Thank you Corey!

A huge thank you to Corey Lloyd, our friend in Virginia, for her generous donation to Lyon-Martin today! Pickles & I are now 32% to our goal of $700!

Pickles wanted to say thank you herself, but she's still resting after tiring herself out with her performance yesterday as Dr. Pickles, Medicine Woman:

She suffers for her art.

Paging Dr. Pickles

On Friday, we received this message:

I am really on the fence about donating. Perhaps you could win me over with some pics of Mrs. P dressed up as a health care provider at Lyon-Martin? 

We always aim to please.

Dr. Pickles contemplates a diagnosis on a tough case.

Thank you to The Krelliotts!

A second donation! Another very big thank you goes out to The Krelliotts of Seattle for their generosity!

Zoey fainted in disbelief & gratitude when she heard the news:

She also pledged to try to learn a second trick this month -- she said she would like to dedicate it to the memory of The Krelliotts' sweet pup Vincenzo.

Thank you Jack & Linda O'Brien!

A very big thank you to Jack & Linda O'Brien for kicking us off with our first donation. Thank you very much for your support!!!

As with the Jogging With Dog project last year, everyone who donates will receive a very special autographed photo of Mrs. Pickles herself at the end of the month.

In the meantime...

Welcome to 30 Days of Health 2014 & SmartyPants.woof!

This year's 30 Days of Health fundraiser for Lyon-Martin Health Services is beginning February 1!

Since 1979, Lyon-Martin Health Services has been a beacon of culturally sensitive, excellent healthcare for the LGBT community in the Bay Area.

I believe that access to quality healthcare is a fundamental right and I am proud to be participating in this year's 30 Days of Health -- I am working to raise $700 to help Lyon-Martin continue to pursue its mission long into the future.

My project for 30 Days is to train our dog, Mrs. Zoey Pickles, to pick things up off the ground on cue.

Teaching dogs new tricks and skills is good for their mental health, and learning how to teach them something requires practice, creativity, and lots of patience. We use only positive reinforcement methods to train Pickles (no force, intimidation, or pain) -- while these methods are based on decades of scientific research on animal learning, using them can be a bit of an art. When done well, the dog not only learns something, they have fun while doing it, and the level of communication between the dog and trainer is improved at the same time.

Through this project, I am hoping to continue to build my skills as a trainer, continue to develop Pickles’s smarts, & continue to improve our ability to understand each other. It will also help me pursue the goal of practicing more patience, which I am definitely in need of, and which will help me lower my overall stress level. I chose to teach her this skill (called a “dead retrieve”) for 30 Days because she will need to know this in order to do some more advanced fun things later. And also because I don’t want to pick up her slobber-covered toys anymore.

I'll be posting our progress here (with many pictures, of course, for Pickles's many fans), each day throughout the month. While I do some research & get my training plan in place over the next couple weeks, feel free to have a look around at the resources & videos I've posted here. And if you would like to donate, you don't have to wait for February 1 -- click here to donate now and help us start the month off with a bang!

Thank you in advance for your support of this project!

"What do you mean I have to wait? I'm ready to start NOW!"