Love Cup

This morning I woke up with a cup full of love, then my alarm went off. My alarm stole love out of my love cup, that little stinker. As I drag myself out of bed, I feel a little love draining from my cup at every step, sloshing out of the sides like my coffee. As I drive to work the radio serenades me and my love cup fills a little more. My phone stole a lot of love when it decided to stop working and a challenging day at work punched a hole in my love cup that slowly drained it all day. By the time I got home, my poor little love cup was empty but I knew I could make it just a little bit farther because right threw that front door is something that always fills my love cup no matter what, Buster Posey. No matter what he is always happy to see me and his unconditional love always fills my love cup but what about Busters cup? 


I woke up with my cup full of tired love. My mom woke me up when she rolled out of bed and put medicine in my eyes. Momma left and my cup drained a little more. But then, thankfully, my cup was refilled when I got to run around outside and go to the restroom in peace. When I come inside, I did my trick to get my food and had a nice breakfast that made my cup overflow. After a little play however, Grandma and Grandpa put me in my kennel and left. In that kennel, my love slipped away slowly all day. But then something amazing happened, I heard mom come onto the porch and realized my love cup was about to be filled. She let me out and had me do a trick and she put medicine in me eyes and then she let me outside and my love cup was full as we started to play.

I first heard about the love-cup analogy in a class I took last year that focused on communication skills of a special education teacher. She talked about what drains our cups and those around us and how important it is to understand that other peoples cups get emptied. Most of all she talked about what we can do to fill other peoples cups when they cant fill them themselves.

Buster can fill his own love cup, don't get me wrong, but Busters favorite way to fill his cup is with a good game of catch. This is becoming increasingly difficult as time passes and his eyes deteriorate. He has a hard time tracking a tennis ball and as he gets going, his eyesight seems to deteriorate when he gets excited. When I first got Buster I looked into solution for this. I looked online and found lots of people saying just to hunt down those rare toys that make noise CONSTANTLY so they can be tracked auditory oppose to visually but they are SO expensive and fragile. Buster would break those things in a millisecond. In light of this I started looking for a solution. A month ago I was drinking some water and Buster stole my empty bottle. It made a bit of noise so I thought, why not chuck that? He found it instantly! Not saying much seeing how it didnt go that far, so I decided to put some rocks in it to way it down. I shook it a little to see if he would get scared and he LOVED IT! I threw it and so far he hasn't failed to find it :) He can hear it when in hits the ground so if he did track it wrong when it was in the air, he gets re-directed to its correct location! One note is to make sure the bottle doesnt have anything that could harm your pup because that bottle may get pretty mangled but overall this is a cheap and effective way to play fetch with a visually impaired dog :)


The photo of the day is not from today but a couple weeks ago on a sunny day with his fetch bottle in the bottom. Dont mind his gunk in his eyes, it had been a long play day with little time to clean but its all worth it to see such a happy dog. Hope everyone had an amazing week and remember to keep your love cup full :)

In the beginning....

Hello blogging community! My name is Melissa. I am an average college student working toward becoming a special education teacher. I have an amazing family that give me nothing but love, support and a little structure when I need it. Over the summer I have two amazing jobs, both of which have to do with my field of interest. My year round job is a care provider for a 14 year old girl with autism and I dont think I could love her any more then I do right now. She is an amazing girl and an absolute gem to work for. To give her credit, she does have some difficult behaviors but she is so smart, caring and talented that you cant help but forget about the bad. For 8 weeks over the summer I work for a camp called Autistic Community Activity Program (ACAP). It is an AMAZING program where Monday threw Friday, paired with individual assistants, people with autism ages 5 and up go into the community in peer groups and have adventures. Honestly I could never say enough good things about this program. I have an amazing life and I am so thankful for all I have.

Almost a year ago I adopted an amazingly huge 6 month old chocolate lab named Buster Posey. Buster is the sweetest, most gentle, loving pup you could ask for but he has a catch. Buster suffers from keratoconjunctivitis sicca (KCS) which is more commonly known as dry eyes. Dry eyes in dogs is caused by  many things. It can be bacterial or congenital. In Busters case we are not sure how it happened because he was the only one in the litter to have it. Bobbi (his breeder) is very supportive and a really amazing person. When she found out about his condition from his previous family she offered her full support but in the end, they didn't have the time for a medically in need dog so they gave him back. Luckily Bobbi found me and I offered to take Buster instantly. Soon after Bobbi started a non profit organization called Busters Vision which is aimed at educating owners and holding breeders accountable for their dogs. I encourage you to go to their website http://bustersvision.com/ and like them on whatever social network you like because it is an amazing program. I would love to talk about Busters Vision because it is a wonderful organization that is going to do amazing things but that's not what this blog is about. This blog is about Buster. My amazing, quirky and adorable dog who is slowly losing his vision and the accommodations we are making for him.

The end product of KCS is usually just mild vision loss but total loss can usually be prevented, in most cases.  Buster is not in the "most cases" category. He got diagnosed early and requires a lot more medicine than average cases and his tear production is still quite a bit below what it is supposed to be. The sad truth is that Buster will more then likely go blind and we are already seeing vision loss in the last 9 months I have owned him. When I found out (and truly accepted) that he was going blind, I started doing research for accommodations I can make for him and I was surprisingly disappointed. So, in the middle of dead week (terrible timing) I thought about starting a blog about Buster, his struggles, accomplishments and accommodations we can make for visually impaired dogs. Even though sight is not nearly as important in dogs as it is in humans, I still want Buster to love the happiest life any dog can have. I believe I have supplied this seeing how he is an extremely pampered pooch ;) But this blog will also do EVERYTHING on a broke college budget :) 

As far as first posts go this is probably fairly dry but in order to get to know Buster, you are going to need to know the back story. So, between my two jobs and busy life, I am hoping to pop in once or twice a week and share a story of my life, raising my visually impaired pup on a budget :) The picture below is Buster when he first came to our house when he was still under 100 lbs about 9 months ago (before intstagram made all my photos look good) He is such a little cutie pie :)

*Tid-bit of the week* Buster LOVES carrots and they are a very healthy and CHEAP alternative to commercial dog treats. Not to mention they are good for his eyes and coat :)