Renewed Sense Of Optimism
Posted on February 17, 2009
Filed Under Things That Make Me Smile, Tips and Tricks, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment
yesterday as i was going through my email i accidentally stumbled upon an email from 2001 responding to a job posting for a assistant training position for paws with a cause. it gave me a renewed sense of optimism that i really am doing what i am supposed to be doing. sometimes i feel very overwhelmed with the idea of opening up a non profit training program and that there is so much to do and never enough time to do it.
in liame raising news it appears that the hours and hours of time we have spent trying to get liame to look at me when he sees food on the floor is starting to pay off. i am now getting this behavior in the grocery store and have started expanding the behavior into just paying him treats for him randomly looking up at me and watching me. it is creating a wonderfully attentive dog when i am paying for the behavior but he goes back to his old self once i am distracted. i really need to learn how to fade out rewards properly or else im going to be stuck walking around with my training belt full of food for the rest of my life!
Yes, I Frequently Give Commands To Random Strangers
Posted on February 13, 2009
Filed Under Mitigating Symptoms, Service Dog Laws, Things That Make Me Smile, Things That Make Me Want To Cry, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment
today i stopped off at home depot and got a few things for the fountain i am making for the back yard. after picking up some office supplies at the office store i dropped into the starbucks world headquarters and had lunch in their cafeteria. liame brought a lot of attention to us and it seems like every single second that i am in a publi place i am not focusing on the moment but my desire to escape the situation. people come up to me all the time at the grocery store, walking down the street, on the bus, etc and i WANT to be able to talk with them but in all honesty all i really want to do is run away. its like this war rages inside of me every time i go out in public. logically i know im not going to get hurt or people are going to make fun of me or anything bad is going to happen but all i want to do is not be there in that moment. i give one or two word answers to their questions and avoid their obvious attempts at conversations. i appear so normal sometimes to those who i have grown accustomed to but in all honesty the social anxiety is always there, under the surface waiting to rear its ugly head while i fight it back tooth and nail. i did have one redeeming moment though. i was in an elevator with a bunch of starbucks employees and told liame to sit. a guy turns around, looks directly at me and genuinely asks if “sit” was meant for him. i chuckle, look down at the dog, look back up at him and say, “yes, i frequently give commands to random strangers” which generates a large laugh in the elevator. i get that response often when giving liame commands and i think i am going to have to use that line again sometime.
I Cannot Fail
Posted on January 15, 2009
Filed Under Care, Major Steps, Things That Make Me Smile, Todays Mood | 1 Comment
so i had my second day of assisting classes yesterday. i live for these dog training classes, especially the older dog classes. puppies are cute and all but i want to train service dogs - a more complicated a mature doggie client. they have completely different needs than puppies. thank goodness i volunteered for these classes before i got laid off. at least now christine and amanda know that i just didnt want to help them with classes because i had nothing else better to do.
both jasper and liame seem to be adjusting to the new routine. i however, am not. i now understand how a home based business can take over ones life. i am so motivated and driven at this point that im doing nothing for myself. i think ive watch maybe 10 hours of tv since the 5th - a pretty amazing feat for someone who used to spend most of her waking moments catching up on tv programs. im looking at being laid off as an opportunity to start my own business, become my own boss and help people at the same time - something i have been wanting to to for literally years. i cannot fail. i will not fail. and hopefully i can control this obsessive compulsive tendency of mine and in the process of not failing, not get burnt out either.
Managing Without The Training, Pay And Authority
Posted on January 9, 2009
Filed Under Mistakes, Things That Make Me Want To Cry, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment
i knew once they started bothering me about my attendance and instituted their “tracking” system it wouldnt be long. i did a job, a job none of the other retouchers wanted to do. i got hired on to do retouch work and ended up managing the entire job from start to finish. i was the reason why we made our deadlines and the customer never really complained. i was in and out of my seat being a detective, doing the dirty work, tracking down and resolving problems before the customer even knew that they existed. because i volunteered to do a job that needed to be done and that no one else wanted to do because they were “real retouchers”
Sayonara
Posted on January 5, 2009
Filed Under Firsts, Major Steps, Mitigating Symptoms, Things That Make Me Want To Cry, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment
i got to work today all excited to tell everyone that i had my fist vacation in years where i didnt spend at least half of it sick. instead i come in, settle down and got the long walk to HR. yup, i got laid off today. as you can gather from my previous posts its not like i didnt see it coming. i tried desperately to turn todays negative into a positive and went home, changed into service dog academy clothing and went to the dog park. the high it gave me worked for a couple of hours. ive been up for a while now and i think the reality of the situation is finally hitting me.
