Avery's Bucket List

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Avery's Bucket List is an imagined "bucket list" -- written by her dad as though Avery, who is expected to die by age 2, will make it past that age and experience life's milestones as a healthy girl.


Here is the part I like most from their interview with CNN
"I try to not overload with too many facts about SMA," Mike Canahuati said. "I try to keep it as fun and lighthearted as possible within the realm that this is serious, trying to make people understand what is SMA and what my wife, my daughter and everyone who loves us is going through. 
"It's making people realize, 'Hey, my life is not that bad, I need to go hug my kid and I need to do something nice for my wife or my kid,'" he said. 
The couple are going to spend the next 18 months enjoying what time they have with their baby, who was born on November 11, but whose legs now don't move at all and her arms are showing less movement because of the disease.
"We could go around and cry all day long or we can enjoy the time we have with her," her mother said. "We have all the time in the world to cry when this is over."
Indeed, my life is not that bad.


Update from Avery's father on May 1, 2012


"Avery passed away yesterday sometime around 3pm due to pulmonary complications related to SMA.  In short, one of her lungs collapsed and she went into cardiac arrest." 



FOHA (Friends of Homeless Animals): April 28, 2012

Saturday, April 28, 2012
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Quite a cloudy day today without rain which was good to walk all these energetic doggies at the shelter. So we don't sweat too much. I got there around noon. There weren't many visitors but there were a bunch of new volunteers. It's nice to see more people come to help.

Since last week I missed walking Crissy I started with her. I bet she grew quite a lot during the past few weeks. Crissy was still a puppy. It's a bit difficult to put a harness on her but she's great to walk and to play catch ball with. She knew she should jump onto the bench when I tapped it. Several times she would stand and wait for me to pet or give her a rub or a hug. Such a cutie. Don't let the word pitbull scare you away. This girl is one of the smartest doggies I have come across at the shelter.

Crissy

I wasn't sure what I was thinking but I decided to walk these two boys, Roscoe and Tavish, by myself. They are about 4 years old and grew up together and now stayed in the same run at the shelter. Since there was no harness left at the run for Tavish I needed to get one from the office. These boys were too small for a slip leash. (A slip leash will strangle their neck. I left it on because I had no place to keep it.) So I learnt that there were dozens types of harness you can choose from. A bunch of volunteers greeting the boys excitingly. They were new to the place.

It's not too hard to walk them though there were several times that they wanted to go the opposite direction. Normally Tavish would be the one waiting patiently. They both were very friendly to people. They loved to be pet. Roscoe even stood on my lap (with all four legs) when I was trying to put a harness on him. 

Roscoe and Tavish

Tavish with Two Leash 

Happy Roscoe
Poor Bonnie. Her brother, Clyde, got adopted separately and went home early this week. I was almost in tears hearing that because I just walked both of them together last week. The reason is because there was no room left at the shelter from what I was told. (But they were in the same run...so I still don't get it.) I really hope they would come back and adopt Bonnie as well.

Bonnie is a very active girl and quite vocal when she saw other dogs. Dear Bonnie...you just need to calm down.

Bonnie without Clyde

I wish I could walk Tyler or Molly or Dooley but walking 4 dogs were really my max. I'll made up next time! I tried to walk five dogs in one visit once but my walk with the last dog wasn't very good. And just right before I stepped out I passed Montana and Savannah who ended in the shelter only because they're overweight. Montana looked shy and had very sad look in her eyes. Poor thing. It's not your fault at all but you ended up here.

So I left the shelter quite heartbroken today.

The SCAR Project

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The SCAR Project: a series of large scale portraits of young women surviving breast cancer shot by fashion photographer David Jay

FOHA (Friends of Homeless Animals): April 21, 2012

Wednesday, April 25, 2012
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Bonnie and Clyde (Actually it's Clyde and Bonnie in this case.)

Clyde tasting fresh grass while Bonnie mowing and rolling on it.

Sorry for the delay it was my busy weekend and week. This week my friend and I walked two pairs of doggies, Bonnie and Clyde as you see above and Jewel and Max. I also walked Tyler who has moved to a different cage this week. Oh man, he must hate the leash used on him. He was still trying to bite it off like last time I walked him.

Bonnie was a little bit more of an explorer while Clyde was just a kind gentleman. But they both were very vocal when they came across other dogs. shhh. Do you both know how small you are ?

Jewel and Max were super easy to walk...though their harnesses were another story. I actually put Jewel's harness upside down. ha ha. No wonder she looked funny. A senior volunteer helped fixing it. She also showed us how to help a dog breathing better when he/she had an allergy and had hard time breathing like Jewel. You basically use your finger hold/close his or her nose to force them to breathe through their mouth. After about 15 seconds they will breathe fine.

Anyway, don't forget to help FOHA, a no-kill animal shelter if you can.

Don't Spend Time Thinking about What We Don't Have.

Read about Annie Clark who was born without hands but just won a penmanship handwriting award.

Wish Upon a Wedding

Thursday, April 19, 2012
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Wish Upon a Wedding, A charity that grants weddings and vow renewals to people diagnosed as having fewer than five years to live.

A Story of Shelly and Jay

A Story of Bethany and Ryan

Just read every single word slowly...A Story of Bethany and Ryan

The article written by Laura T. Coffey for Today MSN

Prioritize Things in Life...correctly

Monday, April 16, 2012

Student can’t graduate because he helped sick mom.

