Diaper Malfunction

Hi, I'm Jonnie, a 50 year old disabled woman with a service dog (SD) named Toby. He's the red dog you see in my photos, since I've encouraged his curiosity, and worked with him scent finding things (especially my phone and TV remote!) you will usually see him sniffing something in my pics. Take a bow Toby.

Ouch, get off my foot please! Good dog. I have a muscle movement disorder, aka chorea, aka hyperflexia (A state of excessive response to stimuli.) or spastic movements, tonic-clonic seizures, etc. Lots of different names, but basically I have a problem controlling my muscles, sometimes they relax at inappropriate times, but mostly the respond abnormally. The person flailing around looking like I'm having a seizure, that's me. It's kinda painful and really exhausting, like dancing without stop for many hours, then dance some more. The bad ones, I can't see, everything goes dark, but I can still hear, and I can't talk. Sometimes now I lose consciousness and wake up on the floor.

I'm OK with it all though, because I stand on my faith. I'm a Christian, and my faith is the largest part of my life, I love to talk about my beliefs to people, even people who believe something different than I do. It's great to have a nice conversation about our believes, comparing our common ground and enjoying hearing about the differences. I love to talk to people who share the same beliefs too. I really feel that the world needs lots of compassion, tolerance, empathy, laughter, joy, well I can go on and on, but mostly love is what's needed. I also think it's really important to keep a positive outlook. 

I started a business almost 20 years ago, but as I was able to do less and less, my wonderful husband, Nick stepped in more and more. I had to retire some years ago when the doctor said I wasn't able to work anymore. He runs it by himself now, a huge undertaking, but one he does without ever complaining. I love him deeply. Smile sweetie.

Such a beautiful smile. When I used to go to work, MuttLee went with me every day. If he makes it until November 2011, he will be 18 years old. He's had problems with his hips for years now, but it got to the point that he couldn't walk around on the bare floor anymore, so we got a bunch of cheap carpets and laid them about. These are a huge pain to vacuum since a lot of them get sucked up instead of having stuff sucked off. Ut oh... another diaper malfunction. It's ok Mutt, I know you wouldn't if you could help it.

I'll use my new Bissell Little Green Proheat aka My Green Machine. I ordered it off of Amazon, where I do almost all my shopping, since it's hard for me to go out. The reviews were pretty good, and it was the best selling compact carpet cleaner on Amazon. I have a Bissell Proheat full size carpet shampooer, and have for years, but it's been slowly dying. Now the only thing it does is suck, but since I've gotten so much weaker, it's a challenge for me to try to muscle it around, so I'm excited that my Green Machine arrived last night. I felt like I was playing with babushka (Russian nesting) dolls while unpacking, so it was well packed from Amazon! 

Set up was fairly easy except to screw the flex hose storage bracket on was a bit of a challenge for me. I bet other's would find it really easy to put the screw in with a Phillips screw driver. The hose wraps around the base and the flex hose clip just snapped on so that was easy. It also has a Quick Release Cord Wrap, which is really nice. Here is the back of the Green Machine with the hose wrapped around, the cord wrapped up. The Proheat came with two attachments: a tough-stain tool, and a TurboBrush with its own powered brush roll. I used the second.

 I ran into a bit of a difficulty with the water tank, the top is curved, so the bottle won't stay up as it was filling, 

so I finally propped it up on a sponge so it wouldn't slide, and leaned it against the edge of the sink so I could put the Bissell Pet Stain for Compacts which I chose it for a couple of reasons, first of all it 'sustainable design' products that offer benefits for you and the Earth, and also that contain biodegradable detergents and have no phosphates, dyes, optical brighteners or heavy metals and is for pet stains, which I get a lot of. I am very sensitive to chemicals, and had my Epi Pen ready, but I had no reaction at all. It leaves a very nice smell, but isn't at all overwhelming or a cover-up.

 This is everything out of the box:

 Toby of course had to check it out, now that he approves, I can proceed! Since the tank now has the warm water with the pet stain cleaner solution, I plugged the Green Machine in, turned it on and pressed the button on the wand for the solution to come out. Since it was brand new, it took a few moments for it to prime. Then the solution came out at a very nice rate, not too little, not too much. This is just before I started.

I had a bit of a leak, which I consider an opportunity to clean another spot, so this is how much water was left in the tank after the leak (had to re-seat the water bottle), spraying, sucking, and repeat on Mutt's accident. Even taking pics, the whole thing took only a couple of minutes. This saved me a huge amount of effort, energy and time! No wonder that The Bissell Little Grean Machine is the best selling compact carpet cleaner on Amazon! In fact, I even had the energy to clean a spot where a guest spilled a really large soda a while ago. I've tried cleaning it repeatedly by pouring water on it, then pressing cloths on, but it's still sticky enough that it collects dirt. Now if only I could find a good dog diaper that doesn't leak, but in the mean time, I am really happy with this purchase!