Marley and Bereavement Time For A Service Dog
Posted on December 26, 2008
Filed Under Jasper, Major Steps, Service Dog Laws, Things That Make Me Want To Cry, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment
we went to see marley and me yesterday. oh my god. before yesterday i had never done the ugly cry in a theater. it took me two weeks to read the last couple of chapters of the book because i knew what was coming. but there it was, boom, on the screen, them putting their bestest friend to sleep. oh my god. i am crying just writing this. i cant believe that sometime in the near future i am going to have to give jasper the injection that will end his life. i did the ugly cry for a dog on the screen, having to do that to jasper is going to throw me into such a deep depression that i am scared that i might not come out of it. up until recently, jasper had been at my side, 24 hours a day for three solid years. i had more contact with him than i did my husband. my husband refers to him as my “floppy eared boyfriend” and he is so right. in addition to losing the first dog i have ever owned (or been owned by), i might end up losing my job over it too. there is no “bereavement” time off for the death of a dog. and because disability law states that they have to accommodate me just like they do a wheelchair, they dont have to provide me time off because they dont do that for if you lose your wheelchair, or your crutches or your prosthetic arm. i wonder how others who have lost a service dog have dealt with this issue in an employment setting. im going to have to do some research about this. service dog academy’s employment coaching needs to cover this issue because its bound to come up sometime.
Somethings Just Not Right
Posted on December 19, 2008
Filed Under Todays Mood | Leave a Comment
yesterday my boss asked me for my administrative password for the database i built. somethings up. you dont ask for admin passwords unless…. im trying not to think like that and everyone is trying to reassure me that nothing is going to happen but i just can seem to shake the feeling that something strange is going on. ive been teasing my coworkers that i have been working on my “back up plan” for the last couple of weeks (service dog academy) but i guess they are just refusing to see what i am seeing. one of my coworkers who i occasionally discuss themes of the oprah show with reminded me of the “law of attraction” and that if i keep thinking i am going to be laid off, it will happen. but today i got a bit of reassurance that maybe things are going to be OK when the new seating chart came around and my name was still on it.
WARNING: Too Much Information For Most Readers
Posted on November 16, 2008
Filed Under Tips and Tricks, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment
so that post i made about my work complaining that i was always sick, turns out there was something wrong with me… my nose was almost completely blocked. the turbinates were so inflamed and my septum was so deviated that i only had about 15% capacity of my nose to breath out of, which for me meant that i wasnt ever breathing out of my nose. which also meant that every drop of mucus that was made was staying up there and turning into a culture medium for bacteria and viruses. that was why if i had even a hint of a stuffy nose, i would immediately get a sinus infection and then bronchitis. so surgery was on the 10th and my nose is killing me.
and now, back to the normal puppy talk.. if you ever get surgery and you have a lab puppy in your household, make sure you have enough pain killers on hand to deal with the pain that comes with puppies accidentally bumping surgical areas. its bound to happen and its going to feel like someone stuck a knife in you. who knew a dog that looks so cute when sleeping could inflict so much damage?
This Dog Is Driving Me Bonkers!
Posted on October 22, 2008
Filed Under Care, Service Dog Laws, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment
two and a half weeks of confinement to a crate has changed liame into a dog that i dont know. he is rude, jumpy, mouthy - even with his vest on. thank god he got his stitches out and has been cleared for some light exercise. he is driving me bonkers. i now know what people experience with a dog that has not been allowed to exercise his drives. i cant even give him any work to eat puzzles because that will make him too active! on the other hand, its been kinda nice to lock him up in his crate and get some things done around the house without worrying about if i dropping something he can eat.
i saw some utube videos on service dogs. i saw a video of a 5 month old performing tasks and the only one liame wasnt trained to do at that age was turn on the lights. im now feeling more inspired than ever to work on task training. even though i dont necessarily need him to pick things up or carry things for me, they are simple tasks to show people that he is trained if i am ever asked to do so in an airport.
The Day After
Posted on October 8, 2008
Filed Under Care, Firsts, Major Steps, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment
i picked him up yesterday evening. the way that they shaved him for his surgery made him look like a poodle. he was bald from his shoulders all the way down to his dew claws! he didnt seem too overly exited to see me but when they told me of his morphine patch it kind of made sense. i was really surprised to see only a small bandage over his morphine patch and no casts. he was walking around fine and seemed no worse than when he came in. infact, he even pulled me down the stairs to try and go smell the grass outside the building. im so glad he is OK. i cant even tell you how worried i was that he wasnt going to wake up from the anesthesia.
in all honesty, i was hoping for the cheaper surgery option and hoping that he only had bony fragments in one elbow. but as it turned out, the doctor said he was a “classic” case, with the fragments being in both. no wonder why these guys charge so much - they actually gave me the vial of what they took out of his elbows as well as a cd with arthroscopic photos of the insides of his elbows and a mpg movie of the operation!
since he cant go up and down the stairs for 3 weeks and has to be confined to a small space (essentially a crate), i bought a cheap air mattress and am now sleeping in our office next to his crate. i didnt get much sleep last night because i had to make sure he didnt pull off his pain patch, bandages or stitches out. he was pretty good about not licking/itching things so i didnt have to put on the elizabethan collar they gave me.
keep looking »Recently
- Flat Collars Blow - At Least For Those Of Us With Back Problems
- Renewed Sense Of Optimism
- Yes, I Frequently Give Commands To Random Strangers
- CSDT vs CPDT
- Elitist
- To Puppy Park Or Not?
- Leave It, No, Leave It, Watch, Leave It Liame! Liammmmme!!!
- Back To The Surgeon
- I Cannot Fail
- Managing Without The Training, Pay And Authority