Month: December 2021

    Our home was so lifeless after our beloved dog, Champion, died. We decided that we wanted another pup right away and found one in Arkansas.  The breeder said that she would organize a ground transport for us that would have him arriving on Wednesday, November 11.  We waited impatiently for the call from the transport people, but when we did not hear from them, we called the breeder. 

   “Where is our puppy?” Ben asked.  Sheepishly, she said that he was still there in Arkansas.  The ground transport had fallen through.  Ben and I scrambled that Wednesday and were able to get me a flight to Bentonville, Arkansas for the next day.  I arrived in Bentonville Thursday evening with plans to pick up a rental car early Friday, and meet the breeder with the puppy at the hotel before 9 am.

   I left Bentonville with puppy in tow at around 9:30. It had been mild in Arkansas, but as I headed north, the temperatures dropped and there were flurries of snow and severe side winds that buffeted my car as I drove.

   If you have ever had a puppy, you know they need bathroom breaks frequently!  Shep, our new pup, was true to form.  We stopped every 2-2 1/2 hours, got out and ran around.  It was crazy cold, and the windchill was pretty bad.  I’d bought a couple of containers of nuts and a gallon of water, so the only stops were gas and potty stops – for Shep, and for me.  Over the course of the day on Friday, we got gas 3 times.  It was getting late when I noticed that my gas gauge was at around 30 miles left until empty.  There was a road sign that indicated gas at the next exit, so I exited down the ramp expecting to see a station at the bottom of the ramp.  Nope.  The sign said gas 1 mile to the left down a dark two-lane road.  I really had no choice.

   I pulled into the ramshackle convenience store/gas station and reached into my purse for my wallet…. No wallet.  Uh oh.  I was in the middle of rural Iowa – a very long way from anywhere… and a longer way from home!  Frantic, I searched my car.  Nothing.

   A man – a bit rough around the edges – asked me if everything was o.k.  “I’ve lost my wallet!  And I only have 30 miles of gas left!”  He talked me “off the ledge”, and then suggested we go inside the store where it was warm to see if we could retrace my steps.  My last stop was a full tank behind me – several hundred miles of travel.  We called one of the gas stations, but my wallet was not there.  We called Ben and he called ahead to Sioux City, Iowa to get me accommodations for the night – without I.d. required.  The man – an angel in disguise for sure – put $20 of gas in my tank and I again headed north.

   Ben was teaching on Saturday morning, so we agreed that I would be at Western Union in Sioux City when they opened at 8.  After an hour with the woman at the counter, we had made no headway – without I.D., she simply could not give me any money.  I went out to the car to sit while Ben got ready for his day.  Ben called corporate Western Union and they told him that he could go to the office in Kalispell where he could show his ID, tell them a secret question, and, if I could answer it, I could get a maximum of $300. 

   It dawned on me that when my friends are in crisis, I frequently reach out to friends I know who pray, to pray for the issue at hand.  I was most definitely in crisis!  No ID, no cash, no credit cards, in a city where I knew no one, a long way from any kind of help.  I texted quite a few friends and asked for their prayers. 

   About 10 minutes later, as Ben drove down our driveway, he was impressed by the LORD to call me and ask me to search my car one more time.  As he spoke, I felt the LORD say, “Look in your glove compartment.”  I reached forward and opened it up.  There it was!  (The strange thing is that I had not been in my glove compartment – and I always return my wallet to my purse after using it.)

   I had held it together – no tears!  When I saw my wallet, I burst out crying.  Such relief!  Such joy!  Such an answer to the prayers of my friends!

   As you might imagine, the rest of the day was spent praising the God I love – He Who hears our cries, and answers our desperate pleas for help.  He is the Finder of the lost, and an ever-present Help.  What a remarkable blessing.  What a joy!

References:
“What’s Making Our Children Sick?” by Dr. Michelle Perro, Vincanne Adams
“Is Roundup safe for dogs?”
https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/is-roundup-safe-for-dogs/

Champion died on October 29 at 3 pm. He was four years old.

