Almost head on? Meaning you were in an accident or just barely missed getting in one? Oh, I was definitely hit, it just wasn't fully head on - the front driver's side was harder hit. I was stopped and I knew that Expedition was going to hit me, fortunately not hard enough for my airbag to deploy, but hard enough to crunch the entire front end of the car. Yeah, this unemployment thing really sucks. It's the first time that my husband has experienced this - we've been married for 26 years. He was at the same company here since 1992, but they merged (actually more like they were taken over by) with another company in 2008. He had a job with the new company for 6 months before they decided that position could be eliminated. Of course most of the key positions were filled with the other company's people. Since then he has been a finalist for several positions. He recently went through very lengthy interview process with one company - 5 out of town trips, but a newly promoted manager decided that she would rather promote from within. Ugh! Fortunately we have been savers, and we actually have equity in our home, so we are doing okay. But if anyone knows of a position for a very honest and ethical person with an MBA and experience running a consumer packaged goods distributorship/sales/marketing team let me know! Oh, and we will relocate.

Epilepsy is a diagnosis of elimination- you rule out all the other possible causes of seizures and end up with epilepsy. With normal lab work, many causes are eliminated, however I would not be satisfied with just routine blood work in such a young dog. Idiopathic epilepsy tends to occur in dogs 2-6 years old at age of onset, not at 20 weeks. Routine blood work may be normal with portosystemic shunts. Your dog is just the "right" age to be affected by this congenital disease. I'd HIGHLY recommend a bile acids pre and post prandial test to rule out PSS. This is a condition that can be fixed, but only if it is diagnosed. If your vet already did a bile acids test, then I would be searching for other causes. It is VERY unusual for a dog that young to have idiopathic epilepsy. The process of getting a diagnosis may be difficult and expensive. It can include CSF taps, CT or MRI of the brain, tick serology, titers for distemper, and other things. But because of her age, I would strongly recommend pursuing diagnostics because some causes can be treated- if diagnosed. The other thing I am concerned about is the timing of the seizures. In dogs with epilepsy, the seizures generally occur when the dog is tired- when getting ready for sleep or just as they wake up. It is very unusual for a dog to be playing outside and have a seizure with epilepsy. I suspect there is a disease process going on that needs to be diagnosed. Another remote possibility is a heart problem. Because she is part Boxer, she could have arrhythmagenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (aka Boxer cardiomyopathy). This can sometimes look like seizures, but what actually happens is the heart starts pumping VERY quickly- so quickly that the ventricles cannot fill up with blood. This leads to less blood being pumped to the brain, and the dog passes out due to lack of oxygenated blood to the brain. Sometimes they don't pass out completely and try to get up which can be mistaken for paddling as with a seizure. If the arrhythmia continues, they can act dazed and confused even though they are now standing. This disease is harder to diagnose because you have to be present when the arrhythmia occurs, which doesn't happen all the time. Most dogs are placed on a Holter monitor, which is a 24-hour ECG, for a diagnosis. Sometimes careful auscultation of the heart or getting lucky at the hospital with an ECG can also help a diagnosis. If she wasn't part Boxer I wouldn't mention this as a possibility, but many a Boxer has died because they were being treated for seizures when they were actually having syncopal (fainting) episodes due to cardiomyopathy. Cardiomyopathy doesn't explain the tremors she had, though. I've had several clients with Boxers on seizure medications from other vets who were misdiagnosed- the meds weren't helping. But because the dogs were having episodes when active and not when sleepy, it made me think of this heart problem and not seizures. It's a remote possibility, but one that should be looked into, just in case.

