An Update on Mauling... Man's Best Friend?

(Prayer altar for Chance Walker Jr.)

Remember last week when I mentioned a local news story about a toddler mauled by dogs while his parents were passed out from a meth crash?  Turns out that yesterday the parents were arrested and charged with injury to a child.

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – The parents of a 19-month old child, brutally attacked by a pack of dogs in Lake Worth, have been arrested.

Thursday deputies with the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office arrested Chance Walker Sr. 26, and Patricia Walker 23. Both have been charged with Injury to a Child.
The couple was taken into custody, without incident, at a house in the 900 block of Hackamore Street in White Settlement.
Four dogs attacked little Chance Walker Jr. on January 30. The child was rushed to Cook Children’s Medical Center with serious injuries and ultimately had to undergo surgery to reattach an ear.
CBS 11 News learned that in the last year there had been eight ‘dog-related’ police calls made on animals at the address where the dog attack occurred.
Before Walker Jr. was released from the hospital, a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation urged that the state be given temporary managing conservatorship from the parents. The request was granted.
♦♦♦Click Here To Read The Entire CPS Affidavit♦♦♦
Chance Walker Jr. remains in foster care. All four of the dogs blamed for mauling have been euthanized.
Chance Walker Sr. and Patricia Walker remain in the Tarrant County Jail, each with a $100,000 bond.
Conviction of a second-degree Injury to a Child charge is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Isn't it just too overall creepy that the "dad" in this case looks like a clone of my ex husband?   (He is also a neglectful father, but not near this bad.  And for the record this isn't what he looked like when I met him, but this is what he became).  

ANYWAY... I imagine this will be the last I hear of this until they are actually charged although hopefully there will be some some small feature piece in the future about the little boy being adopted into a permanent home or his recovery. Weirdly enough another news story came out this week about a news anchor being bitten by a rescue dog on live TV...

...and I'm going to just be honest here.  I don't like dogs.  At all.  I'm not afraid of them exactly but I don't trust them.  My father is an extreme dog lover (who always did and still does value his dogs over his children or wife) so I grew up with a lot of dogs and I loved them.  As an adult I've never had a pet dog but my children love them dearly so I'm sure in the future I'll have to bite the bullet and get them one.  I know for many people dogs truly are their best friends.   But outside of childhood I've felt no connection to this "domesticated" animal and these two examples above are a couple of good reasons why.

Too Close To Home

Once in a while I hear the term "empath" thrown around in Pagan circles.  I don't feel like going into my take on the whole thing at this moment but at times I wonder if its little more than a buzzword for highly emotional people that sometimes have problems functioning in the day to day world.  I like to think that I myself for the most part am emotionally functional.  That being said there are times I wonder if I have some "empath" tendencies myself because every so often I will hear about something very bad that will happen to a random stranger and it will disturb and affect me so deeply that it's like it happened in my OWN family and I almost cease to function.  (9/11 affected me so badly I might as well have been down the street from the Trade Centers).

This past week a toddler was mauled by a pack of (pet) dogs in the very same city I live.  The boy was 18 months old.  My youngest Tornado is 18 months old so this immediately hit way too close to home for me in more ways than one.  Here's the short version of this story (source: Toddler Attacked By Family Dogs, CPS Rules Child Neglect) :

