Service Dog Training by Patriot PAWS!

Patriot PAWS provides service dogs for disabled Veterans!

The mission of Patriot PAWS is to train and provide service dogs of the highest quality at no cost to disabled American veterans and others with mobile disabilities in order to help restore their physical and emotional independence. Patriot PAWS intends to build partnerships with state and community organizations to help develop and support this goal.

Patriot PAWS, a not-profit organization, trains and provides service dogs for disabled American Veterans in order to help restore their physical and emotional independence and to provide a service for other Americans with mobile disabilities.

Partnerships with community and state organizations help support this undertaking and allow Patriot PAWS to reach its overall goal. Each dog is customized to the individual needs of the owner with tasks as varied as finding assistance in emergencies and helping with laundry.

In addition to helping with daily tasks, one of the most beneficial contributions a service dog provides to a disabled partner is its life long devotion and unconditional love. This idea became reality thanks to founder Lori Stevens. Stevens is a certified dog trainer with more than 20 years of experience working and volunteering for several dog-training organizations. In 2006, Stevens combined her passion for training dogs with her compassion for disabled American veterans, thus creating Patriot PAWS. In 2008, Patriot PAWS partnered with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). This collaboration allows prisoners the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than their confinement and provides Patriot PAWS a much-needed volunteer base to train quality service dogs.

• Patriot PAWS was established as a not-for-profit organization in 2006.

• The mission of Patriot PAWS is to train and provide service dogs for the benefit of disabled American veterans and others with mobile disabilities in order to help restore their physical and emotional independence.

• In 2008, Patriot PAWS partnered with community and state organizations, such as the TDCJ.

• Founder and Executive Director Lori Stevens is a certified dog trainer with more than 20 years of experience and is a graduate of the Karen Pryor Academy. She has also worked and volunteered for several dog-training organizations, including Lone Star Assistance Dog Service and Texas Hearing and Service Dogs (THHSD).

• Each dog trained at Patriot PAWS is customized to the individual needs of the owner. Tasks, both physical and mental, can be as varied as finding assistance in emergencies, helping with chores and aiding emotions for those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and brain injury.

For more information on service dogs and Patriot PAWS please visit their website at:
http://www.patriotpaws.org

Please Help Sadie Rose Clifford Appeal!

Sadie Rose is 2 years old and fighting high risk neuroblastoma!

Neuroblastoma is a very aggressive kind of cancer that mainly affects little children and babies like.

On 8th August 2009 our beautiful daughter Sadie Rose was born, weighing a very healthy 8lbs 6oz. But in October 2010 aged just 14 months old Sadie Rose was diagnosed with a childhood Cancer called Neuroblastoma.

Sadie has survived front line treatment here in the UK, which has included an initial 70 days of Chemotherapy in November 2010, major surgery in February 2011 to remove her tumour which was located above her left kidney and wrapped around the main artery in the body, her Aorta. This was a life threatening operation but she came out fighting and was home after just over a week in hospital. Sadie recovered amazingly well. 

In March 2011 Sadie then had an intensive course of High Dose Chemotherapy to prepare her body for her Stem Cell Transplant. Sadie had her own Stem Cells given back. Unfortunately as a side effect from her High Dose Chemotherapy she developed a very serious and potentially life threatening disease of her Liver, called Veno Occlusive Disease (V.O.D). This caused her tummy to swell and she gained over 2kg in just a few days, this was due to fluid being retained. The disease took over Sadie's body entirely and she ended up on Oxygen 24hrs a day. The Intensive Care Team came to see Sadie and had told us that they would expect to see her in ICU by the weekend. Our consultant had prepared us for the worst. This was the hardest part of our journey so far.

However Sadie pulled through and was discharged from Leeds General Infirmary after 8 weeks.

Sadie had 3 weeks of radiotherapy in June. This seemed to go very well, so much so she didn't want to leave!!! However in July, Sadie started Immunotherapy which didn't go according to plan......and after just 2 weeks Sadie suffered a seizure and after an emergency CT Scan the specialist Neurosurgeons discovered a tumour on the right side of her tiny brain. The next day a 4 hour operation to remove the tumour was carried out, and sent to the lab for tests. Which showed that the tumour was in fact Cancerous. The Neuroblastoma had grown......yet again!!

Since July Sadie endured yet more gruelling Chemotherapy and after an MRI scan at the end of the 6 week course of treatment to destroy any microscopic cells. Results showed the tumour had in fact grown again.

In November Sadie Rose started radiotherapy. The last stage in the treatment plan is a course of 8H9 Thearpy.

Sadie and her family need all the support they can get,  please help them by getting involved in any way you can. Here are some ways the family has set up for fund raising.

There is a fund to help with costs of life saving treatment in America at 

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

The price for this treatment is £500,000!!!!!

Please help give Sadie the lifeline she desperately needs and deserves. 

To donate please visit: 

http://www.justgiving.com/sadie-rose-appeal

Or visit any Natwest Branch

Account Name: Neuroblastoma Children's Cancer Alliance UK

Account Number: 24196878

Sort Code: 50-30-05

Or make cheques payable to:

Neuroblastoma Alliance UK - Sadie Rose Appeal

and send them to:

3-4 Sentinel Square, Brent Street, London NW4 2EL

Thankyou is not enough

With Love & Hope

http://www.sadierosecliffordappeal.co.uk/default.html

http://www.childrenscancer.org.uk/

Freedom and the Internet, Victorious!

