Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Change is Inevitable

By

I think I’ve mentioned before, the past couple of years, I’ve really struggled with the writing of this blog.

I’m struggling to get this dish full. Can you help a dog out?

In part, I think it was a depression of what was going on in my life.

  • I was in an incredibly toxic job. Initially they just cut my hours down, and six months later they cut my hours again, but this time they wrote me up. If I’m being honest, I could have been putting in more effort, but the bulk of what I was written up for was bogus. That was when I saw the writing on the wall and knew I’d need to find another job, before they chose to fire me. (FTR, I did and now have the nicest boss!)
  • Things aren’t great at home. I won’t go into details here, but will just say, sometimes people drift apart. People grow, people change and sometimes there are real struggles with that. I’m not sure how it will resolve, but eventually we’ll figure it out.
  • The dogs are aging, and with that comes health challenges and decisions, and the reality of facing some hard and painful events.
  • With the aging of the dogs, they do less. Sampson is limited physically, so they don’t get to play much together. They do make me smile or laugh every day and I do try to capture that for a post. Thankfully, I do have the DADO’s in my neighborhood to help, when the dogs aren’t doing their job. 🙂

Truthfully, there were times when I just wanted to quit. Stop blogging all together, but something just wouldn’t let me. (It’s true, it could have been Jan, she forbids me to stop.)

Honestly, I think it’s the community that revolves around this blog that kept me going. All of you reading, and commenting, helped keep this blog alive.

I want you to take a moment and really let that sink in. YOU kept me going. YOU made a difference for me, and I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being the reason this blog still is active today.

Things change.  All the time.

The pet bloggers are seeing that right now with BlogPaws. BlogPaws has been acquired by a larger company, and with the exception of one, all the people we know and love, who have mentored us over the last ten years, have either been let go, or chosen to move on. Whether this is a good move or a bad move for the community is yet to be seen.

The purpose of this blog has changed. Originally it started out to garner an online presence. (Mission accomplished, I think.) 🙂

Then it became something so much more to me. It was a place to connect with people like me, people who loved their dogs like crazy and totally ‘got’ that I had to skip happy hour to hurry home from work, because…dogs.

A place where I had friends, where I didn’t feel so alone or lonely.

Delilah’s training was at times extremely challenging. I was struggling trying to find what worked for her, so I knew others must be too. I wanted to give those people hope. I wanted to find the humor in and share the struggles I had with training a crazy chocolate lab. I wanted to let people know that even when it felt hopeless, find the humor, pause and laugh, then carry on. Some dogs just need more time than others to find their happily ever after, but the struggle is SO worth it when it pays off, and it WILL pay off.

We faced medical issues. Sampson with his CCL’s, heart issues, adrenal issues, and those little hormones that keep rearing their little heads. Delilah with elevated liver levels. I like to approach these as holistically as I can. I thought maybe others might too, or perhaps something we did would help another person deal with the same issue. So, I wrote about those.

At various times over the years, people have reached out and thanked me for a particular post, as it gave them an option for their dog that they weren’t aware of, or hadn’t considered.

Helping became important to me. Whether it was a supplement, or a training tip, or making you laugh or smile, or just making you feel like you weren’t alone with whatever you were facing. If I touched your life in some way, I’m truly grateful for being able to do so.

I think that’s where I’m at right now. I want this blog to be somewhere you come to, for help, encouragement, inspiration, humor, or just to sit down and not feel like you are alone in whatever you are dealing with.

Change as they say (there THEY are again, who ARE they?) is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be bad, right?

What the Hell Was That?

By

I’m going to tell you three things straight up:

  1. This post is not about dogs, although they do have cameo roles in the story I’m about to tell you.
  2. I will leave you hanging at the end of this post. Only because:
  3. I will tell you what the hell it was in Follow-Up Friday’s post. There will be a prize (a bag of treats) for the person who guesses correctly just exactly, What the Hell it was. (Hang with me, you’ll understand shortly.)
Wait? WHAT? That's a treat right there! A Frankenwoofer by JONES!

I hope it doesn’t take her as long to tell this story as it took her to let me have this Jones Frankenwoofer.

Hubby was out of town this past weekend. He left on Thursday and returned Sunday evening. I never sleep GREAT when he’s gone, I always worry about someone breaking in. SO, I sleep with my pepper blaster on my nightstand and put a tea kettle in front of the door. (Don’t judge.) My thought is this, if someone tries to get in they will knock the tea kettle with the door, which will wake me up enough to shoot them in the face with my pepper blaster and then Delilah can eat them. Perfectly sensible, right?

