When
I walk my dogs – I talk to neighbors - I ponder- I wonder - I reflect and
frequently I do not always notice things.
I
walk past the same houses twice a day and sometimes more frequently. One day I
saw a beautiful scrub. It had an
incredible shape and I had not noticed it previously. How many times had I
walked by it and missed the beauty of the fire brush?
In September one my
dogs experienced a new bump in his life road and faced a major challenged. Out
of the blue Schooner went blind plus he was diagnosed with diabetes and spent a
couple of days in the hospital – it has a bleak and tough week for us but
especially for him.
This
seemed to happen all of a sudden.
On a morning walk I noticed he seemed to bump into a fence he always
liked to walk near. On the next
day morning walk I noticed he looked a little confused and that he not only
bumped into the fence again but when we came home he just sat in front of a
cabinet and stared blanking at it.
When I got home that Sunday afternoon I could tell, for sure, my dog was
blind.
The
next morning I found a vet clinic with an ophthalmologist who could see him
that day. Who knew there were dog
ophthalmologists? While she was examining
him I told her that I really wanted him to have a blood test. What we learned from the tests was that
not only was my dog blind but he was also severely diabetic. Again, who knew
dogs could be diabetic? It was the
diabetes that caused his cataracts leading to his blindness.
After
his testing at the clinic he needed to be hospitalized because his diabetes was
so bad. (BTW dogs do not get diabetes from not enough exercise or too many
sweets – like we get it. Dogs get
it purely through genetics. It is
totally inherited.)
The vets kept saying,
“Didn’t you see any warning signs?”
I said it is hard to know warning signs when you don’t know what you are
looking for. I asked, like what kinds of warning
signs? They said if he drank a lot of water and/or peed a lot. Well, he did – but boy dogs do pee a
lot so I did not think anything strange about the behavior. I know he drank
more than my other dog but he is a bigger dog - I did not know that meant
anything. I said to them how would I know what to look for if I did not know
what I needed to look for especially if I did not think anything was wrong?
Now I can look back
and identify some warning signs. I now see signs that maybe had I seen them earlier and
knew what to look for previously, his health conditions might be different
today.
If
you would go back to a previous post on this blog cite (The Middle Way, the Balanced Classroom, June 20, 2010) I write
about my two dogs Lizzie and Schooner and how I was trying to find the middle
path on our walks since one would want to go one way and the other dog would
want to go a different way. Now I
understand why he had preferred patterns in our walks.
I
cannot move things around the house now otherwise he will bump into things and
it confuses his pattern paths. There are various barricades to prevent him from
falling down steps. I worry about
me falling over them and getting injured – so now I have to be more cautious. Our
walks take much longer now, which sometime really tries my patience.
These
are issues regarding his blindness but being diabetic also provides
complications. There has to be a
regular schedule for eating and giving him his insulin shots. He has to eat within a 12 hour
timeframe and he needs his insulin shots within 20 minutes of eating. This doesn’t
sound all that hard but it is – sometimes he doesn’t want to eat and although I
have figure out ways to give his shots with little distractions sometimes he
doesn’t like them and gets mad at me.
I have never lived such a regularly schedule life.
Schooner is lucky because,
Lizzie, my other dog helps him. She stays with him and rarely leaves his side.
If I leave the room for what she thinks is too long she will come to me with an
expression on her face sharing that I need to go check on Schooner. She is his little guardian angel supporting
her buddy.
Through
Schooner’s health our lives have all been
changed and we all have a different relationship. We have developed new
vocabulary with different phrases; “step down one, step down two, step down
three. Step up one. Favorite alley. Alley going home.” In some ways I have always been a
patient person but I am more patient now.
When
we take our walks I often ponder how most of us, every day, do not notice
things around us. Actually, most of our lives we do not see things that are in
front of us.
Schooner’s new
challenges also make me ponder how teachers and family members may not
understand why children may behave as they do. They have certain patterns of behaviors
that may be considered disruptive; maybe they cannot see or hear that well. They cannot tell us because it may be
the only way they know how to see or hear. They cannot always tell us why learning is hard for them, it
just is. Some students may be ADD
but it is not their fault if they are.
Like
me with Schooner, teachers
do not always know what to look for or even know that we should be looking for
something. So, we have to develop a new level of awareness with our eyes wide
open.
I have resolved everyday, on our walks,
I will discover something I have not previously noticed and I want you to do
the same.
I
want you to do so also through two lenses. One is the lens as an educator. For your reply to this blog I want you
to reflect on how teachers and family members can develop ways to look for things
even when they do not know what they are looking for so we do not blame the
kids needlessly for something out of their control. Identify three or four ways you can develop strategies of
observing student behavior patterns, possible indicators and what may be a
concern.
For
lens two, I want you to identify something new every day that we have class. It
could be something in your neighborhood or on the train or riding a bike. Write them down so you can remember
them and when class is over post them on your blog.
For
example, when I walk the dogs every day I have promised myself to see something
in my neighborhood that I have not seen before. Maybe it is trim on a house, or
a marking on a store front – now that I have developed this pattern finding
something new is not all that hard to do.
As
my dog struggles to learn his way around the neighborhood, the house and life I
also struggle to find my way in the world to help him. The old patterns of my life
and “our lives” have
changed since he lost his vision and became diabetic and we are creating new patterns.
I want to thank Schooner for he has made be a better person. Maybe he lost his
eyesight so I might better see signs that surround me and to look at the world
with my eyes more widely open. I invite
you to do the same.
