you can never fully be prepared for these things

the past couple days have been kinda rough. phone calls at 4am are usually bad and tuesday was no exception. when we got the call that tricia's mom had suffered a heart attack in the middle of the night it almost seemed unreal. we packed up some clothes and left that morning.

watching my wife stay up all night at her mom's bedside made me think of how great a mother she's going to be one day. and when i say "one day", i am in no way implying that she is pregnant. sorry mom and dad. nothing yet.

tricia's mom is doing better now and we want to thank everyone for their prayers. there are two stories that came from this whole thing that i think are fascinating.

1. early that morning, tricia texted a few of her best friends about what had happened even though they should have been sleeping. one girl who lives on the west coast inexplicably couldn't sleep and felt like she needed to stay up and pray for someone. when she got the text from trish she knew why.

2. our new dog Milla was staying with tricia's parents when it occurred. that night, Milla actually woke her up and was acting weird. when tricia's mom woke up to the antsy doggie, that's when she really noticed the pain. it's almost as if Milla sensed it and woke her up.

so i did some heavy research on the phenomenon. and by "some heavy research", i mean fifteen minutes on google. it seems that it's a known fact that some dogs can sense oncoming heart attacks and can predict seizures in epileptic patients through either their sense of smell, body language or a combination of both. here's an article on MSNBC about it. and here's another from PBS talking about it like it's a fact. these aren't websites written by whackos blogging about gear and posting audience shots. these are real news organizations. crazy.

so that begs two more questions. the first is can we get Milla in some sort of training to help further develop this sense. and secondly, how can we exploit this skill for our personal gain. haha...just kidding about the second one. although if the dog ever saves me or trish from a heart attack, then i guess that's better than any money.