How could the school put its rule above one's life ? What kind of lesson is that ?

A Heart Breaking Story this Morning



An update from MSNBC (April 17, 2012)


A loyal Lab who stayed by another dog's side after her companion was struck and killed by a vehicle on a busy California street was reunited with her owners Monday morning. 


Maggie came into animal control's care after she stuck by her companion, a golden retriever, as traffic rolled past just a few feet away. 


A passerby placed traffic cones around the dogs so drivers would be aware the animals were in the street and took video of the loyal act. The clip inspired thousands across the country. 


"Her display of compassion and loyalty is like no other," said Aaron Reyes, deputy director of LA County Department of Animal Care and Control.

24th Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup

Saturday, April 14, 2012
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The Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup is the regional attempt to keep the Potomac River clean. Every watershed around the river got cleaned this morning. Half of my office helped cleaning Upper Snakeden Branch in Reston. The water from Snakeden branch goes to Lake Audubon, then the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. If I heard the volunteer leader said correctly, we got 40 bags of trash and recycle from all the watershed in Reston area which took 2 full trucks to load them up. Isn't that disgusting that we got that much trash ?


Photo: The oily part of Upper Snakeden branch.


Photo: Trash we collect today. We found an engine and a piece of furniture dumped on the trail.

Here is the information from the 24th Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup website as of 5:30 pm April 14, 2012

Volunteers: 2705
Sites Reporting: 115
Sites Registered: 344
Tons: 54.72 tons
Tires: 483
Recyclable Beverage Containers: 56,000
Plastic Bags: 10,409
Cigarette Butts: 10,906
Top Brand Names reported:Pepsi, Deer Park, Budweiser

Several months ago Fairfax County found that our office neighbor had their sewer line connecting to the storm drain. That storm drain takes everything down to the lake nearby. There are a lot of parties involved in construction from architects, engineers, building inspector, contractors, subcontractors, tenant and landlord. How come nobody noticed it ?

Use water responsively, shall we ? So we can enjoy it as long as we live. Below is the photo of Lake Anne this evening. It is one of the five man-made lakes in Reston. It is pretty, isn't it ?

Undercover Boss

Monday, April 9, 2012

I came across this show today for the first time. I am just hooked and I watched two episode in a row, the undercover at Coors and Pizza Pizza. It's all about giving something back to the loyal employees who come to work and do the best they can. It's touching and moving.

You just have to watch it.

FOHA (Friends of Homeless Animals): April 6, 2012

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I loved this weekend. It's busy but I had a chance to do everything. I cooked. I volunteered. I made a new friend. I paddled on the Potomac for the first time. I saw parts of DC I had never seen before. Weather was nice. Trees were beautiful.



Crissy was as friendly and smart as ever. She loved being pet and playing catch ball. She waited patiently when I got water in a bucket for her. But she almost launched to another dog coming out from the run while we were just sitting on the lawn. The other dog acted a little bit crazy so I think she was scared. There was a visitor interested in her but unfortunately she didn't get along with their dogs. You will find home, Crissy!



I am sure Tyler had gained weight. I had a hard time snap the harness clip together. He was a little sad this weekend. He didn't play much and basically acted like a walking machine. Hope he didn't get sick. Above is the photo of his cage. His eyes always had begging look.

I made a new friend, Jane, this week just by walking Dooley and Martina with her. She had been volunteering here for a couple years. We always see her walking a pair of dogs by herself. Still not sure how she handled that!

In front of each cage there usually were a note about the dogs and sometimes a short story about their personality or their history. One of the dogs was given up because he ended up overweight and that was against the housing complex rules. I just don't know what to say.

FOHA (Friends of Homeless Animals): April 1, 2012

Monday, April 2, 2012
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There have been a lot of new doggies coming and going during these two weeks. I have been so busy but I decided I would make time for them this week. The trail was absolutely gorgeous with new leaves coming out and flowers still blooming. The weather was cool. All made walking dogs even more enjoyable.



This week I made a new (human) friend. Her name is Brandy. She has tattoo. She wears purple eyeshadows. She takes kick-boxing class and looks pretty tough. But she is super nice, energetic and love dogs very much. She would like to try walking a pair of dogs and we both happened to be in front of Dooley's and Martina's run so she asked me if I would like to walk them with her. Why not right ? I probably mentioned before that Martina needs to be walked with Dooley. She's very scared of people. To my surprise she didn't hide too far from me this time. It took her just a minute to come closer and I managed to put a harness on her pretty easily. But man! she's a different dog outside. She ran, jogged, led all of us through the trail. Then a senior volunteer asked us if we could walk Riker and Troi, the brother and the sister. So I also walked them with Brandy. Troi was sweet as ever while Riker didn't care much. She stopped playing a couple times just to came to us to be pet. You have to see them walking together. They're so elegant like royal horses trotting down the street.

I didn't have a chance to take photos of the four though.



I wanted to walk Miss Molly first but somehow her harness was impossible to decipher. So I moved to Tyler instead. (I am so sorry Molly.)



And Crissy is going to be my new favorite. This girl knows how to catch a ball and bring it back! She's a 9-month-old pitbull terrier. She has bright white color with ear tips and nose in pink. Her eyes are blue. A little bit hard to get a harness on her but the walk and the play was very pleasant.

If you're in DC area, please help FOHA. It's a no-kill animal shelter.