Waiting in the shadows

I'm not a poet by any means, but this seemed like an excellent title for a blog post.
Waiting in the shadows is one who is still grieving the loss of her mother.
One who will also one day grieve the loss of her father. One who sits alone and wonders if she will indeed spend the rest of her life alone. Without knowing "real" love.
The definition of real true love is accepting someone for who they are, not what they drive or how they live.
Someone who has been alone for most of her life because of her disability has found someone who loves her for who she truly is and you won't accept him, because
you want to see him for what he was, not what he has become.
Is he perfect? No, not by any means, but this world would be a pretty boring place if everyone was perfect. We both try hard to be perfect, but we always come up short because we both know that we're not perfect. We're human.

Rosco and Teddy

I adopted Rosco on January fourth of this year (20119) from the Detroit branch of the Michigan Humane Society.
He is a German Shepherd, Australian cattle dog mix. I started training him for guide dog work shortly after getting him by taking him in to all kinds of places to socialize him with people and to expose him to different kinds of noises for work later on. Once he reached six months old however he began getting sick and having other problems. I can't use him for service work now because he has a floating hip and floating knees and I am unable to afford the surgery to reposition the knees properly, so he is just a pet now. I can't believe where eight months has gone though. He turned a year old this past Sunday.
The fourth of September.
He has grown so much in the past several months. He has turned into a big baby. :)
I also have a chocolate lab named Teddy who I adopted in May and I am in the process of training to be a guide dog since Rosco is unworkable. Teddy is around a year old and is also a rescue from a shelter. All three of my animals are from shelters and unless I'm looking for something specific in a particular breed all of my dogs from here on out will be from shelters.
I train my own, and I started with Rosco because with owner-training you can teach the dogs to do many more tasks than any of the schools do. The schools who train guide dogs train for one specific purpose and that is the guidework.
Granted you can teach the dog other things once you get them home if you go to a school to get a dog, but thank you very much, my theory is starting from the beginning is much easier than starting after they are trained for one specific task.
Clickers make wonderful markers for training.
I have several of them because they are plastic and they can brake.

A letter to Mom no. 2

Dear mom,
There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about you. There's so much going on down here that it's not even funny.
I had to send the Braillenote in for service and now I'm playing catch up.
I read at church this afternoon in a Lenten reflections program.
At the moment I'm trying to get laundry done so that I can get ready to go to church.
I'm now at Melissa's learning to work with Rosco and he's ready to start the training for guide dog work. Charlie Brown is also here.
He sleeps with me at night.
Hi Mom,
Well I'm home from Melissa's now for good. I'll be finishing the training with Teddy myself because Melissa didn't want to help in the first place I don't think.
I still have Rosco, but his hind end is acting up so his days as a service dog are done except for doing things around the house.
I'm hoping to start doing inservice work where I'll be going to schools and talking to kids about what it is like learning to live with a disability.
We'll see how that goes.
I'm hoping to get together with Collette this week or some time soon. She's moving back to Lansing from Flint.
I haven't seen her in forever.
I'm going to post this now.