Alexis & Mark Breyer

Arizona child car seat laws - Protect your children!

By Alexis Breyer on May 9, 2009

As Arizona injury attorneys, we see many car accidents with children. Many children’s lives would have been saved if they had been in a child restraint system. We had one case where the child received a huge gash to the middle of her face because she bounced around the car and hit the side glass when involved in a car accident. She did have her seatbelt on. She required plastic surgery and will have a huge car across her face for the rest of her life. Seatbelts although better than nothing for little children do not work like car seats. That is because children are too little for the seatbelt to work appropriately. In fact, if adults were to have safety harnesses like car seats instead of seatbelts that we have available, those safety harnesses would save the lives of many adults who are killed each year because the seatbelt was not enough to save them when involved in a serious car accident.

If a child is under the age of 5, they must be in a child restraint system. It does not matter how much they weigh or how tall they are. If they are 5 years of age or younger, under Arizona law, they need to be in a car seat or restraint system. There are many different types of car seats and retraints systems.

If you get pulled over by the police, you will be fined and sometimes the fine can be as much as $200.00. For as little as about $40.00 you can buy a car seat that is safe for your little one. It is better to buy a car seat new than used as the safety requirements are always being changed by the federal government.

Dog Sledding . . . WOW!

By Alexis Breyer on May 9, 2009

(Posted by Mark Breyer)

Well, it has taken me a long time to get the chance to write about my dogsledding adventure with my 8 year old son, Tate. Well, it looks like I have the time right now. I left the house this beautiful Saturday morning at 7:00am. Why? Well, Kailey, our 11 year old has a dance competition. Last night she was here at the competition as well. She went straight from school and got home about 10pm. Meanwhile, I went straight from work to grab Zev, our 12 your old, and take him to his basketball game. They lost a tough one, clearly (my) bad coaching cost us the game! Then, I went straight to daddy/daughter dance practice. The thing was . . . I was at the dance practice but my daughter was at the dance competition! After a long night that included trying to figure out the big Mother’s Day gift.

So here I am, plugged in at the back of the auditorium waiting for Kailey and her friends to dance, at which point I will move up and cheer them on. When that is done, it will be straight from here to pick up Tate to coach him in his flag football game which starts at 10:30. Around that time, I will switch off with Alexis, who will come here to watch Kailey with some of the kids, while I try to both coach 10 6-8 year old kids and keep an eye on some of the older kids that come to watch Tate play his last game of the flag football season.

So, taking advantage of this window of opportunity, time to let you all know just how fantastic the dogsledding adventure turned out to be. Fantastic, interesting, unexpected.

We showed up in the morning and I was expecting to see a big dog sled where all 4 of us (my 8 year old son Tate, his 8 year old cousin Sammy, Sammy’s grandfather Jerry, and me) could sit down at the back of the sled while the person who runs the place could “mush” the whole sled from behind. Nope.

We paid our money, signed the release, and headed outside where the dogs were chained up. Each dog was chained up by itself onto a post, but all in the same area. As we walked into the area where the dogs were chained up, they were all lunging towards us and barking like crazy. The guy who owns and run the place leads us into the middle of the dogs. There was also a young girl, maybe 20 years old or so, helping him out. Now, I figured it was not a good idea to seem intimidated, so I tried to fake it. Having said that, it was a little intimidating, in part because the dogs are trying to rip the posts they are chained to our of the ground and lunging towards us. With one dog, this would seem typical and I know the dogs were having fun. But when there are 60 dogs doing it at once, well, let’s just say it has a whole different feel. The other reason I think it seemed so crazy was because I was waiting to get an idea what the sled we would all sit on would like liked and where we would sit down while the person running the show would “mush” the dogs.

Well, I am still waiting for that big sled to appear. Still. To this day, because it never happened. Instead, they pull out three little things that have a place to put supplies (or, in our case, to put 8 year old boys) with a couple of 2×4s coming out of the back. These sleds did not bear the markings of some commercially made sled. Nope, we were told that this owner/trainer of the dogs, “Fred,” had made these sleds on his own. OK, interesting start. A home made sled. Well, that should be fine. I mean, its not like we will have to mush our own sled . . . right? Wrong. Three little sleds are pulled out. I would have one sled with Tate in front of me. We were to pull up the rear. Fred took out his own sled and went in front. Jerry and Sammy had the middle sled.

I am told to go stand behind my sled. They begin hooking up the 4 dogs that would pull our sled. The two in front, I would later learn, are the actual lead dogs when Fred takes these dogs into the professional, cross-continent type dog races. However, one of the dogs in the back must be new, because he was apparently doing something wrong, because Fred jumped on him and put the dog in a headlock while screaming at him and disciplining him about something. So now we have dogs barking all over, Tate sitting in the sled, me standing behind the sled, and one of my dogs is getting thrown into a Hulk Hogan headlock in front of us.

Now, this would have been enough for me to get a bit freaked out in a normal situation. And, in truth, this was intimidating. I just found out I was going to have my own sled, the sled is made by some guy who lives in something approaching a log cabin with a wood stove and all, and one of the dogs on my sled is apparently not trained enough to stay out of trouble with his owner during the “hook-onto-sled” process.

