After this adopted puppy’s impressive response to his new owner’s medical emergency‚ one woman is truly wondering who rescued who! Amanda McCloskey has POTS‚ which causes her to sometimes feel dizzy or even faint when standing up. She was in the market for a medical alert dog to help predict these spells‚ but she wanted to get to know the pooch first. That’s why she decided to foster a sweet pup named Ryder‚ who was only five months old. “It was supposed to be just a short-term foster‚” Amanda told People. “I picked up Ryder‚ brought him home‚ and about a day later‚ I fell in love with him. I was like‚ ‘Okay‚ there’s something about you. We have this connection now.'” Facebook Shortly after Amanda adopted her new puppy‚ something happened that made her realize she’d picked the perfect dog. Although Ryder had not started training yet‚ he was still able to predict a medical emergency before it occurred! His owner was floored by how the pooch detected her POTS episode right away. “We’re just watching TV‚ and he just starts barking at me‚” Amanda recounted. “I stood up to let him out‚ and that’s when my watch started going off‚ letting me know that my heart rate was over 130. I got super dizzy and sort of blacked out.” This newly adopted puppy is about to become a fully trained service dog. Facebook After this incident‚ it dawned on the pet parent that Ryder had been trying to warn her about the oncoming medical emergency. She knew then that she’d adopted the best puppy to help her navigate life with POTS. Amanda was quick to start the dog’s training! In several months‚ Ryder should be a full-fledged service dog. It seems like he and Amanda were just meant to be together! You can find the source of this story’s featured image here. The post Newly Adopted Puppy Jumps Into Action When Owner Has a Medical Emergency: “I Guess This Is a Sign” appeared first on InspireMore.

'I feel relieved to push the refresh button in signing on with Rob'

'Amit broke our hearts'

A video shared on Facebook claims to show French farmers protesting government climate policies. Verdict: Misleading These farmers are protesting a dairy company. Fact Check: Several French farmers dumped manure and tires in front of the Bordeaux’s Nouvelle-Aquitaine regional assembly‚ according to the Connexion. These farmers also clashed with police‚ the outlet reported. Social media users are […]

'He was secretly lining his own pockets'

'I have so much dirt on her it would make her head spin but I've kept quiet'

While it's true that Hitler was named Time's Person of the Year in 1938‚ the genuine cover is different.

