Lance complains about school

Tonight my brother(Lance) was complaining about school and how this professor doesn’t even give out study guides yet expects each student remember what is in about six chapters per test..My response:I went to school but I knew my limits and how frustrated I was going to get.Yes,I knew there was going to be definite frustration for me because of my disabilities academically which is why my parents never mainstreamed except once that I remember.They claim it never happened but I remember it.
However I don’t regret going to school and as a surprise to many I actually enjoy and love taking care of my loving companion pup Lacey 24/7/365 days a year.I have never once said I don’t want to take care of her.In fact I am so devoted to giving her a life of many fulfilling experiences I am willing and specifically told my parents if she should ever get so ill that you may want to put her down to rest I told them don’t.Let her live till the very life is out of her(her very last breath is taken on her very own but not until then.I want her to die at her home in peace when she’s ready.I know that it’s not for many many years and hope we have many more blessing moments together)

My abortion struggle,November 9 2002

Every year I live I struggle every day to fight past the battle of my abortion.As I know deep in my heart I shall never forgive myself as I know and back then I knew I was taking two precious lives who could have grown up with talents but perhaps not with the best schooling…I took my daughters’ lives over their father.It should’ve been the other way around but I can’t turn back time.If I could redo time I’d do it all over again.Honestly..This coming June my daughter’s would be turning 8(June 16 2003)…but one thing I would love to do is get back in touch with my baby’s father someday and see what happens if God ever unites us that is.Again not on my terms but whatever God has for me in terms of relationships is what I will accept.AND some may think because I follow the Duggar family on television may be the reason why I would let GOD give me X amount of kids but that’s not the case.It is because of the very fact I took two precious lives who could have already gotten to know God and I can never forgive myself for it,is the very reason I find each child special…But again if that is not what God has planned so be it.Bottom line for the rest of my life I will be fighting this battle and I most times will never forget it.Having an abortion is one of the worst battles I have faced more so than a man cheating,verbally abusing,physically abusing,sexual abuse,going through group homes,hospitals,foster homes,being in jail etc etc and the list goes on and on.

I just want to write this letter to my daughters and I don’t mind sharing it with the world.Again this is the reason I let the people of the world able to read this site so they know what I am about.I may not speak it or im to others but if you search my name you will find things you never knew or expected.

Dear Allyssasandrah & Shizuko,
This year is going to make 7 years since I “killed” two precious souls whose love is truly stronger than their daddy.It’s a struggle for me to fight this battle every year and every day because every few months reminds me of something to do with the two of you or being a mom but I know that in spirit I am still,always and forever your mommy.But I am doing good.I have fought a “short” battle of depression with my second ex fiance,Augustus Boadu, from Ghana who resides in the UK.Yet I overcame it.I am working on a Advance Healthcare Directive to limit the amount of healthcare I can recive.I will most likely do the same for a Mental Health Care Advance Directive.This year your maternal great grandpa,Tadao Akamine,died.He’s up in heaven with his two great granddaughters.He never knew you but I wished he did.I am sure he’s met up with you two in heaven though.I know that your souls are still alive…Your great grandpa was 97 years old.It was getting rough but he passed away in peace.I told him my goodbyes that morning and I am at peace with his death but I feel that he’s still with me and will never leave me.I had a wonderful relationship with him.I have a dog now and her name is Lacey.She’s sweet and smart.Wise and a rascal.She helps me get through every day even if it’s a battle she’s right there.I want you to know that mommy is in good hands and I hope with all my heart and soul that I will be with you someday soon.Your grandma is still in real estate and your grandma’s mom is still in a nursing home.I don’t talk to her.I cut off talk with your grandma’s family pretty much.
Loving You Always and forever,
Your Mom
PS.Your dad ,Romaine Thomas,is married to your step mom,Dhee Thomas.I never met her but she sounds like the type of step mom I’d want you to have.

A dancing dog!

Dogs can detect cancer by the smell of breath

They’ve got funny names for cancer researchers, like Captain Jennings and Tibbs. They’re also a little furry and have a tendency to lick their white-coated colleagues. But these canine lab assistants may one day make it possible to detect cancers early enough to keep them from becoming fatal.

The Pine Street Foundation, a cancer education and research center in San Anselmo, Calif., is hoping one day to train these dogs to sniff out, literally, early-stage ovarian cancer—a disease that kills two-thirds of the 22,000 women diagnosed with it each year, according to the American Cancer Society, because it is often caught only after it has spread beyond the ovaries.

In 2006 the foundation published a study showing it was possible to train dogs to identify, based on breath samples,which patients had lung and breast cancer.

Now the organization is recruiting ovarian cancer patients and dogs for a new study.

