Becca's Dream

I just today gave you a link to Becca’s day program, RRAF. Well come the end of April they will have to close their doors if things don’t change in the next few weeks. Temporarily we hope but possibly permanently. Why after over twenty years of service will they be forced to close?

THE STATE OF ILLINOIS OWES THEM 118,000.00 DOLLARS IN BACK PAY FOR SERVICES RENDERED. We have heard Quinn on the news; the state of Ill has no intention of paying any of us. On top of that he proposes to cut what the state will pay to anyone who cares for the handicapped by 2.5% in next years budget. Also believe it or not, the state will make expedited payments to 31U or 31A type service programs IF they have exhausted all sources of income. This just doesn’t mean that you have zero in the bank but also that you have exhausted all types of available loans and are in debt up to your eyeballs and over your head.  Basically Governor Quinn wants every body to be as fiscally irresponsible as he and the other members of our lovely state government are.

So wonderful facilities like RRAF are being forced to shut their doors. You need to understand that the state medicaid money only funds two thirds of the cost of each person attending RRAF. Also that the state forbids RRAF to even ask us (the families) to make up the rest of the funds. Even still RRAF’s director, board, and parents have found ways to finish funding the program year after year. RRAF even had funds set aside for expansion of the program. They were looking into going residential as well as day. Those funds are now gone.They have been eaten away keeping RRAF’s doors open for this long while the State of Il. continued it’s whopping irresponsibility  to the tune of 118 THOUSAND DOLLARS.

I am only one small voice. Where is the outrage?  Why isn’t anybody using their influence to protect these who can’t speak for themselves. Oh that’s right all the people of “influence” are down state planning how to justify giving themselves another huge unnecessary raise after they fill up their favorite pork barrel.

Every year the same. The State of Ill takes every agency it can to the edge of bankruptcy watches while it drives some over the edge and then gives a sigh of relief that it will not have to share any of it’s funds with them in the upcoming year.  Do the state officials then share that funding amongst similar agencies who now have to take in those displaced by the closure of the “failed” agency? No they play politics as usual cut the funding for the service agencies still standing and say oh look surplus we can give ourselves another raise. Shame on them all.

I am Nancy Tally and this is what I see happening.

The Link to RRAF is on the new page “Places to find help and blessing”

Today was the first day of riding back outside. They found easter eggs while riding and placed them in corresponding colored buckets. Sure is nice to have spring back. I just asked Becca how warm is it? She said warm, over ten degrees.

Doc, her horse is twenty-five years old today.

Just found this unpublished draft. If I could loose some thing like this I am way to busy. Polished it up for you, there is a small amount of overlap with a January post but it still stands on it’s own.

There is very little good to say about the current economic downturn. But it did one thing for us. The wait list for equine therapy vanished and we were able to procure a spot with FTEA.

As we have shared before Becca loves horses even though her only exposure in the past had been five minute rides around a corral. Now she has a forty-five minute lesson once a week for fifteen weeks. What a stoic she is. How many people do you know who would go riding just a few hours after a root canal?  That was how her first lesson fell, right on top of a molar root canal.  She did not want to leave the stables and could talk of nothing but riding the whole night.  However, she said nary a word through her whole lesson and left her teachers stumped thinking she did not enjoy being there.

Through the years Becca has participated in Special Olympics; so have many of her friends, now they have a chance to give back.

On April 10 2010 @ 3:00p.m. 

 The STARS of College Church will be singing in 

“You Raise Me Up”

A fundraising concert for Special Olympics along with 

The NGOMA Group

Chicago a cappella  and

The GlenEllyn-Wheaton Chorale

Ticket info available at www.gewchorale.org or 630-415-3066

$10.oo per person or 5 for $40.00

I listened to practice tonite they are sounding good.

Think about coming it is shaping up to be a great time.

I use Word Press, this is default theme 1.6 by Michael Heilemann. I wish I designed it. It’s wonderful it allows even someone like me, who is struggling to learn, to have success. I needed to resort to this post to answer you all because I haven’t conquered my sites e-mail yet. Every thing is bouncing back as undeliverable. I have been trying to contact some of you just be patient with me I’ll figure it out sooner or later. Till then there is always more than one way to achieve a goal. But my e-mail is another days learning problem. Gotta go hope this helps.

