Long time no blog

But I do have a ton of excuses, the main one being work. As in I actually found some temp work and I love it. I work with autistic children, which is something I used to do in the UK. Unfortunately the work finishes soon as the schools close for the summer. But I'm hoping to continue at the same school in the autumn. Fingers crossed.

Molly's training is going nowhere at the moment. We're still doing the clicker training but the next big step is yet to come. The samples. We need to collect the hypo samples but I'm not quite sure what is the best method yet. Some people freeze the (saliva) samples, while others use freezing as a way to cleanse the containers of older scents. Go figure. What I don't want to do is to start the actual scent training with contaminated samples. I have to be sure it is the hypo Molly smells, not something else, like my scent or the scent of something I touched before collecting the sample. Nor do we want her to react just to the scent of something else in Eli's saliva. This part has to be done carefully, it'll be more difficult to correct it later if we screw it up now.

The problem I had last month of not having the hypos is long gone. Last week has been torture, we've had countless hypos, mostly at night. For those of you not familiar with the greatness of diabetes, night time hypos suck. Children rarely wake up to them and Eli is no exception. What this means we have to set alarms and measure, measure, measure. And shove carbs downs Eli's throat when he's half asleep and not in the mood for eating/drinking/communicating. We use these fruit pouches which are easy and mess-free. They are like fruit puré in a pouch, no added sugar and around 12 g of carbs a pouch. It's easy to grab one from the fridge and squeeze enough in Eli's mouth to get rid of the hypo. Even I can do this without my glasses at three in the morning, with a dog jumping against my legs. Anything that requires chewing would be a no-no, as he tends to fall asleep halfway through eating/drinking. If all this wasn't annoying enough, we also have to brush his teeth afterwards as he has started to get cavities from all the diabetes-related snacking.

But worst of all is the endless worry. Do we let him go to sleep or do we stuff more carbs in him just before bedtime, just in case? It's impossible to find the balance and trying to figure out which is worse, hyper or hypo.
Slight hyperglycemia isn't something that requires urgent correction. But if it occurs frequently, it will cause problems later on, in the form of diabetic neuropathy, for example.

The recent lack of sleep has made me more motivated to train Molly to be there for Eli and to give us some comfort. Some days the mutt does seem like a great pain in the behind but then I have to remind myself that she is still a puppy. As she is such a small dog and pretty much fully grown now, it's difficult to remember how young she actually is. Our neighbours have a labrador puppy who is the same age as Molly and watching him bounce across the yard does remind me that puppies are puppies and maybe I'm a bit harsh on Molly. After all, for her age, she does behave very well. And whenever she misbehaves, it's usually when she's bored to death and decides that the best way to get our attention is to wee on the important lecture notes or to chew on the mobile phone some idiot left on the sofa. She is a dog, after all, and her idea of playing doesn't include dressing up. Running crazily in the woods and growling at mushrooms is a lot more fun.

Tonight I'm taking Molly to her first puppy lesson. Hopefully it'll be a nice experience for her, she's still very shy with other dogs. Well, shy might be the wrong word here, she barks at everyone and everything, usually with her tail between her legs. The closest she has got to the labrador next door is letting him sniff her bum for a fraction of a second, before scampering away, leaving the poor lad ready to play but not allowed off his leash. Not fair. Then she runs around in circles, wagging her tail and yapping away. She clearly wants to play but is too scared to do it if there is less than a mile between her and the other dog. The puppy class is ran by her usual trainer and I'm hoping Molly will find enough comfort in the trainer and the familiar surroundings to actually enjoy the company of other playing puppies. We'll see.