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Canines with a Cause

We are still waiting for the Insurance to make any decision regarding our claim. So we don’t really know what we are doing, where we are going, or when we’ll be there. But yet another possibility has arisen.

Canines With a Cause (CWAC) is a group that works with the VA here in the SLC area to match veterans with service dogs.   One of the Dr’s I meet with suggested I check them out because he “can’t recommend a service dog to you highly enough.”  He thinks it would do wonders for the PTSD/anxiety/depression that I face.  So I sent in an application and went to one of their orientation meetings.

The program has a goal to save three lives.  The first is the dogs.  They regularly visit all of the shelters and look for dogs to rescue.  They have an animal behaviorist who evaluates each animal for behavioral issues.   They say she has to say “no” much more often than she gets to say “yes” about a dog.

After finding animals that they believe can be trained appropriately, they move onto saving the second life, a female inmate at the Utah State Prison.  They work with the Dept. of Corrections to place the each dog with an inmate who can then start working with the dog and its training toward the AKC Canine Good Citizenship award (AKC CGC). (I’ve worked at the prison and am positive this is a desirable program for the inmates to participate in!)

The animals kept at the prison are transported to the CWAC meetings to work with Veteran’s, the third life saved by the dogs.  They hope to find a good match between veteran and the dog.  When they find good matches the dog is adopted and becomes the Veteran’s.

The CWAC Course has 3 separate stages.  The first one is basically a course training the veteran how to become a service dog trainer.  It is a 1x a week course for 8 weeks where the Veteran works with the dogs from the prison and learns how to train them and has time to bond with them.  If a veteran already has a dog they want trained they are welcome to do that too.

After this time, they hope that the Veteran has a well matched animal.  If not they can still continue on to the next level.  The second level is with the Veteran and his service animal and working with them as a matched pair to pass the same AKC Canine Good Citizenship award the dog has already been working toward.   This usually takes several months, but there is no time table.   You stay here for as long as it takes.

Once passing the AKC CGC test you move on to the third and final level; training to pass the Assistance Dog International service dog test.  This again is for as long as it takes to complete, usually several months.   But when complete you have a fully trained and recognized service animal.

So I’m thinking of doing this.  They say they expect a Veteran/Dog pair to take 18-24 months to complete.   One of the issues is that I don’t know if we will be here that long, or if we WANT to be here that long.  No matter what decision is made by the insurance, we could choose to stay here for as long as we want.  But we also want to either head back to MO or to move onto our boating adventure.

This is something I could start and receive the training and quit at any time.  If we go back to the farm then I would LOVE to have a trained service dog to keep with me all the time.  But is it worth staying here for another 2 years to do?  I don’t know.

And if we end up on a boat, it will already be crowded with 10 of us, so I don’t know if a dog would be welcome or not.  Might be fun to have around, might be a complete nuisance.

So for now I’m registered for the next class in a few months.  I’ll go through it for as long as we’re here.   We might make the decision to finish it and stay here until I’m done.  I might stop and move onto a Catamaran in the Caribbean.  (Capt. Jax ?) We’ll keep you informed.

I’d love to hear any of your thoughts!

 

 

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In Praise of Diversity of Thought

I had a several hour wait between VA appointments yesterday. I found myself an out-of-the-way chair and sat to wait. While there I was able to observe many veterans and VA staff as they passed by and I was struck with an insight about our need for diversity.

The veterans I saw (as well as those I know from elsewhere) largely fit a few stereotypes, while the VA staff largely fit into a few completely different ones.  (As with all generalities, they won’t apply to every individual; there are plenty of exceptions.)   And I was struck by the need for both today.

Due to the nature of the work they are asked to do, Veterans can be gruff, disciplined, hardened, unyielding, unforgiving, strong, etc.  They are trained for violence, uniformity is drilled into them, they’ve make due with cold food from an MRE bag; they’ll go THROUGH a wall to accomplish a task, .  They study military tactics and criminal justice.  They are who you want with you if a fight broke out.

The VA staff are largely not that way.  They are the people who are more compassionate, tender, merciful, willing to compromise, able to see the pain of others.  They are healers.  They want to save the world, they wear peace symbols on their clothes, they see beauty in variety, they sip latte’s from their Starbucks mugs.  They study social sciences and protest for civil rights. They run or call 911 when the fight breaks out.

