Some Long Awaited Answers

Alright, so Elijah from Miraculous Journey has asked me a few questions which I just keep forgetting to answer. Don't worry Elijah I'm not ignoring you, I just have this bad habit of forgetting to put something into a blog post.

So first you asked way back when if I was raising Hilly in the States or in the UK. I'm really sorry this took so long to answer. I raised her while home on Summer Break. My CFR found a transfer that just needed a few months to see if she could get into formal training and that was Hilly. So I took her on because she would either go back or be CC'd right around the time I would leave. We all know how that went. The only thing I wasn't really expecting was me wanting to keep her. I thought that since we would only have such a short time together that I wouldn't get all that attached, but alas, her puppy self pulled on my heart strings. Here are some pictures of the jackets for you.

This is a Guide Dogs for the Blind puppy jacket in the States.
This is a Guide Dogs for the Blind puppy jacket in the UK

This is the Harness that Guide Dogs for the Blind uses in the States

This is the Harness used by Guide Dogs for the Blind in the UK

We all have our different jackets and harnesses used and these are just for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Other Guide Dog organizations use different jackets and different harnesses.

Which brings me to the second question you asked about Hilly. I got her on June 10, 2011. So we're just going on 3 months together on September 10. Unfortunately my flight leaves back to Aberdeen before our 3 month anniversary. But we'll celebrate before I leave.

And now, you asked why I'm a vegetarian. It's for a bunch of reasons, but there are two main reasons. 1) I don't like the taste of most meats. Pork and Beef just never really tasted good to me. I would eat them when I was little but it was by no means my favourite thing to eat. 2) The way America treats its slaughter animals is appalling. What I find is that most people don't think about where their food comes from. I could never do that and I don't like the idea that most of the packaged meats we find in our grocery stores comes from animals that have been shoved into a cage far too small for them for their entire lives and have never seen the sunshine. The way Europe treats the animals they raise for food is definitely more morally correct. I don't care if anyone out there thinks that chickens and cows don't have souls or sentient thought or whatever. Every living being can feel discomfort and I feel that if we are going to nourish our bodies with their dead carcasses that would should honor and respect them. Being a vegetarian has actually helped a lot in the UK. Meat is a lot more expensive over there.

Hope that answers your questions Elijah! Please don't be afraid to ask questions. It might take me a while to answer them, but I get there in the end.