Besides our training to certify as service dog handlers: our video of Becca is the largest single block of time /effort we have to accomplish.  As I did not know anything about putting a video together this has been majorly stretching for me and taking way more time than the actual training will. In order to train Becca’s SD specific to her  and her needs 4Paws for Ability needs a window into her life.  We have been video taping Becca for a year now. Sorting through it all and pulling out the things 4Paws is looking for has been a challenge.  They have four pages of questions. I am finding it is taking about an hour of video per page. Half is done. The interviews about what the family knows about dogs, past experiences good and bad, what we like and dislike in  a dog are all done. How Becca interacts with animals, her fears, is she appropriate or does she poke into eyes and ears or go for tails done as well.

They want to see what activities is she involved in? That took a whole hour of video in itself just covering her weekly, monthly and yearly activities. Pulling tons of 15 -30 second clips together so 4Paws could see the kind of crowds we would be taking the SD into, and to hear the noise levels of these situations.  Took a few hours after preparing that video to engage in my own little pity party. We do so much to keep her busy! It is no wonder I have no life of my own!

Well drop the pity party because now I have another problem. This third disk will not save and burn. Seems that I cannot put materials from three different cameras into the same video. Especially when some are avi and some mpg.   AAGGHH!!  Well I wasted a day trying to make it work and hubby has used another day to convert mpg to avi and guess what? That’s right it still won’t save or burn. Hm-mm, I thought I had a hard time learning to blog. Speaking about learning to blog my son updated my google browser and the next day all they side bar information on  Becca’s Dream was gone. I had entered her site through that log in for so long I had forgotten how  to get here any other way. I was locked off of the blog for a week. But that’s OK, I am learning more about my computer the web and my blog everyday and getting much practice in learning to control my tongue. Last week I was yelling at my computer and realized Becca was sitting at my elbow. Oopps! Time to reclean the mouth and make appologies.

I actually missed not getting time or beong able to log on to do this. But learning to make a video is good. So I’m grayer than I was four weeks ago. And Ok I have less hair because I have been pulling it out in frustration. My mouse is also worse for wear because of my frustration in fact I am surprised it still works. Some friends and I said it would be cute to have one that squeaks and scampers away if you smack it down on the desk top. Well so much for my technology woes. Excuse me for not working on the grammer today been down with the flu. But as I was instructed on how to get back onto the site I wanted to shout out to you all.

Becca is really into cheering on the Olympians. However, she believes doing so should be a team sport. She kept calling for her dad to come see this or come watch that. No breaks allowed for us while she was watching the games. She has even verbalised that we must watch as a team. It was interesting to see her understanding of competition during the Nordic combined. I watched as her body tensed up while she watched the end of the race and cheered loudly. Yeah USA!

HELP FOUR PAWS PROVIDE SERVICE DOGS FOR THE HANDICAPPED. JUST VOTE FOR RAFE!

Our Rafe is the newborn pup sleeping soundly under the  gray stuffed dog’s ear.

> From: support@cutestdogcompetition.com
> To: karen4paws@aol.com
> Sent: 8/16/2009 1:41:37 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
> Subj: Rafe is entered into Round 3 of the Million Dollar Cutest Dog
> Competition [1208]
>
> Rafe,
>
> You did so well in Round 2 that we automatically entered you into Round 3
> of the Million Dollar Cutest Dog Competition. All votes from the previous
> week are now zeroed out and you have seven days to get as many votes as you
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> are to send an email blast to all your family and friends with a direct link
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> your pet store wall, put an ad on your website. If you don’t win this week,
> don’t worry, there are still 9 more weekly chances to get the most votes and
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>
> Here is a direct link to your photo:
> *
> http://www.cutestdogcompetition.com/vote.cfm?h=31291EF331F002A00DFD683FC951E674
> *
>
> LInk to social networking tools which provide 1-click buttons to promote
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>
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>
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>
> Best of luck in the contest,
>
> Contest Support
> support@cutestdogcompetition.com
>
>
>
> ——————————
>
>