Merry Christmas

Make a Smilebox slideshow

We are home!

What an experience! It was hard work and worth it all. We left 4Paws a a little after five on Friday and drove to Indianoplis and spent the night. Judy had an early morning flight back to Anchorage. She was such a blessing to us in Ohio. we could not have managed without her help. Thanks, Jude! Love you!

We met up with Julia at the hotel in Indy and she, Javan, Tobi and I left out around ten Saturday morning to drive home. Julia did the majority of the driving and we drove straight through. Depending on which time zone you were using, we got home around two or three Sunday morning. We arrived home on TX time which was two, but we were all still on Eastern time which was three!

Tobi Mesa is a perfect traveler! No a complaint of any kind from or about her! We could easily forget she was in the car.

We are all pretty wiped out today, but I am sure by afternoon we will have our energy back, (well some of it, maybe). Javan already seems to be in full swing! LOL

These are Sunday morning pictures.

Javan and Tobi on the first morning home. Grandpa had the tree up and decorated and we thougth it was beautiful! Tobi really likes the ornaments, took a few "No's" to not like them so much!

Javan, Amber and Tobi. Today is Amber's birthday and she came by to see us this morning. She is coming back after lunch.

Amber really loves my Tobi Mesa. I think Tobi really loves her, too!

Graduation....Yeah!

We made it. Here are some pictures from today. This is Tobi Mesa's foster family. They came to graduation and also brought us a book of pictures taken when she lived with them.






Javan and Tobi in their mortar boards.











Jeremy, Javan, Jennifer, and Tobi Mesa after graduation.
Jeremy and Jennifer are the trainers. They are wonderful.






It is late and tomorrow starts early so I am going to wind things down.

Thanks for the prayers and good wishes.

Vicki, Javan and Tobi Mesa

December 11, 2008

Well, formal training is over. All that is left is passing the access testing, signing papers and graduating. We are all so tired but it is good to be at the end of the road so to speak. We do our testing at 11:00 am tomorrow. At least we don't have to be up at 6:30 like all of the other days!
We plan on leaving as soon as graduation is finished tomorrow, probably around 4 pm.
I will post pictures as soon as I have more and have some time to do it. Thanks for all of your prayers.

So Sweet when sleeping!

This makes it all worthwhile! Javan has stayed in his bed all night every night except one. And that was about 3:30 AM when he woke up and found Tobi in the floor in the other room because his bed was hot and the floor was much cooler. He loves sleeping with his Tobi Mesa. And I love it, too!

One more day of tracking, and a visit from the vet. More practice on commands and then we will be ready for public access testing and graduation! It has really been an experience. We are all tired and ready to be home with our families and introduce our new family members to all of our friends.

God has provided what appears to be the perfect companion to Javan. We ask for His continued blessings and a safe trip home. Praise the Lord in all things.

Day 8...I think

WOW! Where to start. We have been going from 9:30-4:30 almost every day. We have tracked in wind, and snow and rain. Tobi is doing great. I am learning! We have done mall work, and inside mall tracking, learned all kinds of commands and tricks. Tobi knows shake, give me five, hight five, high ten, roll over and play dead. I just have to get the commands down to an art, lol.
Tobi does well on all of the obedience commands, but is still testing the water a bit to be sure I mean what I say. But she is a very easy dog to work with and we are so in love with her. She can be as active as Javan or she can calm him down. It is just amazing to watch her work even though she doesn't quite realize what she is doing with him yet. She loves the nuzzle and it has made him stop throwing a fit and start laughing every time. She is excellent in resturants! She goes down right under the table or if not enough room there right beside the table and she just doesn't move except maybe to repostition her legs so she can sleep. Javan does wear her out! She is very good on her place, so school should be no problems at all. Small group should be the same. We took her to worship on Sunday evening at a smaller congergation, about 250 members, she did great. One of the young boys, around 12 yrs I would say, had kind of a hard time knowing she was there, but Javan and Tobi did just fine.
Two more days of training, tracking and learning everything we can, and we do our testing and graduation on Friday. Then we will be heading home. I am more than ready. But I think about a week of sleep will be in order! I wish!
It is time to head down to dinner, so I need to get the dog and the boy ready to go. Things do take a 'bit' more time.
Thank you for your continued prayers.