I would have asked if this was normal. I would have asked for reassurance. I would have admitted this was new to me and made sure everything was OK. Yeah, I would have. But I couldn’t ask. There was a 20 year old GIRL helping out, and she wasn’t scared. Sure, she had probably grown up around dog sledding. But it was a GIRL. No way I was going to let her know I was intimidated. If Fred and this girl are not scared, neither am I! (Or, at least, I ain’t gonna show it!)

Besides, at least we would still have our training session. They would explain to me how to handle the dogs, what to do in order to guide the sled, and all of that other safety stuff. I mean, there is no way they are just going to stick me on a homemade sled with an unruly dog and just head out into the wilderness, right? Wrong.

The training session lasted less than a minute. First, Fred told us where I was to stand. That would be on the 2″ wide sticks coming out of the back of the sled. The whole time (a little over 3 hours) standing on a 2″ stick on each side of the sled. The brake was in the middle if we needed it. there was also a “mat” of some type coming out of the middle that was to be used as a light brake to slow the dogs but not stop them. “Team Right” if we wanted the dogs to go right, “Team Left” if we wanted left, “Team Stop” to stop the dog sled, and “Team Go” to get the moving.

Fred also told us that if we got out there and really wanted the dogs to run at their absolute fastest, he had trained the dogs to go at their full sprint if they we said “Team, Rock-and-Roll.” I assured Fred that while I had no idea what I would do on this sled, there would be no “Rock and Roll” coming from my mouth during the trip.

One last thing, Fred mentioned that he never knows how fast the dogs will come out of the property, and that there is a very sharp turn early into the trip, so to be ready. He also let us know that he would be going ahead of us at times. I did not know what he meant, yet.

So, Fred jumps on a sled and his dogs take off. This gets my dogs pulling and tugging like crazy, because they want to run, too. Then, the Jerry/Sammy sled in front of me takes off. I am waiting to get unhooked. By the time the girl unhooks my sled, I cannot even see where the two sleds in front of me have gone. You see, I had assumed we would all stay together in an orgazined line of sleds, close together. Um, not exactly.

So my dogs go out fast. Way fast. As in, Fred later said they sleds went out extremely fast. The dogs wanted to run. We go through the first part of the trail and I see the sharp, seemingly 90-degree left turn up ahead. I have no idea if I can negotiate this turn and stay on the sled. Well, my dogs make the hard left, and I hand onto the sled. I look up and see Jerry was not so lucky. Jerry is off the sled, the sled is on its side, and the dogs are still running. The sled on its side must have created some drag for the dogs, because the sled was going much slower, now. Of course, that may have been because Sammy was still in the sled being dragged along it side. Fred gets off of his sled and gets everything back together. Sammy is not hurt. Jerry is not hurt. And, I just found something out . . . the dogs do not always listen. My command “Dogs Stop” was largely ignored, so i had to stand with all my weight on the brake to get the sled to stop without running right past Sammy and Jerry.

We all get it back together, and we are told by Fred that he will be going way up ahead of us at times. He would be on the same trail, but we would not be able to see him. I thought maybe he was exxagerating. He was not. We were left alone for most of the day.

So we head out. Now, you may think with all of this going on, it was not fun. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! It was awesome. Fun. Exhilirating. And it was about to get better. You see, most of this craziness did not sink in until later. At the time, Tate and I were so excited and the experience so new to us, it was already shaping up to be a great experience. Plus, Fred definitely knew what he was doing. If he thought he knew how to build his own sleds, I got the impression he was right. If he thought he could take off and go have fun on his own and leave us behind, I get the feeling that he had done this enough to know what he was doing. We all have experience, expertise, talent in different things. I felt like he knew dog sledding inside and out.

So we set out from that point into an awesome day of dog sledding. Our sled was so fast, we kept catching the sled in front of us. I would ask Tate if he wanted me to stop to get some space between us and the other sleds. Many times, Tate would have us stop the sled. Also, as the dogs got used to me, they started listening.

And the scenery kept changing, as did the challenge. At some points there were steep hills to climb and descend. There were sharp turns and easy turns. There were times where we were running along staight, wide-open trails. Sometimes we cut through forest so dense that I could hold up my elbows and hit three branches on each side of us!

Tate and I kept talking the whole time. He enjoyed giving the “Team Go” command after we would stop. We would stop, sit there and the dogs would rest while the other dog sleds would get completely out of sight. After several minutes, we would set out to catch them again.

I even got to the point where I was saying “Team Rock and Roll” while we were going down hills. I also used a jet-skiing trick to maneuver the corners on the dog sled. In January, our whole family (I mean, our WHOLE Family, Alexis and me and our 7 kids, both of my sisters and their husbands and kids, and my parents) went on the family vacation of a lifetime. While there, my sister Sheri and I went out on jetskis with each of us having a 13-year old nephew on the back of our jetskis. In that adventure, there were about 12 jetskis and we were all supposed to stay in a straight line from one island to another, small island. Anyway, my sister followed me and when we got to the island she told me to stop letting up during the turns. It is better to “power through the turns” on a jet ski, and speeding up actually gives more stability than letting off the gas when turning. She was right, and on the way back I kept powering through the turns and it was much better.

