CLAWS New Years Resolutions

As the year winds to a close and the New Year is quickly approaching, the humans tell us that we are supposed to make something called “New Years Resolutions”. They have informed us that this is a tradition among humans and think that somehow we could benefit from this as well.

The humans explained that a resolution is something like a promise to ourselves to work on something about ourselves that we would like to improve upon. And here we thought we were all perfect? How do you improve on perfection? Asked that, didn’t really get an answer, did get a smirk. What could that mean?

Well, not all of our friends have agreed to go along with this odd human tradition actually. The majority of the birds say they have no need to change a single thing about themselves, so it is mostly we mammals.

First there is Rocky the raccoon. Well, as perfect as he is, he says that he will try to keep his cage a little more neat and orderly. Oh, and he plans to try to stop pulling the sheetrock off the walls. For some strange reason that seems to bother the humans even though he finds it very entertaining.

Galileo the white fox, says he will try very hard to work on getting more comfortable with the leash and on being in front of crowds. He still thinks that having humans come to him would be better, since that is how he is comfortable, but the humans say “we only do outreach”, so he is going to work hard to get more comfortable going OUT in front of crowds and enjoying it.

Razzle the red raccoon says he will work on keeping his cage more clean and try to stop splashing water out of his water bucket all over what the humans used to call the dining room. They say it is ruining their floor. He says he’s a raccoon, what do they expect, but he’ll TRY.

Dazzle, the black raccoon, makes the same resolution, but adds that he will also try to exercise a bit more, eat a bit less and lose that weight the vet said he needs to. He still says he’s perfect the way he is, his plan to look like a bear is coming along nicely, but for sake of peace with his doctor, he will try.

Gadget, the smaller of the two gray foxes says she is going to really put forth an effort to stop trying to chew up mom’s computer and all the gadgets that go with it. Especially while she’s working, she says its really not helpful for me to take her mouse while she’s working. Even if cords are like the BEST thing in the world to chew on, since the humans say it is not a good thing to do, she’s going to work really hard to stop doing that.

Gidget, the other grey fox, says she is going to work very hard to like Galileo so that she can move back in the house where she belongs. She says it was just ONE time months and months ago, she thinks the humans should get over it and she didn’t really hurt him anyway. BUT, she will work on proving that she can be the perfect inside fox. Though she does not promise to share mom with others.

Kabuki, the kinkajous has said that he is going to try to come out more, be more social so that he can go back to doing programs. And he’s going to try to make friends with Rocky the raccoon, so that he can, once again do World Procyonid Wrestling shows. He misses Pooka and isn’t thrilled that he has to train another raccoon, but he says, for the sake of the family, he will try.

Huffalump, the new bearded dragon says she’s going to try to work on her weight problem. Eat less exercise more.

Odo, the short eared owl says that he will try harder to work better with humans other than the love of his life, Gina. He does say this will be very difficult for him because, after all, she is the perfect woman for him, but he is going to try, for the sake of the family!

And last, but by no means least, Mortimer has agreed to go into a 12 step program for banana addicts. He says he won’t be giving up bananas all together, but he is going to try to be more patient when he is getting them.

So, those are our New Years Resolutions. We figure this is an ok list, because we have heard that humans RARELY actually stick to theirs, so if we try it and it doesn’t work, it’s really no big deal, right? I mean, mom was gonna lose weight this year and trust us, she hasn’t done that! Heehee…please don’t tell her we told

Happy New Years to all of our fans and family from all of the animals here at CLAWS, Inc. We hope that you all have a wonderful 2011!!!

Dear Santa

Dear Santa CLAWS,

My name is Rocky and I’m one of many animals who live here at CLAWS, Inc. Since my hands work better than most, I was asked to write a letter to you from all of the animals here at CLAWS.

First, we promise, we have all been very good boys and girls this year (one look at my little face should tell you how sweet I am)! We have educated many, made many laugh and been generally either totally cute or stunningly gorgeous (I am both). So here is the list of things we would like you to consider putting under our tree this year:

Mammals:

• Snugglesafe Heat Pads - these are great gadgets, you put in the microwave and hold heat for 12 hours


• Squeaky toys - don’t tell dad, but we love them


• Chew toys - ones that can withstand the largest of dogs


• Shiny things - this can include rocks from aquariums, old keys, anything shiny that we raccoons can put in water.