Day Three

Just hanging out on tracking day number one. Tracking is fun! It was soooooo cold, but I got to give Tobi hot dogs and hugs and kisses when she found me! And we got to run back to the parking lot and then I got to go along on the next track to see how the dog works. Jeremy let me run beside him! I had a great day! .... Javan and Tobi

Tues night pictures

Day 2 of training

Wow you can do a lot of pack leader training when you don't have the children with you. We trained on a lot of stuff today, lots of sits and downs and also tricks. It was fun to have the twelve dogs in a down and just walk around and over them and they just don't move. Well, mostly they don't move, lol. Tobi did great. Tomorrow we start tracking....high temps are suppose to be low thirties. Should be fun. Who knows?
For some reason I can't get any pictures to load tonight so I will just leave it at this and hope to load some pictures tomorrow.
Javan's Aunt BrrBrr arrived today so she will be with us for a couple of days to observe and help. She gave Tobi a bath and had quite an experience. LOL


Vicki, Javan and Tobi
Judy and Amber

Tobi Mesa

According to Javan Tobi is the dog he dreamed about! So I think we have a great match.

We have arrived!

Well, we have arrived at the Homewood Suites and are mostly settled into our room. The staff here is fantastic! Just ask and it is taken care of. We met about half of our class at a small get together this evening and we are all so excited to get going in the morning and meet and greet our dogs. Javan is sound asleep so I am sure he will be up early. I will try and post on Monday night to let you all know how our meeting with Tobi Mesa goes. God bless and thank you to all for your prayers.

Mesa's new name is Tobi Mesa! Javan's choice.

Javan's Dog

Dear Javan,

Hello! my name is Mesa and I am a Goldendoodle. I am a member of the national Parks gang born to Allie and Hobo. My birthday is 11-9-2007 and I am a girl dog. I hope you do not mind and I sure hope you are not one of those boys who runs around saying girls have kooties! I am so excited you are coming. I heard you visited us and were actually in the same building with me. WOW you know what I think I felt you here! I was just sitting there in my crate and bam you came into my head and I was thinking it was THE Tuesday and you were here to get me. Well,it is only one more week! Next Tuesday it will really be THE day and we will be together! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo Mesa

Five sleeps until we leave!

Javan is getting very excited. He asks everyday do we go tomorrow? It is very hard to get across the concept of time. We are definitely hoping that we find out which dog he gets before we leave home. That way he will have a picture of the dog and a name.  He still says it will be named Toby, but if it already has a name he likes then we won't be changing it. Training will be hard enough without teaching the dog it has a new name, I have Javan all packed and ready to go, I think. But I haven't even started on me or the dog or the stuff necessary for class. I am sure I will be all ready by Saturday morning, though.  What choice do I have? We are all very excited and ready for this to happen. Thank you all so much for your good wishes, support, and prayers.

Countdown has started

It is now only 29 days until Javan will meet his Service Dog for the first time. WE are so excited about it and can hardly wait to find out which dog he will get. We have a billion things to do, still raising money for the trip, and working out the stuff with the school for both Javan's absence and for when the dog starts school with him in January. Getting supplies, such as Giant dog crates, yes we need two, one for home, one for school, food and water dishes, extra mats for school use, food, etc. It is a long list but it is well worth it. Also looking through clothes and trying to find some cold weather ones since it is still in the seventies here this week. I think it will be colder in Ohio! I will try to updte as we go along. I am not very good at posting to blogs, but I will try to do much better!
Good night all. May God bless you richly.
Vicki

Javan's Story

Javan was born April 25, 2002, weighing 8lb 11oz. He was a beautiful newborn but did have a couple of minor problems. They could not get him to stop crying for about half an hour and were unable to get him to suckle. He eventually calmed down, but feeding proved to be a problem from the beginning. At about four weeks old he was switched totally to a bottle and things improved.
By two months of age, Javan had been diagnosed with Asthma. He was on a nebulizer regularly and he hated it! He would scream throughout the entire 20 minute ordeal.
By 3 1/2 months of age, Javan had moved in with us, his grandparents, permanently. Javan was a good baby, but he was not a snuggly or cuddly baby.
He loved to watch Baby Einstein movies and would stare at them for the entire half hour that they ran. He was also a drummer. Anything and everything became his drum. He could keep beat to any of the music that he heard. Most baby milestones were on a fairly normal timeline. He babbled, cooed, and said mama, papa, and other names and had a vocabulary of around 25 words at 18 months of age. However, by age two he no longer had names for us and had a vocabulary of only five or six words. He no longer said much of anything at all. We first had his hearing tested...it was fine. Then he had speech testing...he was now 13 months behind at age 2. He started speech therapy with Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) and had another battery of tests. It was determined that he had sensory issues, fine and gross motor issues, fine being much more delayed than gross, speech issues, oppositional/defiant issues, social issues and obsessive behaviours.He received multiple therapies. He had play therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, psychological therapy, and family therapy. We also enrolled him in a pre-school from 9-2 two days a week.

Since both of us sign, we used sign language along with speech when communicating with Javan. This did improve the communication a little.