Nicholas Broffman, executive director of the foundation, says the dogs are helping to answer an important question that may one day lead to earlier detection of diseases like ovarian and pancreatic cancers, which are often caught only in very late stages: Does cancer have a smell?

Does cancer have a smell?
“Is there something about the breath of people with cancer that is different in people who do not have cancer?” Broffman wants to know. “Our goal is to identify what collection of molecules in the breath are unique to ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, and lung cancer, and develop a test to find those.” Using animals to detect disease is not new, and this line of research is not as out there as it may sound.

Diabetes is detectable, too
Dogs, which have been used for decades as aides for the blind or hearing impaired and as companions for the infirm, have also taken new roles in alerting epileptics to impending seizures and diabetics to low blood sugar.

A few dozen miles east of the Pine Street Foundation, in Concord, Calif., Mark Ruefenacht, who runs dogs4diabetics says the link between a dog’s smell and its ability to detect hypoglycemia is well-established. He’s been training dogs for 10 years to pick up the scent of diabetics on the verge of hypoglycemia.

“We don’t know the complete science here, but when blood sugar starts to drop, the body starts to kick out chemicals in the breath, sweat, whatever,” Ruefenacht says. “Those chemicals indicate a change. The dogs can pick that up. Low blood sugar has a smell; high blood sugar has a smell; even the rapid change in blood sugar has a smell.”

In diabetics, the presence of  ketones—substances produced by the body as it breaks down fat for energy—can be smelled in urine and on the breath when blood sugars are high. Dogs, Ruefenacht says, can pick up on other smells that humans can’t when glucose levels drop.

These chemical scents are what scientists at the Pine Street Foundation and the University of Maine, which is helping in the ovarian cancer study, hope to identify for ovarian cancer. The research is still in its infancy, but researchers are clearly excited about the potential—and they’re not alone.

In a case study published in The Irish Journal of Medical Sciences last year, researchers claimed that a family pet had recognized hypoglycemia in an elderly man who had never been diagnosed with diabetes.

“Dogs have a sense of smell far superior to humans,” says study coauthor Mortimer O’Connor, MD, of Victory University Hospital in Cork, Ireland. Smell is just one way dogs may detect a condition change like low blood sugar, O’Connor says; he also suggests that they may taste a difference on a person’s skin or sense changes in the electric or magnetic energy the body emits.

Looking toward the future
Scientists may be years from identifying the specific biomarkers that distinguish the breath of people with cancer from those without, cautions Broffman—and years more from being able to distinguish one type of cancer, such as ovarian, from another.

Even further in the future: Developing a mechanical device that can sense those biomarkers when someone breathes into it. “It would be great to have a Breathalyzer-type machine that could do this,” Broffman says. “Our goal is to identify what collection of molecules are unique to ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, or lung cancer, and can we develop a test to find those. Scientifically, this is very difficult.”

That’s because this wouldn’t require just detecting one molecule—which is difficult enough—but a range of molecules, Broffman says. “Together, these molecules smell like cancer. When we smell a rose, we’re not smelling individual rose molecules, but our brain puts all the molecules together and says, ‘OK, that’s a rose.’”

For a computer to accomplish that level of pattern recognition, Broffman says, the patterns have to be extremely well-defined. “This is the challenge, scientifically. This may why we never replace dogs. Maybe dogs will be always be better at this.”

Dogs can detect scents as small as one part per trillion—or the equivalent of a drop of ink in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, Broffman says. “No scent detection device on the planet that can come close to that.”

So for early detection of such diseases, scientists’ best bet for now has four legs and a tail—and may one day be known as the cancer patient’s best friend.

Help stop McDonald’s Cruelty now!

Target: McDonald’s Corporation
Sponsored by: PETA

In the slaughterhouses of McDonald’s U.S. and Canadian chicken suppliers, birds are dumped out of their transport crates and hung upside-down in metal shackles, which often results in broken bones, extreme bruising and hemorrhaging. Workers have the opportunity to abuse live birds, and birds have their throats cut while they are still conscious. Many birds are immersed in tanks of scalding-hot water while they are still alive and able to feel pain.

McDonald’s has the ability to end these abuses.

There is a less cruel method of chicken slaughter available to McDonald’s suppliers called controlled-atmosphere killing, or CAK, and it would cost the corporation nothing to demand that its suppliers use it. CAK would eliminate the worst abuses currently suffered by chickens killed for McDonald’s. In fact, a 2005 study about CAK produced by McDonald’s concluded that it is far better for animals than the current method of slaughter.

Write to McDonald’s now, and demand that it phase in the exclusive use of chickens killed by CAK by requiring that its suppliers switch to this method.

