Hydrotherapy

Many of you know that I am a Licensed Veterinary Technician and that I work in a small animal hospital. That's a hospital for small animals, not describing the size of the building. :) I get to do all the fun things like dental cleanings, teeth extractions, blood draws, x-rays, prepping for surgery, monitoring anesthesia, placing IV catheters and much, much more. But recently, I've taken on a new interest of canine rehabilitation. A few years ago I took several classes on small animal massage and then this past year I have been doing hydrotherapy in the hospital. Its been a year now since we installed our underwater treadmill in our new rehabilitation/boarding/grooming building. It started out mostly for rehab with our orthopedic surgery dogs. It allows them to exercise and move the leg without having to fully bear the weight on the leg. Its much better than swimming because this uses all the muscles and range of motion. We've since expanded to back injury dogs(I've seen dogs go from paralyzed to walking on their own in a matter of weeks!) to overweight dogs who cant do a good workout because of their weight(this allows them to walk or run without the weight of their body holding them back), and also athletic dogs in training. Its so amazing to see the results. I get to do hydrotherapy twice a week now and it is so much fun. I also recently started doing massage at the hospital. Here's some pics of what I do and also a video of one of my first hydro patients, "Princeton". Also, check out where I work: Northwest Animal Care Hospital. The webpage is a little cheesy, but its cool.

Self Reliance

This months visiting teaching message was on self reliance. Self Reliance refers to many aspects of our lives: physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. but I have often found excuses of why I did not need to be self reliant in preparing my food storage etc. I've always had excuses. "I'm single" "I live in an apartment" "Doesn't BYU have food storage for all it's students?". But lately I have had pointed out to me that these excuses are not well founded and that I can start my food storage for my family. But where to start? Its seems so daunting when you think about getting together a years supply of food! So I am here to share with all of you this awesome website/blog that I have found that makes food storage simple and makes it seem possible. They have all sorts of tips and info. Its free, and you can sign up for these baby step email reminders. They send you an email every 2 weeks with a new checklist of things to do for those two weeks. They send you these every 2 weeks for a year, and after that year you will have a years supply of food storage, an emergency kit, an emergency plan, etc. I don't even know all the stuff they have cause I just got started, but I'm excited to be able to start this and not feel overwhelmed. Check out their blog. Its called Food Storage Made Easy.

Project Linus

Last week for our Relief Society Enrichment activity we made blankets for Project Linus. We made some fleece blankets, but then I also got a quilt top kit to work on at home. They have these kits with all the squares already cut out. You just have to sew them together, so the hard part is already done! You don't even have to finish the quilt, you just have to sew the top. Unfortunately, I'm not very creative so I had a hard time figuring out a good way for the squares to go together but I think it turned out pretty good. What do you think?

Biggest Loser

It has been brought to my attention that I am a giant blog slacker. I think my problem is, I don't want to post unless its something big, so I don't. But then when something big does come along, it seems like such a daunting task, so I don't. So I'm going to try to do better and post smaller things more often and also the bigger things.


So, 10 weeks ago my mom challenged us(Me, Nick, and my brother and his wife) to a biggest loser competition. The prize $150 to the winner, $50 if your spouse comes in 2nd and $50 to anyone else who also made it to the qualifying goal. (You had to lose at least 8% of your body weight in order to qualify). It was tough. I got the flu for a few days in the middle so that helped me out a bit. At the week 9 weigh in everyone was still a ways off from the goal, but with a 9 lbs weight loss for Nick last week and a 4.2 lb weight loss for me, we clinched 1st and 2nd place!- Giving us the maximum prize possible. Nick had a total weight loss of 27 lbs and I had 14.2 lbs over the 10 weeks. Now the trick is to keep the weight off. Also it sounds like we might try to start it up again after a 2 week break. Which will be good, because if I want to achieve my goals of a 1/2 marathon, a triathlon, and the STP this summer, I've got to get in a different shape besides round. :) Wish me luck, and keep me on track!