• Dog Beds - all sizes


• Tug-o-war toys - foxes love this game!


• Wooden Chew Toys


• 
  
  Coop Cup beds for like guinea pig sized animals

Birds

• 
  
  Bird Baths - the kind that sit on the ground AND the kind on pedestals, we need both


• 
  
  Bird Houses - big enough to hold a 5 inch tall owl, and some larger, like for barn owls


• 
  
  Table Perches - for all sized birds


• 
  
  Sturdy Leather - always needed for those things the feds say have to be on our legs


• 
  
  Suet


• 
  
  Suet holders

Others

• 
  
  Bat houses


• 
  
  LOTS of meal worms!!!!!


• 
  
  Clorox wipes - apparently we are a messy lot


• 
  
  Paper Towels


• 
  
  Magic Erasers - mom says they truly are magical!


• 
  
  Medical supplies - contact mom at mrsclaws@nc-claws.org for a list of these


• 
  
  Powdered Goats Milk - you can buy this at Harris Teeter, it’s for baby mammals
  
  Sincerely,
  Rocky Balcoona

The truth about rabies

This will be one of our only blogs with no photo attached to it. The reason for this is that, in our experience, humans do not tend to fully read and we do not want anybody to look at a picture and assume that the animal has rabies. We do ask that you PLEASE read this entire blog and help educate yourself.
While rabies, if contracted, is a completely FATAL disease, it is also a completely preventable disease if you educate yourself and take appropriate actions.
We felt it was time to write this blog because CLAWS educates with 3 types of rabies vector species, raccoons, foxes and skunks. A vector species is a species that has a variant (type) of rabies named after it; the variants are raccoon, skunk, fox, bat and dog. Yes dog. And prior to the US adopting an aggressive vaccination program, dogs were the largest reservoir of rabies in the US. They still are in many other countries that do not require vaccinations.
All variants of rabies can be contracted and passed by all mammal species, and all are given the same vaccine for prevention. So, do not be confused by the fact that there is a name for a particular variant.
Rabies is a viral infection transmitted from saliva to blood (bite). This means you cannot contract the disease by petting an animal or having it walk through your back yard. It is actually a saliva to blood transfer, which can only be caused by either a bite or by a rabid animal drooling into a gaping, open wound.
It is also a very fragile disease that lives only approximately 3 seconds outside of the body. So, finding a dead animal, whether it died of rabies or not, is not typically a concern. Since, unless the animal died within 3 seconds of being found, the virus is dead.
Any mammal can contract rabies, and EVERY animal that contracts it does die within 3 months of exposure. The reason this takes so long is that it can take weeks and weeks for an animal (or human) to become sick from exposure. The disease can only be transmitted during the “shedding” (sick) period, which lasts about 7 days. Once that time has passed, the host animal dies. Meaning, even if the animal contracted the disease 3 months prior, it only was capable of passing it to another for the last 7 days of their life.
We hear all the time “oh, it had rabies because it was out during the day” or “it had rabies because it was acting funny”. There are NO true symptoms of rabies. We hear “mad rabies” and many other things that people think are actual variants of the disease. These are just SOME symptoms that can be present; however, there can also be NO symptoms present at all. For instance, being out during the day is not at all uncommon for raccoons except during the summer. They are opportunistic animals/scavengers, who will be out when food is most readily available. The same is said of skunks. Skunks are crepuscular, meaning up at dawn and dusk, both times of day when it’s light outside! These “old wives tales” do not help the animals, nor the humans!
Here is a quote directly from CDC’s website:

“In 1950, for example, 4,979 cases of rabies were reported among dogs, and 18 cases were reported among humans. Between 1980 and 1997, 95-247 cases were reported each year among dogs, and on average only two human cases were reported each year”
This DRASTIC improvement is due to the aggressive vaccination program previously mentioned.

Note that 12 of those cases in humans were contracted while on vacation in countries that do not vaccinate the way the US does.