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Dear McDonald's Corporation, I was shocked to learn that McDonald's knows (through your own investigation and the experience that your European suppliers have) that controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK) could eliminate the worst abuses your chickens suffer, yet you refuse to require that your suppliers in the U.S. and in Canada adopt this slaughter method. [Your comment here] Please require your suppliers to switch to CAK immediately so that the birds they kill will no longer suffer broken limbs, abuse by workers, having their throats cut while they are still conscious or being scalded to death in defeathering tanks. Sincerely, [Your name here]

Dogs and 2-Year-Olds on Same Mental Plane

ccording to accumulating research, the beloved family dog is really a toddler with a snout and tail.

“Dogs basically have the developmental abilities equivalent to a human 2-year-old,” said dog expert Stanley Coren, who was scheduled to present recent canine research developments at the American Psychological Association annual meeting this week in Toronto.

The average dog can learn 165 words, although “super dog” Rico, a border collie, could understand 200 spoken words. Experts think some dogs can learn up to 250 words.

Dogs can count up to four or five and can correct you if you can’t add one plus one.

One dog apparently learned to “read.” Coren recounted the case of the canine who was able to “deliver” mail addressed to two girls, one with a short name and one with a long name. Although the owner thought the dog was actually reading, it turns out the canine was gauging the length of the name, not the individual characters, enabling him to deliver the mail to the right person.

Different breeds of dog differ in their intelligence, with border collies topping the list for working (instinctive) and obedience intelligence. The next six smartest are poodles, German shepherds, golden retrievers, Dobermans, Shetland sheepdogs and Labrador retrievers. (The third type of dog smarts is adaptive or problem-solving ability.)

“There are two extreme viewpoints when we talk about dogs,” said Coren, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and author of numerous books on dogs including How to Speak Dog and How Dogs Think. “Some tend to think of dogs as if they are little human beings with fur coats. The other extreme is to think of dogs as if they’re unthinking but programmable robots. My little beagle would then be a beagle-shaped bag, a biological equivalent of transistors and gears. The truth of the matter is somewhere in between.”

More and more, scientists are realizing that dogs can think and solve problems in ways previously thought to belong only to humans and higher primates.

Indeed, one recent study also found that dogs were like 24-month-old children, at least when it comes to figuring out where humans have hidden a treat.

Like 2-year-olds, dogs can experience fear, anger, happiness and disgust (perhaps at a human’s sub-par math skills), but not guilt. Humans don’t feel guilt until about age 4, Coren said.

That doesn’t mean they can’t make humans feel guilty. That desolate look when a dog’s human leaves the house is probably legitimate. “Dogs are pack animals,” Coren explained.

Dogs apparently can ponder the meaning of “dog,” in a way. According to Coren, they do have a consciousness of self, though not as complex as that of humans.

They also recognize differences among beings and are cognizant of others’ variable viewpoints and talents.

And they dream, as demonstrated through movements they make while they’re asleep.

Dogs can figure out how to get to the couch before you do and how to operate a latch or other simple mechanism.

They can also deceive other dogs.

Not to mention people.

Coren has both a beagle (ranked seventh from the bottom in obedience intelligence) and a cat. The cat is fed on the counter so the beagle can’t interfere with feline meal-time.

One time, though, the beagle started scrabbling around, digging at the kitchen floor. “I was quite confused,” Coren recalls. “He looked around and continued again, then he looked up at me. I finally got down on my hands and knees and he immediately jumped onto my back and onto the counter. He decided his psychologist father could be used as a ladder.”

“This presentation asks and answers some very deep questions about if, and then how, dogs might think,” said Bonnie Beaver, a professor in the department of small animal clinical sciences at the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University. “[But] there is always the possibility that generalizations do not quite fit the data or that the original data may have been weak. Serious students of dogs are advised to go back to original studies, lovers of dogs should view this with interest and leave a little room for doubts.”

Animal groups in court over Helmsley fortune

Leona Helmsley’s dog, Trouble, may be living quietly enough in Florida, but back in New York there’s a lot of barking about the way the late hotel queen’s millions are being given away.

Three animal welfare groups filed court papers Monday accusing Helmsley’s trustees of a “scheme to deprive dog welfare charities” of their share of her fortune.

The groups say Helmsley, who died in 2007, primarily intended to give her fortune to dog causes.

They say a judge’s February decision giving the trustees sole authority to decide what to do with her fortune should be thrown out.

The trustees say Helmsley did not intend for the charitable trust to focus on dogs.

Helmsley’s will named her dog as a beneficiary. The Maltese is living in Florida on a $2 million trust fund.

Veterinarians using stem cells to treat animals

Lucy the Labradoodle scoots along the ground to grab a bone.

At only 5 years old, she’s unable to walk, crippled by rheumatoid arthritis that has rendered her back limbs unusable.

However, her owners say she has improved. She no longer yelps or whimpers in pain, and she needs far less medicine than before.

Lucy’s owners credit a costly stem cell treatment, despite what experts say is a lack of evidence such treatments work.