"Fort Worth, TX - Here’s a dog mauling story that has more white trash in it than my ex-wife’s family. Earlier this week, an 18-month-old boy crawled through a doggy door while his parents slept and was attacked by four mixed-breed boxers.
By the time Chance Walker Jr.’s mother was woken up by the commotion and stepped between her son and the dogs, Chance had already suffered some serious trauma to his face. Police released a 911 call made by a neighbor where you can hear Chance screaming in the background.
One neighbor described seeing Chance in his grandfather’s arms with one ear almost completely off, hanging by a piece of skin. The boy was rushed to the hospital to treat the numerous bite marks to his face and hopefully save his left ear. Once it is time for Chance to go home, it won’t be to his parents. A judge has decided that unless a suitable relative is found, he will be placed in a foster home. It’s probably for the best.
Turns out his parents, Patricia Walker and Chance Walker, are known meth users who often left Chance to play unsupervised and knew the dogs were aggressive. In fact, after the mauling, Patricia was administered a drug test and tested positive for methamphetamine and amphetamines, while Chance simply refused to take a drug test.
A nurse at the hospital where Chance Jr. is being treated told a CPS investigator that on Tuesday,  the boy’s parents would not change his diaper and left him alone in the room for hours. No surprise that CPS has been involved with this family before.
Chance and Patricia were investigated back in 2010 when they both tested positive for methamphetamine. Because CPS also felt that Chance Jr. was being physically abused by family members, Chance Jr. was placed with Patricia’s mother so the couple could get some outpatient drug treatment. They did, but would again test positive for meth. Twice.

The remaining family members aren’t much better it seems. The boy’s grandmother, 45-year-old Lena Walker, was charged with assault after attacking a neighbor in front of deputies and FOX 4′s news crew. She wasn’t happy with the neighbor’s remarks about the entire situation.
Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy said the department has dealt with several reports of dangerous dogs at the Walker home, including another child in the neighborhood that was bitten in 2010. The Walkers did not feel like they were at fault because the child, according to the affidavit,  ”should know not to run from dogs.”
Also interesting to note is that Lena Walker was one of the family members CPS felt had been abusing Chance Jr. and when an officer informed her that her grandson had been mauled, her first response was to ask why her dogs were being taken away.
It turns out they were being taken away because it is state law to do so whenever a dog tries to eat a toddler’s face. Because of the boy’s young age, they each needed to be tested for rabies as soon as possible. Unfortunately for the dogs, that test could only be conducted if they were dead.
Of course the Walkers once again do not seem to feel this was anything but an accident, not a result of them being piss-poor excuses for caregivers for either toddlers or dogs. Chase informs his Facebook friends that his son got 400 stitches, but laments the fact that CPS has come a callin’ while Lena says she regrets attacking her neighbor, but she didn’t like that she was talking trash about her dogs. On a more happy note, she did inform everyone that Chance Jr. is loved and that his ear looks like it is getting color in it."

I don't even know where to start, but I have cried numerous times this week for this precious baby.  I have read all the news stories, I have seen the videos, read the court documents.  The worst was hearing the 911 call.  His cries sounded very similar to my son's.  This is what he looked like before:

My eyes teared up just posting that.  He has that same last-stages-of-babyhood look that my youngest has.  There are many other acts of neglect that the article didn't mention: Being allowed to play outside unsupervised in a water trough, not bathing the child regularly, not changing his diapers, the parents constantly sleeping at all hours leaving him unsupervised, living in what looks to be a filthy environment, having dangerous objects such as a saw blade inside the home within reach.

I will never understand child neglect or child abuse.  I have my days where I don't feel like the best mother in the world, but then a case like this makes me realize I really do the best I can and makes me hug my kids a little tighter.

This little boy has already been released from the hospital (after at least a couple surgeries and probably many more to come) and placed in foster care.  Foster care folks (the ones who really do positive things, not the ones who make a bad situation worse and abuse the system) are my heroes!  I wish I had a heart (and resources) for foster care myself but I just do the best I can with my own kids.  People who take in children from bad situations and care for them with unconditional love are truly the embodiment of the Divine.

My prayer altar for little Chance with an amethyst for healing, a prayer stone for Courage in coping... for Chance (recovering, healing, separation anxiety, his future), for the foster families, the case workers, and yes... even for his family of origin (that they someday learn what parental love really means).  Mother Demeter (or however anyone involved see the Divine - most would say "God") is holding, healing, and guiding the baby.

I Wanna See Your Peacock!