Author of How to Prep When You’re Broke and Bloom Where You’re Planted online course Being a prepper with mobility issues can be tough‚ and that’s even before the possible need to bug out on foot through the forest. What used to be easy and done without a second thought now requires planning‚ pain‚ and exhaustion. But before we ever get to anything extreme‚ there are things we need to do at home that can be difficult under some circumstances. I’ve found a few tools that help me as a prepper with mobility issues‚ and I’m going to share them here in the hopes they help you‚ too. How I became a prepper with mobility issues A little background: a year and a half ago‚ what felt like a mild ankle sprain was actually a torn tendon. Me being me‚ I pushed through and the situation did not improve. I’ve been seeing a doctor back in the US for the past 7 months‚ and it’s only gotten worse. There is almost a full rupture just below the inner ankle bone. Now‚ to prevent it from fully separating‚ I have to limit my steps. I can’t carry heavy things that might strain it‚ and it’s constantly painful. The things that help me may not help you. I do have some mobility‚ though it’s limited. I can walk (well‚ limp) and manage things around the house pretty well. But soon‚ I’ll be having surgery to reconstruct that tendon‚ and many of the items here will no longer help me at all for at least six weeks when I am not able to bear weight on that foot. I already had some of these things and bought the others. If you’re mobile at all‚ you may find these items helpful. Once I have surgery‚ I’ll write another article like this for when I have to use crutches and a knee scooter. A grocery cart I use this grocery cart multiple times every week. It folds up and lives against the wall of my apartment behind the door. If you had a front hall closet‚ the folded version would easily slide in. How I use it: When groceries get delivered‚ I don’t like to let people in the house. I bring this cart outside and then pull it back in once they’ve loaded it from their car. Then I roll my food straight to the refrigerator and pantry to put it away. On laundry day‚ I can’t be lugging heavy hampers to my laundry room‚ which is fortunately on the same floor. I pop the hamper into the cart and wheel it there. It’ll fit 2-3 smallish hampers. The grocery cart is probably the thing I use the most. It’s nice because it also provides the user a little bit of support. A wagon I have a folding wagon which I don’t use quite as often but still find helpful if I have a large‚ ungainly package of some sort. The nice thing about the wagon is that the sides are down lower‚ so I don’t have to try and awkwardly squat down and lift something really large and heavy all the way up‚ then back down into the grocery cart. This comes in handy when I have a larger package delivered. They aren’t brought right to my door so I have a short walk to get them. If it’s a larger item‚ such as a piece of furniture that I’m going to assemble or a few cases of canned goods‚ I can’t carry these packages. I break out the wagon‚ move the items into it‚ and wheel it back to my apartment. You can use it to bring things in from the car‚ too. It folds down well and fits in almost any trunk with plenty of room to spare. It has big‚ chunky off-road-type wheels and rolls easily over grass‚ paving stones‚ or whatever I need to roll it over.  So there’s more utility to it than the grocery cart‚ which is pretty finicky about liking flat surfaces. Because of this‚ it could easily be used for outdoor tasks as well. But because it’s fabric‚ you’ll want to line it with a trashbag before moving messy things. If you plan to use your wagon for gardening‚ you might want something specific to the outside. This one is a good price and easy to hose off‚ though I’d say it’s more like a small wheelbarrow than a wagon. A dolly cart Another thing I use regularly is a dolly cart. I‚ like most people‚ had one for moving heavy stacks of boxes. But I’ve found that I use it for other purposes too. One thing I use it for is to wheel my generator around the apartment during a power outage. The battery section is heavy‚ and lifting it in and out of carts and wagons isn’t ideal. I simply slide it onto the dolly cart‚ and moving it where I need it is simple. When choosing a dolly cart‚ I recommend the kind that doesn’t fold up – it’s just one less point for potential failure. Mine is all one piece‚ and I’ve had it for at least a decade. (And y’all know how often we move!) I do have another utility cart‚ but it’s too big for use around the house. A rolling office chair When doing things that require a lot of bending or squatting‚ I make use of my rolling office chair. It’s quite simple to wheel it into the kitchen to put things away on the bottom shelves or to reach the plumbing under the sink‚ and it keeps the strain off my ankle. I also use it if I’m cleaning out the refrigerator or doing other tasks that would require prolonged time squatting. I have this one‚ which I’d gotten for my office‚ but you don’t need anything fancy for these tasks. A cheap $30-50 one will do just fine. These are my go-to items as a prepper with mobility issues. This short list may not offer anything groundbreaking‚ but perhaps it will give you some ideas you haven’t considered before. I find all the things extremely useful‚ and they’d be useful for folks who can get around well‚ too. I had several of the things before my injury but definitely rely on them more now. Every bit of independence that I can maintain is important. I don’t want to have to wait for help to reach low shelves or move my portable generator to where it needs to be. I hope you find these ideas useful if you are a prepper with mobility issues or if you love someone with these concerns. In a few weeks‚ I’ll share what I’ve learned about getting things done when I can’t bear weight on that leg at all. If you also struggle with mobility‚ do you have any other things that help you in the house or yard? Other ways you move things from point A to point B? Ways to reach awkward places? I’d love to hear your ideas. Please help your fellow preppers out and share your ideas in the comments section. About Daisy Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging‚ adventure-seeking‚ globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites.  1) The Organic Prepper‚ which is about current events‚ preparedness‚ self-reliance‚ and the pursuit of liberty; 2)  The Frugalite‚ a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived; and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com‚ an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. Her work is widely republished across alternative media and she has appeared in many interviews. Daisy is the best-selling author of 5 traditionally published books‚ 12 self-published books‚ and runs a small digital publishing company with PDF guides‚ printables‚ and courses at SelfRelianceand Survival.com You can find her on Facebook‚ Pinterest‚  Instagram‚ and Twitter. The post Tools That Help Me as a Prepper with Mobility Issues appeared first on The Organic Prepper.