We get asked SO often, when we are out, especially with our raccoons “does he have rabies”. NO is the answer. All but one of our rabies vector species were born in captivity in USDA licensed facilities, which are required to vaccinate their animals, as we are.
Even though we are very certain that our animals are rabies free, we still do not allow contact with the public and our animals. Not only to protect humans (from scratches, not rabies), but to protect our animals from the mass panic that seems to be prevalent in this area.
Right now, in the US, yes, wildlife are the largest reservoir of rabies, however, feral cats run a VERY close second.
As we teach in all of our programs, if you do not know the animal, DO NOT touch it, whether it be wild or domestic.
If you are bitten by an animal that you do not know, please contact a health care professional immediately. As we said, rabies is preventable. If you get a post exposure vaccine in time, you will NOT contract the disease, even if the animal was rabid.
If your pet is bitten by an animal you do not know, please contact your veterinarian. Even if your animal is up to date on their vaccines, it may be advisable to get a booster shot just to be safe.
Much more information can be found on CDC’s website at www.cdc.gov

NOTE: All CLAWS permanent volunteers are vaccinated against rabies and get our titers checked every two years. This is NOT because of the wildlife we deal with, but because of some of the exotic species we rescue.

Pooka's Life with us

Pooka was brought to us in late November, very late at night. The people who asked us to take him said they had been raising a litter of four and this was the last one still living. They had kept them in a wooden box in a goat pen and fed them human milk once a day. No baby can survive on one feeding a day and human milk isn’t good for any animals, it isn’t even good for human babies under the age of one. They left him with us because they said they were tired of his crying.
The poor, tiny, sickly and filthy baby was handed to us and the people drove off, never contacting us again to see how he was.
He was crying pitifully and so filthy, we could not tell if he was male or female! After warming him up and feeding him, we weighed him. He was so tiny! He weighed 15 ounces. By the end of November, baby raccoons should weigh between 10 and 15 pounds. I made a very late night call to our vet, who said to bring him in first thing in the morning.
At the vet’s office, we cleaned him, tested him for distemper and determined that he was a boy and that his little body was starving to death. The vet was skeptical as to whether or not he would even survive.
We all immediately fell madly in love with this little darling, and worked very hard to ensure that he would not only make it, but become healthy! He began to grow and get very attached to us as well. He “helped” decorate our Christmas tree and by January he weighed a whopping 5 pounds. We decided to go ahead and neuter him, agreeing with the vet that he’d probably never grow large enough to safely survive in the wild.
We named him Pooka and he very quickly became the love of my life! I won’t say he was spoiled, since anybody who had gone through what he did deserved anything that could be provided for him and make him happy!
Soon after his surgery, Pooka began to grow, and by the time it was over, he was a whopping 29 pounds. We always said he didn’t grow until he was sure he wasn’t leaving.
He was raised around a lot of children, both my own children and those of my friends. He had his favorite games, one of which was sneaking up behind a small child, standing on his hind legs and calmly putting his hand on their shoulder. When the kids would jump, both Pooka and the child would laugh! He also loved playing “peek-a-coon”, which meant climbing quietly over the back of the couch and pouncing on the nearest unsuspecting head. LOL, He loved this game!
Pooka always had some issues from his “early childhood”. He was terrified of going outside unless I was with him. So, he stayed inside most of the time, but we did build him a play cage outside with a pool to play in the summer. I can’t count the number of times I had my clothing decorated with muddy raccoon paw prints.
Pooka started doing programs to educate children by the time he was a year old. He LOVED going to what he called “The People Zoo” and seeing the kids. He never did quite understand why he wasn’t allowed to get out of his show cage and play with them though. But, we had to be very careful so that the state would not say he had hurt anybody. If he knew we were leaving for a program and he wasn’t going, he would cry. When he saw his show cage, he would get excited. Even though he got car sick every time he was in the car, he still loved his visits with humans. He was wonderful at showing everybody just how great raccoons are at climbing and using their hands.
For the next 7 years, Pooka saw thousands and thousands of people. And here at home, he brought joy to our lives daily. If I got hurt, he felt it was always his job to make it better. Even old injuries that I’d forgotten about, he would fixate on and lick, trying to fix it. If he saw me cry, he would put a hand on each side of my face and lick until I laughed. He hated seeing anybody upset.
His best friend was a 6 pound, white Chihuahua. They would look like they were wrestling on a pro-wrestling team and people were always amazed that the dog was never hurt! During programs, we always put the kinkajous in his cage to show “World Procyonid Wrestling”. Pooka never hurt another living creature! He would wrestle, but he knew how to be careful, he knew his own strength.
At the vet’s office, he was an angel. I would hold him on my hip and the vets could give him shots and do his entire checkup with no worries.
Sadly, at the age of 8, Pooka stopped eating, but never complained. Within four days, it was determined that he had liver cancer and he died in my arms.
Pooka is the reason we started CLAWS and his memory is the reason we will continue to educate people about all of the species that we can. Especially those that are so misunderstood, like Pooka’s cousins in the raccoon family.
Nobody will ever replace Pooka, he was absolutely one of a kind. And we all feel honored to have shared his, too short, life with him.