SOPA Act Dropped After Mass Protest!

The blockage last week of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act of 2012, is a tentative victory not only for net neutrality and changing definitions of intellectual property, but also an impressive display of new online organizing.

SOPA is the first of what will likely be several attempts to censor the Internet, under the logic of media's intellectual property law. Nominally, the act would have shut down offshore torrenting sites, a move which the FBI already took in part on Jan. 19, when massive file share sites Megaupload and Megavideo were shut down. Actually, the law would have the capacity to shut down or censor some of the most trafficked sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Google, as well as numerous smaller sites with much less clout and bargaining influence.

SOPA is not the last we've seen of the push to censor the Internet. As our modes of information access have shifted from newspapers and libraries to the vast universe of the web, law, especially intellectual property law, has struggled to keep up. It's no secret that record sales, newspaper sales, movie attendance and other hallmarks of our media-saturated era have plunged in recent years, and the industries have scrambled to save their bottom lines. SOPA and its ilk will not go without a fight.

The most interesting outcome, then, of the SOPA debacle is the massive backlash from the general public. Goaded in part by blackouts of popular sites such as Wikipedia and Reddit, millions of angry consumers signed petitions large and small to "save the Internet!" The sites in blackout, and even those that weren't, linked viewers to a place where they could look up their representative and send an email in protest, as well as sign a petition.

People's activist fervor, at least as exhibited through Facebook and Twitter, was overwhelming. Seasoned organizers might argue that anything done in front of a computer screen is not activism but "slacktivism"; yet behold, the architects of the bill have backed down and vowed to go back to the drawing board.

The utter criticalness of SOPA is determined by the means we had to use to protest it, indicating ever more clearly the Internet's omnipotence and almost crippling power in our lives. A censorship of the Internet would be a censorship of the people's power, through the means we in the developed world now use to express it.

The anti-SOPA petitions are a heartening harbinger of the massive quantities of fervor and activism, even via the Internet, waiting to be tapped. This was a large-scale version of the rapid-fire Change.org petitions that stunned corporations, such as Molly Katchpole's Change.org petition against Bank of America's proposed $5 fee for debit card usage. Katchpole, a 22-year-old nanny (and full disclosure, a former coworker of mine), collected 300,000 signatures through an online petition and the bank relented. Several months later, SOPA protests ignited the same kind of public fervor, just on a larger scale. Both protests indicate the ubiquity and power of online organizing, and both capture public distress at a time when banks and governments are overstepping their limits more than ever.

Attempts to legislate the Internet will not go away. The Internet is a relatively young place and as such is inevitably going to be reined in as the boundaries of authority shift with the meaning of intellectual property. Fortunately, the medium shapes the message, and the millions of signatures, calls and emails to our representatives indicate how the general online public can organize not just for net neutrality, but for anything.

http://www.smithsophian.com/opinions/a-victory-for-the-internet-sopa-act-dropped-after-mass-protest-1.2760787#.TynsX4FST3E 

Ohio Passed HB14 Stopping BSL Today!

HB14 takes the Pit Bull Terrier off the "vicious" dog list!

Today around 2:20pm, all hell broke loose across the pit-bull loving social media world. I was glued to my computer, watching the Senate tally the vote on HB14, a bill which would remove pit bull dogs from the definition of “vicious dog” in Ohio, and make many other improvements that would help identify and track dogs that had a history of aggressive behavior. I strained to hear the votes as they came in, and my heart leapt each time I could make out a “yes” over the muffled audio. When all votes were cast, the result was a 27-5 win for dog lovers and enthusiasts across Ohio, and for those who passionately work against breed-specific legislation across the country.

Fireworks went off, hurrays were shouted(and typed) and lots of congratulations were passed all around. I felt very proud of my state. After the goosebumps went away and the tears of joy were wiped, a common question circulated: now what?

The Senate passed a slightly different version of the bill from the one that was handed to them by the House. It included several amendments, some of which were semantic and others which further improved the bill. If you’re a policy nerd like me and would like to read a summary of these amendments, you can find them here.

Since both chambers of the General Assembly need to agree upon a single iteration of the bill, the most likely scenario is that the House will take up the amendments added in the Senate version, and then vote on it again. Once passed, it will move to the Governor for his signature. It will take effect 90 days following the Governor’s signature.

We’re currently warming up for an election year in which all of Ohio’s Representatives and half of its Senators will be up for reelection. It is critical that Ohioans keep the pressure on our legislators so we can get this bill passed before campaign seasons draws them away from the Statehouse and potentially hot-button issues like this one. It is true that given that both houses have already passed versions of HB14, the chances of it becoming the law of the land are very, very good. That said, I’m just not willing to rest my bets on very, very good chances. For the sake of dogs across Ohio, we need to make the passage of HB14 this session an absolute certainty.

To email your state representative, click here.

http://centralohiodogblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/hb14-passed-the-senate-now-what/