MagaMimi

On National Rescue Dog Day, we celebrate the incredible rescue dogs who remind us every day what loyalty, resilience, and unconditional love look like. 🐶🐕🇺🇸 At @USDA, protecting animal welfare is more than a mission — it’s a responsibility. Earlier this year, USDA partnered with @TheJusticeDept, @DHSgov, and @HHSgov to crack down on chronic dog welfare violators and strengthen enforcement against animal cruelty and dog fighting operations. This one is especially important to me — we adopted my precious Aussie Shepard, Maggie, almost 10 years ago. She has been my best friend, travel companion, herder of my kids (especially when they were young!), guardian (she is VERY protective of her mom!), and has participated in thousands of conference calls beneath my desk for a decade. Thank you to Lauren and the wonderful team @SavingHopeTx for one of the greatest gifts of all. My family AND our USDA family is so proud to support rescue and adoption efforts that help deserving dogs find safe, loving homes across America. If you’ve ever adopted a rescue dog, you know the truth: they may be rescued, but they end up rescuing us too. ❤️

@TRobinsonNewEra Unconscionable. I am happy to fund a wrongful death lawsuit against these disgusting excuses for law enforcement. They damn well better have been fired.

.@jonesbrendanm Today is a beautiful day! Let’s save Lucy!! ⭐️ Call the Shenandoah County’s Commonwealth’s Attorneys Office and demand her release! It’s been five weeks! Enough is enough! ☎️ 540-459-6129 SHARE, SHARE, SHARE!! 🇺🇸 Let’s bring Lucy home! #savelucy

Please help us get a Veteran get his dog back. She’s in dog jail for barking at the wrong person! She has done more time than actual murderers. It’s a 22 second call! @realDonaldTrump @LaraLeaTrump @MELANIATRUMP @nickshirleyy 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 @BillHemmer @greggutfeld @MarthaStewart

Before I settled into the beautiful and sacred role of becoming a stay-at-home, homeschooling mother to our four kiddos, I spent decades as a professional musician and teacher. When I closed my music school in 2022, it broke my heart so deeply that I swore I would never own another business again. But I have always been someone who needs to create. My love of art, beauty, homemaking, service to my community, health and research led me to something new. What began as homemade soaps and beeswax candles eventually became The Mulberry Patch after I sold out at a small church market that a friend convinced me attend. I’ve since returned to school to study herbal medicine and have poured myself into creating practical, handcrafted goods inspired by simple living, old-world traditions, and the beauty of the natural world. I strive to make ordinary moments intentional and magical. And through it all, Lucy has been there. Many years ago, after a bear wiped out our first flock of chickens in a single night, we wondered if Lucy might make a good livestock guardian dog. Within days, she had made the fields her home and appointed herself protector of every creature we owned. What began as a handful of chickens slowly grew into a true little homestead filled with sheep, goats, ducks, geese, wool, gardens, muddy boots, hard work, and eventually three more crazy dogs, including our two Pyrenees and sweet Lex, our other military rescue and Lucy’s very best friend. This little business and homestead have become woven into the very fabric of our family. It represents everything we love: creativity, self-reliance, serving others, raising our children close to the land, and building a life centered around beauty, freedom, our faith, and community. Many of you have continued asking how you can help us as we fight to bring our Lucy home. Asking for financial help is not easy for us, and the generosity of everyone has been deeply humbling and profoundly inspiring. I truly mean that. The reality is that we are facing a long legal battle—not only to bring Lucy home where she belongs, but also to protect our family, keep my husband home with us, and fight back against an unjust dangerous dog declaration. Our hope is not only to help our own family through this, but to bring awareness to laws and systems that can devastate ordinary people, and hopefully help create change that protects future generations as well. I deeply believe in the exchange of meaningful goods, and in creating beauty even in sadness. I wanted to make something special in honor of Lucy and this journey. I have created handmade bracelets using authentic Miyuki glass beads in the colors of our stars and stripes, along with a genuine mother-of-pearl heart representing our sweet Lucy, whose name comes from the Arabic phrase meaning “pearl of the desert.” These bracelets are simple, but to me they represent love of family, love of country, resilience, freedom, and the beautiful way something painful can become something meaningful and unifying. If you choose to wear one, you’ll carry a little piece of Lucy’s story with you. A story that has somehow reached millions across the world, brought people from all walks of life together, and reminded us that ordinary people still matter! It is also just a small way that I wanted to say thank you ♥️ If you would like to donate in exchange for one of these bracelets, you can visit my shop at MulberryPatchHome.com and select the Lucy bracelet listing. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for continuing to stand beside our family, pray for Lucy, and fight alongside us for justice, freedom, and the hope of bringing our girl home. ⬇️You can find the bracelets here: mulberrypatchhome.com/product-page/l…

Our fight to #SaveLucy, the dog who survived war, is getting media attention. She saved me ten years ago. Now I'm fighting to save her. Thanks to Mason Willett at WHSV Harrisonburg. @Herb_Minstrel is radiant. @LoneStarChica, this couldn't have happened without you. @catturd2

It has now been one month since Lucy's collar slipped over her head. One month since she was loose in my yard for a few seconds. One month since nobody got hurt. One month since nothing happened. It has also been one month since the police were called. One month since animal control issued me a court summons. One month since they took my dog, the dog I bonded with in war ten years ago. One month since my world turned into a living hell. It has been one month since nothing happened. And it has been one month since everything happened, in response to nothing. She has spent one month in jail. Over nothing. Away from everything. One month away from her fields. Away from Lex. Away from the kids. Away from @Herb_Minstrel and me. Let her come home. It's been long enough. It's time. It's damn time. #SaveLucy I have nothing more to say. @LoneStarChica @catturd2

After I separated from the military, I continued to deploy as a contractor. Many don't realize that we often claim to have no boots on the ground in a given theater because we have no uniformed troops there. But we do. Their uniform is 5.11 cargo pants and black zip-up fleeces. I know. I was one of them. I didn't ask to stop deploying. I was forced into it. I got a bad neurological report. Spinocerebellar ataxia, type 14. Never heard of it, right? It's one of the rare ones. I think of it like a slow progressing ALS. It's characterized by a steadily deteriorating sense of balance and coordination. It makes things that used to be easy, difficult. It makes things that used to be difficult, impossible. It's not going to shorten my life, God willing, but it will make my later years look different than I had hoped. I obviously couldn't keep deploying. I did my final tour - one last hurrah to the same desert where I had earlier met Lucy. It was a much safer place this time. I made a point to stop by our old camp and visit the spot where I had once played with my dog when she was a sad faced pup in the desert. What I didn't know is that a short time later, I'd be out of a job, a casualty of Biden's vaccine mandate. As someone rendered non-deployable, nobody went to bat for me. In those uncertain times, they wanted to retain the people they could use as boots on the ground. So I was shown the door. It felt like Uncle Sam had spat in my face. At the same time, @Herb_Minstrel's music school closed on orders of the Virginia Health Department prohibiting in-person music lessons. In the blink of an eye, our family's source of income had disappeared. But Lucy remained a source of comfort. When I deployed, I felt better leaving my wife and kids knowing she was home to protect them. When I had to stop traveling, she kept my experiences alive; a living, breathing link to the past. D.C. once took away my livelihood. Richmond took away my wife's. Now, the county is trying to take away our dog. We can't let them. #SaveLucy