Help me get my Magic Room!

Hi ya Tocho Tribal Nation! I thought it was about time I made my debut in the CLAWS blog world. After all, it’s not fair to keep all this cuteness to myself! Check out my photo album if you haven’t already. I am so cute they had to give me my own album ‘cuz they can’t stop takin’ pictures of me. I’m too sexy for my spots!

For those who don’t know me (you MUST be new!), here’s the Short Attention Span Theater version of my story. Somethin’ happened to my wild mom. Me and my siblings were sent to a nice lady. All my siblings died. Nice lady sends me to Kindra. Kindra takes me to a vet who says I have some kind of wobbly thing (editors note: cerebelar hypoplasia) and IF I live I can’t be wild ‘cuz I’ll always have the wobblys and could fall and hurt myself while jumpin’ and stuff. But somethin’ else was wrong ‘cuz I kept gettin’ sick and losin’ weight. Mommy K sat up with me many nights tryin’ to make me better. She was afraid I was gonna die. But I am a fighter! Turned out I don’t digest my food right and will need enzymes (they taste nasty and I don’t like them) and vitamins every day for the rest of my life. (Mommy K says they are still tryin’ to work out the exact doses, but I hope this is it, ‘cuz bein’ sick sucks.) This means I will have to stay at CLAWS. That works for me since I have these people wrapped ‘round my very large kitty paws and I have a bobdog.

That brings you up to speed. I know a lot of you have been followin’ my story from the beginnin’ and are already in love with me. I have a great fan club. You all have very good taste! One of those great fans is my adoptive Mommy Heidi. She’s been a great supporter of CLAWS and couldn’t resist me! Last week Mommy K took me to Mommy H’s house for a visit to get me out of the house and see if it would perk me up after a rough week. Auntie Carol came to visit too and we brought her adoptive furkid, my friend Rocky. He’s a cute little raccoon. Not as cute as me of course, but he might come in second.

Mommy H has the most awesomest room ever! You are outside and inside all at the same time! I soooo want one! I spend a lot of time looking out the window at home. I don’t get to go outside very much, and when I do there is a human hoverin’ over me crampin’ my style! I gotta figure out how to get one of those rooms. The bottom half is already there (that would be the back deck at the CLAWS facility). It just needs a top half. So I was talking to the Wolf Pack that lives in the room over the fence and told them about the magic room at Mommy H’s. None of them really cared ‘cuz they get to go outside. But my new friend, Gali the Great White Wolf (that would be Galileo the arctic marble fox), cared ‘cuz he doesn’t get to go when the rest of the Pack goes outside. So he’s excited now too. I think every Mountain Lion (that is what my name means) should have a Wolf for a friend.

We really, really, really want a magic inside/outside room. Mommy K says we don’t have the money right now ‘cuz of my vet bills and the other vet bill CLAWS still owes. So I gave her “the face” and she said that if I could find the money to buy materials (estimated to be about $1,000), I could have the room. I already have the labor lined up. I own Vinny and he is very useful. I have marked him as my own. (www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=420030774183) Rocky has offered up his human, Damien, for labor. Lori said Blue Drew is a pushover and should be mine for a purr if more workers are needed. So that just leaves the money.

That’s where you guys, my wonderful, adoring fans come in! How much do you love me?! Show me the money! I would love you forever if you would go to the CLAWS website (www.nc-claws.org) and click on the Paypal button and send me some money for my magic room. If you wanna send a check, ask Mommy K how.

Remember that painting I did a while back before I got so sick? It was rather good. Keep watch on the FaceBook page because Mommy K is figurin’ out how to auction it off to help pay for my magic room. It would be so great to be able to be out in the fresh air, but still be safe from the outside. I know I can’t ever be a cat out in the wild, but I am still a wild cat that needs to be outside…sometimes (don’t want to give up my cushy bed and stuff!). Because of my wobbly thing I can’t be out in a regular cage. I could climb the fence and fall and hurt myself. That would be bad.