Hi Mas: That was funny !! One runner-up in Biggest Loser stated: no matter how much one works out, if one doesn't change how one eats, it doesn't matter much. SO TRUE !! I put in 2 hours of snow-shoveling yesterday, and lost only 1/2 lb. on the scale. Compare that to 3 lb. a week, with zero work, when I drastically changed my eating a decade ago. For me eating while watching TV for the past years caused weight gain .. I mindlessly throw stuff into my mouth without thinking. So I took away the table in front of the TV, and put my Nordic-ski-machine, plus a Bow-flex. It works !! Now I eat slowly at the kitchen table, drink herbal tea while eating, plus lots of RAW veggies ... that really cut down my intake of food. Eating mindlessly, esp. in front of the TV, can pack on pounds. It didn't dawn on me, until I asked Jesus to help me with losing weight. Hi Frances & Damask & Jim: So glad to have all of you here with your strong faiths. To improve my kid's handwring, I copy & paste Bible verses from my Pinterest into Microsoft Word document. I chose a nice font at size 18, print in light blue, and made her trace that in black ink. One verse that she traced today: 2 Peter 2:19 "They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity--for "people are slaves to whatever has mastered them."" Also Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make our paths straight." Below is the link to my Pinterest with pics. of roses, plus Bible verses, recipes, etc. Here is a link that might be useful: Straw's collection of rose pics, Bible verse, recipes This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Feb 2, 15 at 15:29

Straw wrote: "Khalid: the advantage of rocks or pebbles is SLOW-RELEASE, so it's safer. If I don't like red-lava-rock leaving red iron-stains on the leaves, I just take them off... but I can't undo the damage of gypsum that drop the pH level with its 17% sulfur, or lime that shoot up the pH too fast. Taking off rocks or pebbles takes 1 min, compare that to hours scraping off cow manure .. the damage was done too fast & could not reverse that cow-manure-disaster. The advantage of pebbles/gravel is it's naturally released whenever acidic rain hits it ... so the release is controlled gently by Nature, rather than us foolishly dumping all at once. I take magnesium oxide daily with lemon juice, only 1/2 teaspoon is enough to have a MAJOR laxative effect in human. One Amazon customer complained of explosive diarrhea since he took 1 teaspoon. Rose is smaller than a human, so 1/4 teaspoon, or just a touch is enough to UP the pH-level ... it's very alkaline. Calcium is just the opposite: it's constipating, tense up muscle & contract heart ... versus magnesium is laxative, relaxes muscle, used as IV to treat heart diseases. Taste-wise, Magnesium oxide have zero salt, versus salty & bitter Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate). When I gave Angel Face rose too much gypsum (calcium sulfate), its leaves crinkled & curled up .. plus it lost the scent. Same with Bayes Blueberry: the foliage became ugly & dull. Too much calcium tense up and contract muscle in humans, which explains why leaves tense up .. and pucker up instead of flat & relaxed like normal leaves. OLDER leaves crinkled & curled up is typical of magnesium deficiency. YOUNGER leaves crinkled & curled up with yellow blotches is boron deficiency. Both are induced by too much calcium. Too much calcium also drives down potassium, resulting in less blooms & faded color. Calcium can be from gypsum (calcium sulfate), or lime (calcium carbonate), or hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) which is added by municipals to treat tap-water .. this form of calcium shoots up the pH of tap water, causing magnesium and boron deficiency. Too much calcium drives down potassium, thus roses become stingy with tap-water high in hydrated lime. Too much calcium also cause balling of blooms: petals bunch-up, rather than relax and open-up. Below is a picture of boron deficiency, manifested as crinkled & curl-up YOUNGEST leaves, too much calcium induces boron deficiency." God bless you Straw....you are a gem. So....... I don't have to go to a chemical store to buy MgO2. I can buy it from a pharmacy I guess but they are selling it in the form of capsules mostly and that is expensive to as it comes with a brand name. But I will get it today because day after tomorrow morning I will be leaving Islamabad for 22 days. So I must do it before I leave. BTW, also need to keep some Monopotassium Phosphate in my stock. Just in case I see a potassium deficiency in any rose (which I don't expect anytime soon). Thanks a ton Straw.