But like a symbiotic relationship, both sets of these characteristics are good and desirable.  The veteran, trained for violence, keeps the world peaceful for the healer; their strength provides stability, safety, and security.  The healer works to put the veteran back together again physically and emotionally; they remove the sting/pain of the violence that the veteran has experienced.  They help the violent find peace.

My Facebook PicSticker on my Physical Therapist’s backpack

 

Without the violent/strong/brave the caregivers world would be unsafe.  They would be subject to the whims of the cruel and uncaring.  Without the healers, the world would be cold and ugly and full of suffering.  They help to show us the beauty that exists around us.

Again, not every veteran fits the description, nor does every healer.  There is plenty of overlap, but I feel the premise is true.  I think the two groups would generally have very different world views and sets of values.  You might say one group is described by the world “Justice” and the other by the word “Mercy”.

What I’m trying to convey is that as a society, we need both.  We need justice amongst us, and we need mercy too.  We need those who are strong and unyielding.  We equally need those who are tender and compassionate.  Without a sheepdog the flock of sheep would be destroyed by the wolves, but there would be no point in having just a flock of sheepdogs. It is only the combination of sheep and sheepdog that has any benefit.

There are limits to the value of diversity to be sure, and perhaps I’ll write something about that in a different post, but I wanted to express that I see the value in having several viewpoints by which to evaluate the world.  And I hope you can as well.

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Missing the Farm!

I don’t have much to offer on this today. Just that I’m missing the farm.  I’m missing the grass, the trees, and the gently rolling hills.  I’m also missing the sounds.

Jensen Farmland in MO

Utah is so loud. And crowded. And loud. From where I’m sitting I can hear at least 5 different conversations in neighbor’s yards, multiple pets, and about 10 passing cars per minute.

Now I know that that isn’t terrible. There are much louder and more crowded places. But compared to “home” in Missouri, this is extremely loud. From home I can’t even see another house in any direction. If 1 car an hour passes by on a Sunday then that would be unusual, but that car would almost never be heard because the road is on the other side of a ridge.

There are plenty of noises at “home” (not including my kids – their noises is consistent anywhere). But they are almost all nature based. The cows in the field can occasionally be heard; the frogs in the ponds make a beautiful symphony; the hum of cicada’s could put you to sleep (some years it could wake you from one!); the pigs grunts are amusing and strangely satisfying; the chickens make some noises as we watch them chase bugs around the yard but are only loud if the dogs decide to give them a chase; the ducks don’t make too much noise, and neither to the heron; I suppose if you listened REALLY close you could hear the turtles rustling the grass or slipping into the water.

So most of the noises at home are just more peaceful; I don’t have to try to ignore vehicles, conversations, or stereos. There is nothing wrong with it here in Utah, I just miss the farm!

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Choosing an Icon – Help Me Decide

 

I’ve noticed that when sharing my blog posts to Facebook, that there is no picture/icon next to the link. I believe that it is because I haven’t created an icon to load to the blog site (If I’m wrong about that, please let me know). I’ve found where to upload one to the blog, so now I’ve been trying to design something that I like.  Let me show you some of the designs I came up with.   I’d love some opinions!

 

I started off really simple.  This is just a letter “J” inside an oval.  Really simple.   Jensen Icon 1I toyed around with some different fonts and colors of course.  I’m not sure why I liked this font so much, perhaps because it reminded me of a fish hook and seemed appropriate if I’m trying to live on a boat.

 

This was the second attempt.   I just added a shaded box behind it to see how it looked.  It’s not bad.  I kept playing though because I wasn’t really sold on either of them.

 

This next one was my just a different color J.   Nothing fancy still.   At this point I was still reacquainting myself with PowerPoint’s design/draw options (I didn’t know you COULD draw/design in PowerPoint, but it was a tool I used a lot in Military Intel).

 

These were me adding a few icons from PowerPoint’s default selection.   I could make those just about anything I wanted them to be, but used water-themed icons here. They could be flowers, cows, or anything else.

This one was me deciding I wanted to get away from the oval entirely.  Instead of just the letter “J” I added the text boxes so it reads Jensen Journey.   Still kept the fishhook font (Algerian).

 

 

 

These next two are same fonts, but changed the background colors and added a gradient so they are darker on bottom.   That blue one made me think of possibly adding a boat near the top so it looked like the blue was the increasing  depths of the ocean.  Or possibly adding a fishing line that is attached to one of my J hooks.  I didn’t do it, so I can’t show it to you, but it’s a thought.

