by jennae on March 8, 2010
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“Relentless” photo by RunnerJenny
Things have been more than a little quiet here. Activity came to a complete stop over the last several months. But if there were ever a day for me to end the silence, that day is today. I am a member of the Green Moms Carnival, and today’s carnival is about something that hit entirely too close to home for me recently: cancer.
I still don’t like to use that word. In fact, I almost never say it. I don’t believe my daughter has ever said it, and she’s probably heard it only once or twice when doctors and nurses have slipped and said it. In case I have you completely confused, let me reveal something that I wrote about a while back over at Green Your Decor. In January, my daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. I’m not a fan of telling the story over and over, but if you want to know all the details, feel free to read the post over at GYD.
Today, I’m writing less about the details and more about what I don’t know. What I’d love to know. Simply put, why?
Not necessarily why in the “Why my daughter?!” type of sense, but why leukemia in the first place. The doctors have told us over and over that they don’t know what causes the disease, and also that there is nothing we could have done to cause or prevent it. But that begs the question: If you don’t know what causes it, how can you be so certain that it couldn’t have been prevented?
I have been obsessed with all thing green for a while now, clamoring for more and more information about the chemicals that we put in and on our bodies every day and going leaps and bounds to try to avoid them when I can. So my daughter’s diagnosis hit my family like a sledgehammer. It is no secret that some cancers have environmental links. It’s the reason we avoid lead and asbestos and the reason that some people who do certain high-risk jobs with lots of chemical exposure wind up with forms of the disease that others do not. But clearly, my daughter is in a household where we take exposure to these types of things seriously. So what could we have done differently?
Even if we’re never able to determine the cause of leukemia, I know this: I will do everything in my power to make sure that she, nor anyone else in my family, ever has to suffer from a disease that could be prevented simply by changing the way we live. It’s easy to make excuses about why we can’t change, banking on the idea that we don’t really “know”, scientifically, that some chemicals and products are bad for us. Preying on people’s skepticism about whether “green” is just another ploy to charge more money for stuff. I, however, won’t wait until everyone else decides it is time to change. I figure the only way to protect myself and my family is to make the change on my own, hoping to be an example to others who want to do the same. And hoping that if enough of us do this, the rest of the world will eventually catch on.
Because if the doctors had told us my daughter’s diagnosis was the result of some environmental factor we easily could have avoided, I’m honestly not sure how I would have reacted…
by jennae on December 11, 2009
I have been wanting a dog for years. But for several of those years, our living situation didn’t make that possible. When we finally moved into our own apartment, my desire to have a dog was renewed, although my husband wasn’t too keen on the idea in such a small space. However, last week, he revealed to me that he planned to give me a dog for my birthday, which is next week. I had always wanted a Yorkie, but it was more important to me to adopt a dog than to buy one just because it was a purebred.
We wound up with the sweet little ball of fluff you see above and below, who we named Shiloh. We adopted him, though not from a shelter, and we couldn’t be happier.
The story
last Friday night, I started doing my research, trying to find a dog from a nearby shelter or rescue organization via sites like Petfinder and Petango. We did this with a couple of things in mind:
- We live in an apartment, and there are restrictions on the type of breed we can have.
- We also wanted a smaller dog for this reason.
- We wanted a medium-energy dog who would be able to live happily even without a yard to play in.
- We have a four-year old, so we had to have a dog who was good with kids and wouldn’t bite.
That wish list, small though it may be, proved to make our shelter search really difficult. What we found is that most of the rescue dogs were larger breeds, required a yard or had behavioral problems and weren’t recommended for kids. We did find one option, a Chihuahua mix named Laverne, but several other potential adopters had already filled out applications for her.
While we didn’t find our forever dog at a shelter, it wasn’t because we didn’t find dogs who were lovable. Their stories will tug at your heartstrings. There was a Chow puppy whose eye had to be removed because it was ulcerated. There was another mixed breed puppy whose owner threw him out of a moving vehicle and who, as a result, was very timid and didn’t get along well with people or other dogs. Seeing, and in some cases holding, all of them was a really heartwrenching experience.
They all really made me wish that we owned our own home so there would be fewer restrictions on the kind, and number, of dogs we could own.
We found him!
Later that day, fate would intervene though. We were on our way to go grocery shopping at Walmart, and spied a little boy holding up a sign for puppies. We headed over to him and his dad and little brother. Their dogs had six puppies, and they were trying to find a home for them. They had already found takers for three of them before we arrived, and I kept thinking I really wanted to adopt from a shelter. But when I saw the little puffballs he pulled out of the kennel, I was instantly smitten.
The puppies were Doxie-Chons, which means they were a mix between a Dachsund and a Bichon Frise. I cared little about his breed once I held him in my arms, though my husband did think to ask how big he will get (7-8 lbs. full grown). We want to be responsible dog owners, so once I got over my delirious happiness, we asked all the questions we could think of.
Was he a breeder? Are the puppies healthy? Are the puppies good with kids? Would they require a yard? Did he want an adoption fee, and if so, how much? And about a dozen other questions that escape my mind right now. Once we were satisfied that we would be doing a good thing by bringing home one of the puppies, we agreed to take one of the males, who they had dubbed Moonie for his habit of walking backwards (he looks like he’s doing the moonwalk).
Do I have any regrets? Not really, though I’d still like to go back to the shelters and perhaps become a foster parent until we’re able to own another dog permanently. But at the end of the day, I’m happy that we were able to give a dog a home without going to a pet store and who didn’t come from a puppy mill.
So next time you decide to get or give a pet, head to a shelter first, or adopt from a family who can no longer care for them.
