a big question of who was in the older model Mercedes with the WBHS sticker on the back? Whomever it was will have witnessed Annie's hit and run, they'll either report it, or use it to blackmail her. Or another scenario is always the "guilt them into turning themselves in" where someone like Kelly Taylor maybe saw her (after dropping off her stoned parents), and it will turn out whatever was in the road had been there for hours and was either dead or needing help. Kelly (or whomever) will constantly drop hints and give looks directly into Annie's eyes that will eventually make her crack and admit what she'd done. That's just a guess.
Dixon and Silver are a big, wide yawning gap in the story line. The writers need to seal this off and move one. The audience has grown tired of the back and forth with the two of them and regardless of whether or not Dixon and Silver love each other, it's time to let it go. She should leave town with Ethan or something. Maybe that was him in the road, and because of his death, she'll realize she had feelings for him, and she'll be so confused that she will turn into a convent bound freak like the one at her Catholic school, who wanted to fast on her behalf.
If Kelly Taylor develops a crush on Harry and it causes a rift between him and Debby, it will be very obvious that it's merely a ploy to rock a boat on calm waters. Writers: Don't go there. Come up with something else. You've already done the "he has a kid with someone else, her job is too demanding, and your mother is driving me crazy" issues between them. Be more original. The audience of this show is geared more toward a teen demo, but they can handle something a bit deeper than a crush on Dad that gets Mom angry.
As for Navid and Adrianna, they're a sweet couple and she needs to be strong enough to move on from her decision to give up the baby. Strong enough to stay clean and stay with Navid. Just let them be the typical, happy high school couple for a little while. They can be the teen image of Debby and Harry. You can always mess them up later with what his father does for a living…perhaps Navid meets a woman that is too innocent for that business and falls for her. Maybe the sorority sister he met in the bar will have fallen into "the biz" and he'll get her out of it, thus causing a rift between him and Adrianna.
That's it for this season! That's the last of my ideas the writers' get for free, too!
This post was originally written for my work blog for DIRECTV.
90210 ~ Well, my goodness…didn't Jen turn out to be Naomi's evil sister? Jen betrayed her sister for so little a thing as throwing a party and obviously, for throwing in her face the fact that Naomi is paying for everything. The way she lied to Liam and then used him to hurt Naomi is really going to have to come back and bite her somehow. If the writers and producers don't let that happen, their audience will never forgive them.
Rumors are that Ethan will not be returning next season, so some people are guessing that whatever Annie hit with her car will be Ethan. Or they think it will be Liam because he's getting sent off to military school and maybe he was able to run away. Anyway, there is a big question of who was in the older model Mercedes with the WBHS sticker on the back? Whomever it was will have witnessed Annie's hit and run, they'll either report it, or use it to blackmail her. Or another scenario is always the "guilt them into turning themselves in" where someone like Kelly Taylor maybe saw her (after dropping off her stoned parents), and it will turn out whatever was in the road had been there for hours and was either dead or needing help. Kelly (or whomever) will constantly drop hints and give looks directly into Annie's eyes that will eventually make her crack and admit what she'd done. That's just a guess.
Dixon and Silver are a big, wide yawning gap in the story line. The writers need to seal this off and move one. The audience has grown tired of the back and forth with the two of them and regardless of whether or not Dixon and Silver love each other, it's time to let it go. She should leave town with Ethan or something. Maybe that was him in the road, and because of his death, she'll realize she had feelings for him, and she'll be so confused that she will turn into a convent bound freak like the one at her Catholic school, who wanted to fast on her behalf.
If Kelly Taylor develops a crush on Harry and it causes a rift between him and Debby, it will be very obvious that it's merely a ploy to rock a boat on calm waters. Writers: Don't go there. Come up with something else. You've already done the "he has a kid with someone else, her job is too demanding, and your mother is driving me crazy" issues between them. Be more original. The audience of this show is geared more toward a teen demo, but they can handle something a bit deeper than a crush on Dad that gets Mom angry.
As for Navid and Adrianna, they're a sweet couple and she needs to be strong enough to move on from her decision to give up the baby. Strong enough to stay clean and stay with Navid. Just let them be the typical, happy high school couple for a little while. They can be the teen image of Debby and Harry. You can always mess them up later with what his father does for a living…perhaps Navid meets a woman that is too innocent for that business and falls for her. Maybe the sorority sister he met in the bar will have fallen into "the biz" and he'll get her out of it, thus causing a rift between him and Adrianna.
That's it for this season! That's the last of my ideas the writers' get for free, too!
This post was originally written for my work blog for DIRECTV.
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