Tuesday 9 October 2012

Paralympics and Disabled Beings

It's very difficult when you are unable to do something because you are lacking in the necessary body parts. As you will know from my last post I was unable - or as humans call it; disabled - by being Cushinged and that made me lack energy and wee a lot and drink and eat a lot. I kept having to go to the vet for her to get the Cushing out of me and it seems she has managed that very well cos now I am too much un-Cushinged - it was supposed to stop when I was normal again but now I am a little bit the opposite. I've become a puppy again and have lots of energy, and I have grown a lot of hair back and want to go for walks a lot and jump around and, and... write all my thoughts to you. But it seems Emma got Cushinged too cos she kept telling me she didn't have the energy and unfortunately I need her to write. Actually she got Herpesed, which is very painful indeed and I wouldn't wanna get cos a Herpes sounds even worse than a Cushing, so I understand and forgive her. My other unability as a dog is that I can't write cos it's hard to hold a pen with paws or to type with paws - have you ever tried it fellow paw-beings? You end up hitting too many keys at once. You need to use someone with fingers to help you. So I have pet-stirred Emma til she finally said I could borrow her fingers and her brain, and as usual, dear readers, I hope she doesn't take over and start trying to correct me or put her thoughts through too - oh no, too late, she says pet-stirred isn't a word and I mean pestered, but if she knows what I mean I don't know why she can't just keep calm, carry on typing and leave me to it. We love each other loads really!
It makes me wonder how it would have been for any of the paralympians if their able-bodied helpers - for those who had to have them - had decided to correct them or tell them to do something else, when, even with the body parts they were lacking, they were highly skilled at what they were trying to do, just as I am highly skilled at all the things I try to do. I think being unable in some ways makes you more able in others. It's just like I always say humans have too much intelligence for their own goods. Maybe even too much ability with their hands and other parts to act on that intelligence and cause all sorts of chaos in the world to themselves and to others trying to live in it, including other animals and plants. But I digress - which as it suggests means digging around in all sorts of other things (the resses) than the thing which we are talking, or writing about, which Emma says I do a lot, but of course I do cos I am a dog and that's what dogs do, especially when they are trying to dig up something they buried to save for later. Getting back to the unable paralympians - some of them didn't have eyes or eyes that worked, and so another human had to direct them where to go, and that didn't work very well for those having to do long-jump - which is basically running and them jumping as far as you can in a pit of sand - cos many of them ran and jumped in the wrong directions and hurt themselves, or others badly. As my human mum Jane would say -  "that's not very sensible." A bit more sensible were the blind runners, who could hold hands with their guide who could see. That worked a lot better and they did very well. they all had to wear blind-folds to make them equal - in case some of them could see more than others - and the guides had to run at the same speed and just make sure they went in the right lane and right direction. I would have been very good at that job. Emma is laughing her head off - well not literally, that's her again and I've just told her that if she did that she wouldn't have a head and that's too much unability cos someone can't function at all without a head. Now she is laughing even more so I'm asking her why and she says cos I'd not have been a very good guide-dog for the blind runners at all cos I pull people along cos I go faster than them, and I decide which direction to go even if it's not the direction we need to go in. Well we'd win eventually!! You have to know the rules to break them as humans say. Yes, but you're not supposed to break them, as Emma says, cos then you'd lose whatever medal you won. Oh and gold medals aren't really gold - they are silver but painted gold, which I think is not very nice. It's be like getting a babybel cheese that has something that's not as good as a babybel cheese inside it - hm yes, that's irony... I'm an ironic dog cos that's what happens to me when I get my anti-Cushing pill... Emma's just said that IS like gold within gold cos it makes me feel a lot better. Anyway there is a problem for the runners cos who runs with a blind man runner. We only saw the women and they had to have men runners as their guides. It made us wonder who the men would have had - perhaps it would need to be someone like Ussain Bolt or Mo Farrah, who both ran as Olympians, who are fully able. I'd love to run in a race with Ussain - I'd win even though I have shorter legs than him - or maybe I wouldn't - the man, who is called the Blade Runner (Emma loves that film) cos he lost his lags and has blades instead, and whose real name is Oscar Pistorius, was beaten in a race by a man with longer blades, Alan Olivera, and Oscar said it was unfair and that Alan cheated. So maybe to make it fair in a race between me and Ussian Bolt, I'd have to have blades added on to my legs or he'd have to have part of his legs chopped off so we'd be the same height. My favourite paralympian is Ellie Simmonds. She does swimming. I don't think I've ever done swimming or if I did it was accidental. I don't like water very much. In fact I hate it when I have to go out to have a wee and it's raining, and I hate it even more when it's raining hard cos that scares me. And then when I have to have water on me cos Emma says I need to have a shampoo and cut, I don't really like that very much either, but she makes it into a game and tells me I'm a good boy and so it's not as bad as it was when I got dragged to the beauty parlour and bad very short back, sides, ears, tail and everything - so much so that Emma said she didn't know who I was though she was only joking really. And then recently she had to cut my hair even before she gave me a shampoo and threw water on me cos I was growing what she called dreadlocks. I don't think she understood that I was trying to look more like Ussain Bolt and Mo Farrah, cos they are black men and can grow dreads, but I'm a mostly white dog so don't usually grow dreads. Maybe she dreaded them though and that's why she took them off. No wonder I have trouble being a cool dog as I keep being given bad haircuts - though I better not complain cos then Emma will send me back to the beauty parlour and her way of doing it is far nicer, even though I almost always look a bit daft. Oh yes, she says I just look like I am! That's love for you :). Anyway, Ellie is like me cos she is vertically challenged, cos she is a dwarf. I don't know how she got dwarfed but Emma says some people just come out dwarfed when they are born. I suppose it's like me - I came out dwarfed too cos I have short legs like Ellie has short legs and arms and feet, like me with my paws, that sort of look too big for the rest of her. She is very nice and everybody loves her and she won lots of medals. When she won her medals Emma cried. In fact Emma cried a lot at the Olympics and then even more at the Paralympics. She said it was all very moving - all these amazing people overcoming all sorts of things to even take part and then some of them win, and that makes her cry even more. It's all good crying she says. And she and other humans getting very excited and jumping up and down while all these people did their running, and jumping, and swimming, and cycling and well all sorts of other things they do to entertain themselves. And in a way it's all a bit strange cos there are lots of signs up at the moment telling people to 'Keep Calm and Carry On' - and for a while in the summer that's not what they were doing. I found it funny to watch them, but like the dancing horses, I kept calm and carried on cos somebodies have to. Even though I'm too much anti-Cushinged, I still have very calm moments, when I watch my humans be foolish and funny... like me :)


Love and Licks, Ted and Emma XOXOXOXOX