Please help me get my magic indoor/outdoor room so I can take naps and play with my friends Gali and Rocky out in the fresh air. Thank you for caring about me and my friends here at CLAWS.

Tocho
Mountain Lion (in her heart and mind, adorable Bobcat in reality)

Editors note: While Kindra may seem crazy, she is not crazy enough to have a Wolf Pack living in her living room. We are actually waiting until we get more land and a bigger facility to get wolves. Tocho’s Wolf Pack is the group of very small dogs (Chihuahuas, Pomeranian) and the fox who all have the heart of a wolf and a couple who even howl like one.

Today was a pretty run of the mill day here at CLAWS. Started out with feeding handfed babies, squirrels, flying squirrels and bunnies, then off to sweeping and mopping floors, and feeding of animals who are still fed more than once a day.
Then we got the first call….a duck at the animal shelter, then a call about a bird who was caught by a cat last night, and finally a call to pick up bird seed. Thankfully all of these places were near each other, so it was going to be a fairly easy time.
Vinny headed the other direction to go feed the fawn in Alamance County and off went Damien and myself to do pick ups. First came Mrs. Duck. A female mallard who had a cut on her foot. She was able to walk and fly and be a duck and the cut was actually quite minor. So, we got the location where she was found and out we went. While we were still in the parking lot, a man walked out with a dog he’d just adopted on a leash. The dog escaped and took off for the road, and off went Damien. Good thing too, because the man was not nearly fast enough. Damien got between the dog and the road and the dog ran up to him licking his face and making fast friends. The collar was not going to stay on this dog’s head, so I showed him how to use the leash as a collar to get the dog in his truck.
Off to pick up the bird. He’d been found the night before and put into a chicken coup. He had a hole under his wing, caused by the tooth of a cat.
Off to pick up 240 pounds of bird seed…YAY! And some new cat litter, as the type we’ve been using on the raccoons, is just too dusty!
Then down into Carrboro to drop off the duck back with her friends. She was quite happy to be back with her little family and to see the backside of humans. All we can do now is hope that she’s not picked up again for no good reason.
Home we went. Set up the bird in a cage and head to the yard to do some work. The flight cage had to be cleaned out and remulched for the new resident. This sounds like a simple job, and it was, just very strenuous in the heat and humidity. 20 bags of mulch later, a barred owl was enjoying the great outdoors and hoping to escape this larger, new prison very soon.
Then it was time to attack the 40some crates sitting around the deck and yard, awaiting power washing. Got all cleaned, neatly stacked and put into shelves. They are now awaiting new inhabitants. And we are hoping not to fill any of them anytime soon! It’s funny to see these stacks of crates, knowing we don’t need them currently and knowing that when things get really busy, we run our and are trying to figure out where to find more crates. Oh, the eb and flow of rehabbing….
Then it was time to come back inside. Short chat with the vet about Tocho and how she’s doing on her new medication, then Rocky and what he saw during his surgery. Tocho seems to be taking her new meds very well, and they seem to be working!!! YAY! Rocky shows signs of dwarfism, that definitely is a result of genetics, not an accident or anything. Then a short discussion about foxes….fun! Love talking to a vet who truly is interested in the interesting animals we share our lives with!
And of course, now it was time to start outside feedings, give hand feedings to little ones again and play with babies who really need playing! The Drazzles proved to us that any litter can be dissolved in water, with enough determination.
And now, it’s time to start on all of the nightly feedings……….