 

 

 

This one was me playing with that background of the three above.  I rotated the square background and leaned it just a bit.  I tend to like black and white, so this was my first one using just those colors.   I like it!

 

 

 

Here we have the same as the black one above, but using shades of gray.  I also added the patterned border.

 

 

 

Same thing here… just a different shade of gray.  It turns out there are at least 50 shades of it.

 

 

 

Here I made a significant switch.   I wasn’t sure I wanted the Icon/Logo to have “Jensen Journey” written out, and decided just putting a “J” in front of a cool background should work.

I couldn’t actually find a compass in PowerPoint, but I found the design in black and added the compass points myself via text boxes.  Then I went through a whole load of fonts before I decided I liked this one (which mimics the J I use when signing my name).  I liked the way the dark green stood out with the black background.

 

 

 

Here I decided to just add the blue background to the one above.  I thought about adding the gradient blue, and could still do that.

 

 

 

Here I kept the same design aspects but went back to the text saying Jensen Journey but with the cursive type J instead of the fishhook.

 

 

 

 

Just playing around with different background colors.

 

 

 

 

I toyed with different compass colors too, but decided black was best.

 

 

And this is the last one I’ve done.   I kept the black compass but put in on a gold background.  I kept the dark green “J” because I just thought it looked best and was easiest to read with the background colors.  I also stayed with the Jensen Journey text.

I did already save this as the blog “Icon” but you may see it changed occasionally.  I’m hoping that since I’ve saved it that when I publish this post and then share it to Facebook that this Icon will appear next to the link for you.

I also really liked the plain black compass with the lone cursive “J” and might decide that the text is cumbersome, so don’t be shocked if you see that one used here at some point.   At some point we’ll probably settle on one that we keep, but not yet.  These aren’t really hard to do, and I had fun doing them, so maybe I’ll do something completely different.   I guess that’s part of the journey!

Let me here some feedback on what you liked and why.

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Researching Boats

 

Wow.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the variation in boats, but boy are there a lot of different options out there.  And I don’t know anything about any of them.  And because I don’t know anything about any of them, how am I supposed to know what I should be looking for?  I don’t even know the difference between a boat and a ship… but there seems to be some disagreement there.  There is no right answer to what I should be looking for, but I turned to an expert for some advice.

Christa Prows and her husband sold their farm in Utah back in 1997 and moved their family of 7 onto a Catamaran and have spent lived on it in the Caribbean ever since.  The Deseret News had an article about them last summer that I came across on day 1 of my research.  I reached out to the author of the article and he put me in touch with Christa herself.

Now I’ve never met her, but she seems like a wonderful person.  Very gracious and encouraging.   We’ve exchanged a few emails where she gave me some advice, waylaid some fears/concerns, and has answer many questions.  She game me her number and said to call any time, but I told her until I know enough to know what questions I SHOULD be asking, I’d stick to email and hopefully avoid coming across as a fool.

Christa’s recommendation regarding a boat for a family our size was a Catamaran between 40-55 feet long.  That seemed as good a place to start as any… so I went out looking.  Now if you followed that link, you’ll probably notice the first thing that I noticed… Boats are expensive!  Now I didn’t expect to pick one up for my pocket change, but I didn’t know for sure what to expect.   What I found is pretty close to what I expected.  If you are going to buy a boat large enough to use as a house, then expect to pay about what you would for a house.

But I also wanted to look at other options.  Turns out the prices for traditional mono-hull sailboats are about as expensive as Catamarans/Mulit-hull boats, or possibly a little less.   But who said we have to have sails? Something like this would seem nice and I wouldn’t need to learn to sail.  However, further research tells me that I NEED to learn to sail… the power yachts are about the same price as those with sails, but they only travel about one nautical mile per gallon of fuel.  Which means that I’d be able to live on it, but almost certainly wouldn’t be able to afford to move it.  And since we’d like to move around… sails it is.

But what type? The answer to that depends largely on what we want to do with it, and we don’t really have an answer to that yet.  I’d love to sail the world, Julie would love me to forget it all together, and the kids just don’t want to be eaten by sharks (Kristie).   I think for at least a few years we’d be content to just putter around the gulf coast and Caribbean/Bahamas with possibly an excursion or two up the East Coast.   The biggest concern we have is safety, and so we’d hold to sheltered waters until we felt real comfortable, and the Atlantic (and Pacific) don’t really fit that description just yet.

So what will we do?  Not a clue.   I guess you’ll have to just keep checking back to find out.