We did brushing, weighted blankets, swaddling, and other sensory therapies. We also did mouth exercises, Javan could not pucker or use a straw at age 2 and still has a problem with it at age 5. His sensory input just does not let him know he has hold of a straw and that he can suck on it. He still bites it to hold on to it. He also still prefers a sippy cup, and he eventually bites the spout off.

When he was approximately a year and a half old, he was drumming on the walls and ended up at a window which he broke cutting his hand in two places. He did not even slow down. He only cried when I tried to cover it and take him to the doctor. This past year he decided to smell of a cheese sandwhich grilling and burned the entire top and bridge of his nose before anyone could stop him. Same reaction, nothing.

On his third birthday he was transitioned into the public school system Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities (PPCD) and attended school for three hours a day in a special education class. Language and behavior were huge issues. He did not handle transitions between centers well, but he loved riding the bus to school and going to school. Javan moved at only one speed...FAST. He paid no attention to space or objects causing him to be very clumsy. He loved to be upside down, loved to spin and twirl, and fell and ran into things all the time. He also loved to be inside/under anythihg. He virtually never cried or complained when he would get hurt and didn't want to be comforteded. The majority of this has not changed.

When Javan had serious asthma attacks, he would be put on steroids! Take a hyperactive child and add steroids to the mix and you have a nightmare! He couldn't sleep and couldn't be still and all of his 'problems' would multiply and be many times worse. He would scream, yell, become aggressive and emotional. His feelings, which were easy to hurt to start with, would crumble at nothing and he would just meltdown. He no longer hates the nebulizer, but will ask for it when he has trouble breathing. He finally realized it helped him to breathe. To this day he calls it 'Space Monkey' and will ask for it by name when his Asthma is making him miserable.
During all of this the school district had their psychologist observe him. The report was that they didn't see any prevasive developmental problems, it was just a behavior problem and immaturity! We had already set up to have a full psychalogial evaluation done on him at a children's hospital. So we waited on that. In the meantime, Javan's behaviors continued to deteriate.

When we got in to see the specialist, after about 3 hours of testing and observation we were told that he definately fit into the Autism Spectrum. At that time it was labled as PDD-NOS (Prevasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified), and he was scheduled for full testing in a few months. He was started on a mood stabilizer, Seraquel, and checked every two weeks for adjustments to this medication. He was started on a very low dose and changes were made in very small increments. After about three months we all felt that we had reached a good level on the meds. Javan was sleeping through the night for the first time in his life. What a blessing that was.
At this point he was started on a medication for his hyperactivity. This also was started at a rock bottom dose and monitored very carefully.

Now that his behavior was under control, it was obvious that his problems were not just behavior oriented. He was finally toilet trained at 4 1/2 years of age. He still could not dress himself. That didn't happen until after his fifth birthday. He still has problems with it.

He had his full testing done in December, 2006, at age 4. It was two days of testing for about 3 to 4 hours each day. The results came back with definite Asperger's Syndrome, extreme ADHD combined, and Sensory Integration Dysfunction. There was a list of 43 accomdations that the school needed to make to meet his needs! We had a very long IEP meeting with those!

Javan flourished after the accomdations were implemented. He began to have actual language! Two and three words at a time. Just recently, he is using full sentences!

Javan has always had a stimming motion of his own. He streatches his mouth in to a big oval, opens his eyes wide, stretches his arms down to his sides and quickly opens and closes his fingers while wiggling them very fast and usually against his legs, and if he happens to be barefoot, you will see that his feet and toes are doing the exact same motions, if he is sitting in a chair the only difference is he puts his hands on top of his legs. If he is sitting in the floor, he rocks back on his spine so that his feet are raised off the floor and both hands and feet are stimming in the air. He has done this all of his life. I do not know if it is an autism stim or a sensory stim or a combination, but it is very much a part of him. He does it hundreds of times a day. Sometimes as often as 10-15 times a minute.

Javan craves friends. He will tell me so and so is my best friend, when in reality so and so doesn't want anything to do with him. He does not know how to play. Because of his sensory issues, he tends to play rough without realizing he could be hurting someone. Because of his autism, he doesn't read the situations and has no idea of the proper social interactions. With Asperger's he wants everything to be in order...his order...and can't handle it if others don't comply with his order.

Adults and teens fall in love with him, children around his own age want nothing to do with him and tend to make fun of him. He does realise when they are making fun of him and will tell me 'Gwanma, they are laughing at me' and then just collapse and cry unconsolably for half an hour to several hours. With Asperger's, kids know they are different, they just don't know how to do anything about it.

Javan loves animals, and he is looking forward to having a service dog. He ask me daily if today is the day his dog will come home. He desperately needs someone besides his grandparents and family who will love him unconditionally and be there whenever he needs to talk, or snuggle, or just hug. We are hoping we can complete our fundraising soon and bring Javan his forever friend home quickly.