“We didn’t think she’d live anywhere near this long, and I know it’s because of the stem cells,” says owner Carol Fischman, 57, of Vero Beach.

Thousands of dogs and horses with degenerative arthritis have had stem cell treatments, costing around $2,500 to $3,000 per procedure. There are no independent studies verifying their effectiveness, and some experts say such studies are needed to assess their potential.

University of Florida veterinarian Kristin Kirkby, who performed Lucy’s procedure, said that the outcomes on five similar treatments have all been positive. But that’s from owner-reported results, not scientific scrutiny.

Owners tell her their dogs have an easier time getting around the house and getting into position to urinate. Mostly, they just report their dogs appear to be more comfortable overall.

To get hard results, Kirkby says the university plans to start taking a pain inventory of each animal at the beginning of the process, followed by an evaluation and checkups afterward to measure changes.

“I think it’s an exciting field. Undoubtedly the future of scientific research is going this way,” Kirkby said. “It’s early on, especially in the small animal side, to know what the results can be.”

Vet-Stem, a Poway, Calif.-based company, is developing the stem cell therapy and began treating horses in 2003. It derives stem cells from fat samples taken from dogs and horses across the country.

The procedure has been used mainly to treat osteoarthritis, which involves loss of cartilage in the joints, but Vet-Stem is researching treatments for other diseases. Vet-Stem claims the therapy enables animals to replace cartilage and other tissue.

Since 2003, the privately held company has treated 3,500 horses and 1,500 dogs and plans to begin treating cats later this year. More than 1,500 vets are licensed to use the procedure.

Dr. Bob Harman, veterinarian and Vet-Stem founder, said it made sense to use these fat-based adult stem cells, which the body uses to create scar tissue and repair damage, to treat chronic disease in animals.

“Really, all we’re doing is harnessing the existing repair machinery in the body, concentrating it, and putting it right where an injury occurs, where healing is needed, to heal naturally,” he said

Adam Gassel has used stem cells to treat almost 40 dogs at his Irvine, Calif., veterinary clinic during the past two years.

“I was pretty skeptical,” he said. “I was hoping that dogs would just be more comfortable.”

But for about 25 percent of dogs, their owners report they are like puppies again, able to get back to normal activities, he said. Another 25 percent are able to stop taking medicines they were dependent upon. In all, Gassel said, all but 20 percent of the animals show some positive response to the therapy, according to their owners and the requests for pain medicine.

One peer-reviewed study by researchers at Cornell University, published in the American Journal of Veterinary Research and sponsored in part by Vet-Stem, found that tendinitis in horses was improved by injection of the adult stem cells.

Two other studies published in Veterinary Therapeutics found that dogs with osteoarthritis showed improvements in lameness after stem cell injections. Those studies also were sponsored by Vet-Stem and conducted by Vet-Stem researchers and other veterinarians.

Jonathan Slack, director of the University of Minnesota’s Stem Cell Research Institute, said adult stem cells from fat can become cartilage in a laboratory cell culture. Conclusive results on whether the stem-cell injection process actually makes new bone cells in animals don’t exist, to his knowledge.

“I guess from the dog’s point of view,” Slack said, “it’s good if it does work.”

Whatever the scientific merits of the therapies, Lucy’s owners say they would do it again for her.

She’s had her stem cell treatments through an IV three times, and the Fischmans want to give her a fourth one soon, despite the $3,000-per-procedure cost.

“I like the dog as much as I like my kids,” said Dr. Charles Fischman, 59, who is an immunologist. “People will spend more on their dogs than they will on themselves.”

Double the Love: Second Chihuahua Born with Heart-Shaped Marking

Toru Hanai/Reuters

It’s twice the love! A Chihuahua puppy was born in northern Japan this week with a dark patch of fur shaped like a heart. But the male pup, named Lovekun, isn’t the first: His older brother Heartkun, born from the same mom two years ago, has a similar marking to match.

Among the four recent litter mates, Lovekun was the only one to have the adorable little patch. According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, the pups’ owner Emiko Sakurada says that out of the more than 1,000 Chihuahuas she’s bred, Lovekun and Heartkun are the only two to have the special heart-shaped coloring. How lovely!

Lacey only needs one mat and not three?

I think Lacey was telling the family that she only needed one mat and not three to help her potty training.The reason I say that is she was pulling the tape off the second and third mats after we had put tape on the mats to hold it down because she was pulling it away from its’ spot.So far she’s doing good with only one mat.Am thinking is because the first mat we had it in a corner(upper left of the dining room)from the beginning.Just like her food:We started the food with puppy food+IAMS+Science Diet then I started giving her puppy food +IAMS without Science Diet but she would eat less.Lacey is too smart for a maltipoo but it’s good she tells us what she needs..