Bands Pull Out of SXSW Because of U.S. Army Sponsorship

Medium-sized animals dominate the top places in the running section of the animal Olympics‚ and now we know why‚ thanks to a new model of muscle performance.For many important criteria‚ animals find it’s good to be big. Insects may be able to lift astonishing weights relative to their size‚ but in absolute terms the biggest animals are also the strongest and usually live the longest as well. Indeed‚ many measures of animal performance can be predicted from their size using a simple power law – not perfectly‚ but tolerably well.Yet when it comes to speed‚ cheetahs can outrun much larger animals‚ and they’ve got mid-sized company close to the top of the list‚ an anomaly that has puzzled zoologists enough to inspire many papers.“Why does running speed break with the regular patterns that govern most other aspects of animal anatomy and performance?” Dr David Labonte of Imperial College London asked in a statement. Labonte has helped answer that question‚ showing that there are two limiting factors to running speed‚ rather than one as had been assumed.Labonte and co-authors explored the way muscles contract‚ using this to build a physical model that predicts an animal’s running speed. They confirmed its accuracy by comparing predictions with measurements others have collected on more than 400 species‚ from insects weighing a 10‚000th of a gram (0.000004 ounces) to the largest mammals.“The key to our model is understanding that maximum running speed is constrained both by how fast muscles contract‚ as well as by how much they can shorten during a contraction‚” co-author Professor Christofer Clemente of the University of the Sunshine Coast explained. “Animals about the size of a cheetah exist in a physical sweet spot at around 50 kilograms [110 pounds]‚ where these two limits coincide. These animals are consequently the fastest‚ reaching speeds of up to 65 miles per hour [105 kilometers per hour].”Smaller animals are held back by the first limit Clemente refers to: their muscles just cannot contract fast enough to trouble their mid-sized counterparts. The forces generated by muscle contraction are large relative to the animals’ weight‚ which is good for overcoming counteracting forces – such as when running uphill – but limits top speeds.Large animals run into the “work capacity limit”; they just can’t produce forces large enough to accelerate their great masses to high speeds.“For large animals like rhinos or elephants‚ running might feel like lifting an enormous weight‚ because their muscles are relatively weaker and gravity demands a larger cost. As a result of both‚ animals eventually have to slow down as they get bigger‚” Harvard University’s Dr Peter Bishop explained.The authors compare the situation to the Reynolds number in fluid dynamics‚ where viscosity dominates at small scales and inertial forces at larger ones.Cheetahs may be the right size for maximum speed‚ but there are other reasons they’ve reached the top. One factor‚ as anyone who has watched a documentary filmed on the African savannah can tell you‚ is that they have evolved to be sprinters rather than distance runners‚ going all in on the fast-twitch muscles.Cheetahs are also spared competition from some creatures of similar size. Large reptiles such as crocodiles cannot match the speeds of their mammalian counterparts.This fact may be yet another piece of science the makers of the Jurassic Park/World franchise will ignore‚ but the authors of this study are keen to find out why‚ although so far they don’t have all the answers. “One possible explanation for this may be that limb muscle is a smaller percentage of reptiles’ bodies‚ by weight‚ meaning that they hit the work limit at a smaller body weight‚ and thus have to remain small to move quickly‚” Dr Taylor Dick of the University of Queensland said. This‚ however‚ just moves the question back one step – given the immense advantages of speed‚ why have large reptiles not evolved limb muscles to match it with mammals?Then again‚ maybe those filmmakers are right to not treat the model as gospel. Although it does an excellent job of matching the speed capacities of living species‚ the model runs into problems at the larger end of the scale‚ predicting that it should be impossible for a land animal weighing more than 40 tonnes to move. We know that isn’t true‚ because the titanosaurs got around somehow‚ and the largest weighed an estimated 70 tonnes. The authors think there must have been something different about the largest dinosaurs’ muscle structure compared with anything living‚ but they don’t know what it was.The study is published open access in Nature Communications.