Our first freeze (slightly below 32 degrees) here in North Texas has rolled in this week.  Lovin' it.  Most people (especially around here) would think me insane.  But I've always loved the cold.  I mentally and spiritually flourish within it.  I would be blissfully content to live in a part of the States like New York state that sees practically arctic winters with snowdrifts burying the front door.  But nope... we get about 8-9 months of summer (in the middle of it three months of BRUTAL 100 degree plus summer) and a month of spring, a month of fall, and a couple of months of something resembling winter.  That time is now upon us.

Last night I had a dream (one of my usual disconnected and random ones) that had vaguely to do with marriage.  And this morning on my "Pagan" Facebook account I was greeted with this picture:

Hera: Primarily known as the goddess of women and marriage Hera is mostly portrayed as "majestic and solemn".  Applied to daily life Hera embodies the trials, challenges, and celebrations women experience in all phases of life.  Not that I've never read up on Hera before but in researching a bit for this blog post I was reading about how Hera was said to have taken bird form and she had quite a "thing" and use for peacocks.  And it got me thinking about the connection I've lately felt with birds that I've been trying to find a deeper meaning to.  

Could this be a calling from Hera?  Its rare that I feel "called" by certain god/esess, but as the years go by I can name a few that happen to be all Greek or Greco-Roman: (Gaia, Persephone, Demeter, Dionysus, Hades, Hecate).  And now I should probably add Hera to that list. 

What does this have to do with the dream I mentioned above?  I was married once before I married the Family Guy and that marriage lasted about six years.  My first husband (Whoa Tornado's biological father) shall be Christened here as Deadbeat Dad - DBD.  The marriage was never very healthy, strong or productive (other than producing the sweet old soul that is Whoa Tornado) but it wasn't totally terrible until the last two years.  One thing I really envy are exes that still co-parent together as friends because he and I simply cannot do it.  As the years pass in between the divorce and now we head more and more toward being mortal enemies.  We haven't spoken or had a conversation in about two years but my daughter does still continue to see him every other weekend (but really she's visiting his parents more than visiting him).  Long story short he's 36 years old living in a dark dungeon of a room at his parents' place and he spends his time either sleeping, playing video games, watching movies, or doing courses for "online schooling".  He hasn't had anything resembling an actual job since about 2006 and he's something like $12,000 behind in child support.

Anyway in the last year of that marriage I believe I half ass petitioned Hera for comfort and support in keeping that union together.  And despite the fact that Hera is the goddess of protecting the union of marriage She doesn't seem to be one that is much for just quietly sitting back and taking crap from a lover and it seems in retrospect that her answer was "Hell no, let it go."

Despite being divorced and remarried I do believe in most cases that marriage should really last for life but if one has to end that it should be fought for to the death before letting it go.  Which is exactly what I did.  And my husband and I now are committed for the long haul.  This morning I read on a website that sells beautifully artistic Goddess dolls a statement on the Hera section: 

"And when you choose to intimately pair with another, Together you are One in marriage, committed to mutual support, protection, passion, and love." 

To me that rings 100% true.  So true in fact that here is a bit of sadness that I see within the severed alliance of a former marriage.  I've mentioned soul loss (the fracturing of a soul through extremely traumatizing personal events and divorce or death of loved ones are great examples of these) here before.   Well, last night I dreamed of my ex husband and in the dream we had some sort of forced interaction due to a Whoa Tornado school event (this would never happen in real life as DBD refuses to show up to those things) and in an extremely uncomfortable eye avoiding conversation in the classroom he handed me an amythyst heart necklace that he'd once given me in real life (and I think in real life I have either buried it deep in the Level 5 Hoard bedroom closet or thrown it away).  I asked him why he had it and told him, "I thought I still had this... what were you doing with it?"  Then he said, "Well apparently I still have a part of it."

Ugh.  UGH!  Very disturbing!  Its a slap in the face obvious... in my anger toward him (not anger about the failed relationship but the financial destruction the marriage created for me and laziness toward his daughter) obviously has claimed a huge part of my soul.

Ok Hera, peacock, crow, parakeet... or any other sign from the Universe that I need to let go of the anger.  I get it.  The next question is... where to find the strength to do so.