Well Saturday night Sampson didn’t come to bed. Which meant I couldn’t booby trap my door. Despite this, I fell asleep and slept fairly well until about 2:30. Around that time my bladder intruded into my sleep suggesting I might want to get up and make a trip to the bathroom.

Sometimes this happens and I ignore the bladder, but not this night. This night I appeased my bladder and got up to empty it.

I climbed back in bed, bleary eyed, ready to get my sleep on. I flipped this way and turned that way to get comfortable and then I was startled by a flash just above my curtain. You know when you’re using the flash on your camera and you get that quick little flash, just before it blinds you? Yeah that one. Well that’s what it looked like.

You’re dreaming, I told myself staring at the window.

Flash!

There it was again.

I swiveled my head around to check the shelves on the other side of the room, thinking there might be something up there that was causing it.

Nothing.

Whip my head back around and stare intently at the windows.

Flash!

Shit, I think the aliens are here for our cavity probe, I whispered to Delilah, who never moved.

I got up and cautiously approached the window.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to just open my curtains and peer out into the night. I have this fear of something/someone peering back at me. Granted I live in a raised-ranch, but there is a small porch outside my room, it’s unlikely, but not inconceivable that someone who was determined COULD manage to get up on that porch. Which is why I hesitated briefly.

I crept up to the window and carefully grasped one side of each curtain and slowly put one eye to the crack and gently pulled.

Nothing. No eyes peering back at me (thank Dog!) No alien spaceship shining a light in my window or trying to attract my attention by flashing me.

I let my breath out, and climbed back in bed.

I stared again at the window.

Nothing.

You’re still half-asleep, I assured myself as I once again started to close my eyes.

And Flash! There it was again, but this time it was on the chair next to the nightstand.

I grabbed my cell phone, activating the flashlight quickly and trained the light on the chair.

I didn’t see anything.

Someone’s fucking with me, I thought to myself, trying to figure out if this was one of those times where I needed to vacate the house immediately. Because we all know in those damn horror movies, investigating this shit doesn’t work out for anyone but the homicidal maniac.

I closed the flashlight and lay there staring at the chair.

FLASH! There it was again.

Again I grabbed the cell phone and using the flashlight feature, I once again inspected the chair.

And that’s when I saw it.

And this is where I leave you.

Yeah, so this is the cliff hanger portion. What do you think I saw? Leave your answer in the comments and whoever guesses correctly will win a bag of treats. These treats are something I recently found, they are made locally and my guys love them.

If there is more than one correct guess, I will put all correct guesses into a drawing using random.org and pull a winner. All guesses must be received by 9:00 PM eastern standard time Thursday, July 14, 2016.

Friday, July 15, 2016 I will reveal the answer to what the hell was flashing in my bedroom.

All Points Bulletin

By

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post today to bring you this important public service announcement.

United States of America, April 5, 2016

Today police along with the National Weather Service issued an All Points Bulletin (APB) for Mother Nature and Punxsutawney Phil. These two b-list ‘celebrities’ have been accused of a most duplicitous crime against the American people.

Nine weeks ago, Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his home in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and boldly predicted an early spring. This prediction came as a surprise to millions as Phil has a solid record of typically predicting six more weeks of winter.

Mother Nature who is reputed to be in collusion with the shifty Ground Hog was scheduled to usher the spring season in on the 20th of March. Yet despite mild temperatures towards the end of March, winter seems to have come back with a vengeance in many areas throughout the United States.

Pictures taken in CT in the last two days confirm the heinous nature of this crime.

kfdjfdjfd

The trees, while thrilled to be resplendent in winter white, were over-burdened with snow and did their best impression of a frat boy after a long night of drinking.

The forsythia are pissed off.

The forsythia have hired an attorney to file a formal complaint against what they are calling an egregious injustice.

Police are requesting the American public be on the look out for the two suspects, but to be wary of approaching either one.

The Internet, especially Facebook is particularly interested in finding Mother Nature, in fact, it seems her information has been shared almost to the point of becoming viral.

Meme found at QuotesGram

Meme found at QuotesGram

Punxsutawney Phil is a ground hog and while typically gentle by nature, Jimmy, Phil’s Wisconsin counter-part did bite the ear that heard him during his last personal appearance.

If you see Mother Nature or Punxsutawney Phil, do not, I repeat DO NOT try and apprehend them yourself, that is best left to the professionals.

Phil?

Phil?

Phil, is that you?

Phil, is that you?

You can run, but you can't. I can smell you, you little fucker.

You can run, but you can’t hide. I can smell you, you little fucker.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

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