Rocky's Arrival

All summer long, we receive phone calls from people who find baby raccoons that have lost their mothers. Because it is illegal to rehabilitate raccoons in North Carolina, and because I have a personal love for raccoons, these calls are particularly difficult for me to handle. All we can tell people is that we cannot legally help them. We receive more of these calls than many do, they are even sent to us by officers and other rehabbers, because we possess a permit to keep three raccoons permanently. This permit does not help in these situations; all of our raccoons have to come from captive settings. We still cannot rehabilitate them, or take illegal ones in on a permanent basis.
In July we received one such call from a woman who had raised a baby raccoon that had become very friendly to humans and she wanted to know if we could take him in as an educational animal. As many are, this woman was desperate to save this baby. She knew the law, understood the chances she had taken in raising this baby, and loved this baby very much.
After talking to her for a bit, I told her that we could only take this baby in if the state would give approval and a permit for the raccoon. The woman agreed to contact the state, seeking approval and we didn’t hear back from her. I assumed she had tried and the state had turned her down.
In mid-August, we realized something was wrong with our darling, permanent raccoon, Pooka. Given how close Pooka and I were, I knew that something was seriously wrong, even in the absence of what most would consider major symptoms. He wasn’t acting particularly bad, but he wasn’t eating like he normally did. I took him in to the vet on a Wednesday for some blood work, which showed nothing. I continued to watch him closely and worry. Within a few days, things got scary, Pooka had completely stopped eating, and lost so much weight that I could see his ribs, something you should never see in a raccoon. Then, on Friday evening, he vomited. I immediately called the vet and scheduled an appointment for Saturday morning at 8am. We sedated him and took an x-ray. The x-ray showed a large mass inside his abdomen. The vet put in barium to see if this mass was in his stomach and it wasn’t, which made it scarier. The vet said we had to do surgery to see what and where this mass was. At this point, he looked at me and said that, given how this mass looked, once we got in there, we may decide not to wake Pooka up from surgery. This was something I really was not prepared to hear. Though deep down I knew that something serious was going on, Pooka was only 8, and I was not ready to lose him. During surgery, the vet removed a round mass, a little larger than my fist that was slightly attached to his liver, and noted that Pooka’s liver was hard and not a normal color. Pooka made it through surgery, and he was sent home. Unfortunately, Pooka never fully woke up from his surgery. He passed away that evening, in my arms.
The loss of any animal is never good or welcome, but the loss of Pooka sent the whole family reeling. We were all in deep mourning over losing the CLAWS founder and a close family member.
Tuesday, after Pooka’s passing, I received another phone call from the woman with the baby raccoon, explaining that she had called the state, explained to them that we lost Pooka and they agreed to let us take in her baby raccoon, Rocky. I was more than a little shocked, both because I wasn’t sure how I felt about taking in another raccoon so soon after we lost Pooka, and simply because the state agreed. But, no matter what we were going through, being able to help one raccoon was more important than our feelings. So, we began arrangements to bring Rocky into our family.
Thankfully, this woman truly cared about Rocky and did consider him her responsibility. The state had given her until August 31 to turn Rocky over to us, so we needed to move quickly to get him prepared to live here at CLAWS. Several things needed to be done. All animals, even raccoons should be spayed and neutered, for their own health, even if there is no risk of mating, and we keep all of our animals up to date on their shots, of course. We decided that, it would be easier on Rocky to go through surgery with her, since he trusted her. So she made an appointment and got him neutered and all of his shots were given. This way he could recuperate with the only mom he had known so far, and not with strangers who love him, but he doesn’t know. Rocky came through surgery like a little champ. The vet informed us that he shows signs of possible dwarfism and may be some other issues. Just things to note for the future.
We set up a meeting time for Tuesday, one day before the deadline given by the state. In walked a very sad mom, carrying a precious bundle of joy!
Having to take Rocky from his mom was very tough to be honest. She very obviously loved him very, very much. But, we all knew that this was the best thing for Rocky. Trying to hide a raccoon is not easy and if he was ever discovered, he would be euthanized by law. One look at his darling little face and we were all very much in love.
After a very emotional parting, we brought Rocky home. We had thought we would change Rocky’s name, since it is such a common name for raccoons, but one look at his little face and the name just fit him too well, so we decided to keep the name given to him by his first mommy.
Once home we decided to have Rocky live in Damien’s room for his initial transition period into CLAWS. In the two days that we have had Rocky, he and Damien have developed quite the relationship. Sharing their little bachelor pad! Rocky has begun to really trust Damien and play with him like a brother. He also loves playing with the dogs, and making the cats scatter!
As sad as it has been to lose Pooka and as unsure as I was about taking another raccoon in so soon after losing him, Rocky has been a great addition to the CLAWS family and I am certain will help continue Pooka’s message to the public! We look forward to many happy years with this darling little boy as well as, I’m sure, many more blogs to tell you about his antics!
We want to thank Rocky’s original mommy for the wonderful care she gave him during her time with him! And for loving him enough to ensure he has a bright and very productive future!