Well, at the start of the dogsledding, I kept trying to slow down during the turns, and that made it harder to hold on. However, at some point I figured out that going full speed through most turns actually made it easier . . . and more fun.

I did almost fall off one time . . . when I accidentally stepped off my 2″ wide sticks. The dogs kept running and I had to hang on by my hands and jump up onto it. I probably would have just let go, but since the dogs had my kid in the sled, there was a little extra motivation.

Tate did have an interesting point when he took off his gloves to videotape the dogsledding. Well, he is from Arizona, so it did not occur to him to put the gloves back on. Tate and I spent the whole day talking and joking and having fun. Well, all of a sudden he got kinda quiet. I asked him what was wrong, he said “nothing.” So we kept going down the trail - probably close to 2 hours into the adventure, when this was going on. So, about 5 minutes later I asked him again what was wrong, and he said he was cold. Well, thanks to Sammy’s mom, we were bundled up enough to handle much, much colder weather than we had that day (it was a beautirful day that got into the low 30s) so that seemed odd. I looked down at him, and his gloves were off and his hands were freezing.

me: Tate, why are your gloves off
Tate: I never put them back on
me: Well, if you hands were cold, why didn’t you put the gloves back on?
Tate: my hands were too cold to put the gloves on!

Later, Tate and I had done one of our many “let’s wait and then play catch-up” when we came upon Jerry walking alone on the trail. No dogsled in sight. A slight problem regardless of the situation. A much bigger problem when Sammy was last seen in a dogsled being pulled away with no one on back!

Tate and I try leave Jerry walking along the trail while we try to “rock and roll” our dogs as fast as possible to catch Sammy and make sure he is OK. Sammy was fine. We caught up to Sammy and Fred after about a mile and a half. Turns out, Fred had stopped up front to wait for us (as he did several times throughout the trip) when Sammy’s sled came to a stop behind Fred and his sled. Fred asked Sammy how long he had been alone. Sammy looked back behind him - he had no idea his grandfather had been thrown off the sled a long time before! He was never worried, just enjoying the ride!

Fred was great at the point helping my warm-weather child with his cold hands. Fred gave Tate his big mittens and some small heat packs to put inside them. Meanwhile, we had a small problem. Jerry was way back on the trail trying to walk his way to us. So, Fred turned the sled around and I went back to get Jerry and we found him walking back towards us. Jerry turned the dogs back around, jumped in the sled, and I took him back to the crew.

One other time, When we were stil close together and had just left one of the stops, Jerry was thrown off the sled right in front of us, and Sammy was now being dragged on his left side on the sled. I had gotten pretty good working with these awesome dogs, so we caught up, grabbed onto the sled, stopped it, and Jerry came running up, dove to grab the sled, and drove off.

The speeds of dog sledding are much faster than I expect. The trees are much closer than I expected. the dogs are much stronger and have more energy than I expected. In the end, however, we only went on this trip because I thought it was a chance for Tate and I to have a unique experience together while Tate had a weekend with his cousin.

Turns out, it was much better than I ever expected. It was not just different, it was fun. Seeing the landscape as you mush through it with dogs that do not know how to quit. My son and I passing up, down, and all around. Dog sledding . . . WOW!

My 5 year old tells me I don’t have a nice name

By Alexis Breyer on May 8, 2009

On the way home as I converted from Arizona injury and wrongful death attorney to mom of 7, my 5 year old Talia asked me if she and her siblings were having a babysitter today. I told Talia that she was having a babysitter and she then asked me who it was who would be babysitting. I told her I wasn’t going to tell her but that the babysitter had a nice name. Of course, there was no babysitter… it was me. Although sitting here after doing work for a few hours, I am thinking I should have had a babysitter as I have yelled at the kids 1,000 times in the last few hours that “doors are not toys” as the kids slammed the doors while playing hide and seek. That’s what happens when you are a personal injury attorney - everything in site turns into a dangerous thing.

Anyways, a few hours later Talia came up to me to inquire why the babysitter had not come and what was her name. She went through the long list of babysitter names (when you have 7 children you need a never ending supply of babysitters). I then told her the babysitter’s name was Alexis (myself) to which she responded, “That’s an ugly name. You should have been called Kathy.”

I would like to thank Talia for insulting my name, spilling food all over my comforter, and having an accident on my bed as well. Aren’t 5 year olds the greatest? I guess it serves me right for ignoring her while I responded to all my work e-mails on a Friday night.

I will be updating the blog more. The last month we were very busy, including a trial regarding clients who had been in a car accident (we won!) so I didn’t have time to write that much. If you haven’t already signed up for the contest of the month - it’s the “Best Mom” contest and you can win up to $200.00. The winner of the “Best Teacher” contest was so excited that when she screamed of happiness when she found out she won, my employee next to me heard her. It was fun to surprise her with her being the winner. She is planning a surprise for the best teacher that she nominated.

Remember, if you know a friend, family member or co-worker who has been in a car accident or who has sustained an injury or lost a loved one from the negligence of a third party, have them give us a call.