We laughingly referred to our beloved pup, Champion, as our lemon (if he’d been a used car, we would have returned him for our money back!). Lemon that he was, we loved him to pieces and the loss of him has been huge.
When Champion was a pup, he had a kind of “failure to thrive” syndrome. He was slow to gain weight, and he had frequent stomach ailments. After a particularly disastrous encounter following eating the drippings of a roasted chicken, we took Champ to the vet where it was suggested that he might be allergic to chicken and that we change to salmon/sweet potato chow. He started eating that chow when he was one, and seemed to be much, much better.
At the end of this September (2021), Champ developed what seemed to be a bladder infection which was intractable to antibiotics. On the Saturday two days after starting a second course of a second antibiotic, Champ began vomiting and subsequently refused all food. On the following Wednesday, I had gone down to the orchard to work. Champ normally went everywhere with me, but he did not come. As I walked back up towards the house, I found Champ laying flat on his side. He did not move when I sat down on the grass beside him. I put my hand on his heart – it was like a wild caged bird trying desperately to escape. There was no steady beat at all.

Ben and I took Champ to the vet. He was in heart failure, and the vet told us that there was no hope – dogs in heart failure like this simply did not recover. She told us about research she had read last summer about young dogs dying of heart failure when they were fed grain-free food. She said that many of the grain substitutes in dog foods were of crops treated with Roundup just prior to harvest. Sweet potatoes were one of the crops mentioned as such a crop.
We took Champ home. We talked about putting him down, but a dear friend texted me with such good counsel – God alone has the number of the days of his creatures – and on thinking on that, we decided to let him die whenever it was his time. I sat vigil with him – just loving on him and talking to him and praying over him and singing. It was dreadfully sad, but such a blessing to get to spend those last two days with him. He died on Friday afternoon – truly a remarkable death at the touch of an angel.

We looked for the research by the FDA mentioned by the vet in which there was shown to be a strong association between dogfood which included crops typically sprayed with Roundup, and it was nowhere to be found. The only articles we could find were pretty innocuous, and were nothing like the article the vet had described. The article cited above was sent to us by a friend and was particularly helpful (and troubling).
It is troubling to realize that Monsanto, and those in agribusiness know full well the dangers of Roundup and the GMO seeds on which Monsanto holds patents – and that they seem very cavalier about their use. It has been known for a long time that there is a strong association between exposure to Roundup and cancer. It seems that there are other health implications when this poison is ingested through foods sprayed with it prior to harvest.
I have been aware of the dangers of various pesticides and have chosen for years to generally eat organic produce. Somehow though, I hadn’t made the association between the need for seeds to be GMO and the use of Roundup. GMO seeds turn into plants that will tolerate Roundup which leads to more and more frequent use of Roundup by those who are growing our foods. Here in Montana, I have seen the planes spraying the canola fields – they spray the fields a couple of days prior to harvest with Roundup as it causes the entire crop to be ready for harvest at the same time. Makes for a super-efficient harvest process – which makes for a more profitable crop.

The Sunday after Champion died, both Ben and I were a mess. The house felt so dead without him. I decided to look for a new puppy and found one in Arkansas. On the drive back to Montana, I listened to one of the books our daughter, Celeste, had recommended a while ago (cited above). I did not realize that this book was written to expose the impacts and effects Roundup and other pesticides are having on the health of our children. The author also brought attention to the increasingly frequent use of Roundup and other pesticides on our food crops. Monsanto has been busy developing more and more seed strains of various different crops that are genetically modified to tolerate Roundup. Monsanto has patented all of these seeds – and these seeds typically have to rebought each season – definitely a cash crop for Monsanto!

One of the authors of “What’s making our children sick?” is a medical doctor who has seen many children with intractable illnesses of various types – from rashes all over the body, to digestive troubles, to radical behavioral issues. Dr. Perro had developed a dietary and supplement protocol that seemed to work really well in helping kids for whom prescription drugs and other interventions had been unsuccessful. The most effective part of the protocol is to switch the child to eating a diet of only organically produced food, and to supplement with pre and probiotics.

Roundup was designated an antibiotic in 2000 – and just like other antibiotics, it kills off the normal bacteria that facilitate digestion and absorption of nutrients. Many of the children described in this book were having trouble with elimination. Many were malnourished as far as trace minerals and nutrients for which a healthy microbiome of the gut is necessary for absorption and utilization.

The dietary changes recommended by Dr. Perro brought about significant changes in the lives of the children, and in the lives of their parents.
Champion’s death, and all I have learned since, have brought home to me the degree to which our food production is messed up. While I cannot cite double-blind, placebo studies as to how Roundup and GMO seeds effect a population, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that would indicate that there is trouble at hand in the way our food crops are being produced. The profit motive seems to be the driving force behind the use of Roundup and GMO seeds. Has love of money so blinded agribusiness that they have ceased to see using a known poison on crops intended for human and animal consumption as wrong?