Listen Here, Whippersnappers!

In the spirit of being Old Enough To Know Better (the long version name of this blog), I have reached the point in my life (officially 44 on Dec. 20) where I freely offer advice, to just about anyone.

Being old comes with privileges like that. Doesn’t matter whether or not people listen. That’s not the point. How handy to have this blog to help in my endeavor!

Along those lines, this post is a random collection of items that make me happy in life. Of course you want to know about them because they are sure you make you happy as well. Consider my tips an improvement over what you might find in high-brow periodicals, such as Martha Stewart Living, Oprah’s O Magazine or Real Simple—only better. The great thing is that I am sharing these happiness-makers with you for FREE, via my low-brow blog!

Here are five FREE! happiness-makers:

1. Make the bed every morning. No matter what.

This is something that I can easily control, even when the rest of my day is insane. Bonus: When I collapse in bed at the end of a long day, the covers are not in a messy heap. This gives me the illusion that I’ve conquered all chaos in my life.

Extra credit for remembering to sprinkle some baby powder between the sheets while making it…keeps things extra fresh.

2. Sit on a ball, not a chair, while at work.

I am not kidding. Unless you work in a profession that gives you frequent freedom to move about, your body is getting weaker every second you spend in that chair. Scientists agree with me, as empirically proven by this one study, as well as plain common sense.

At least sitting on a physio-ball ($20 from your local Target) keeps you working core muscles while you are sitting, because if you don’t work your core you will fall off the ball. The entire process will make you feel better. Especially the part about not falling off the ball.

Anyone who thinks you’re a weirdo has too much free time on their hands to be worrying about you and your ball…suggest that they get back to work and let you continue being on the ball.  Who can argue with good posture?

Extra credit for one or two backbends during the day, supported by your trusty ball. If you are both self-conscious and stealthy this can be accomplished while co-workers are in the kitchen or on bathroom breaks.

3. Even if you don’t like habits, pick a few that give you comfort and practice them every day.

I like change and don’t enjoy a lot of repetition in my days, so this is not an easy discipline for me. What hooked me on habits is that they are both nurturing as well as efficient use of time.

Getting ready for work or school and arriving at the same time every day is a simple habit that most of us have to do anyway, so that’s easy. Fitting in some time for meditation and journal-writing prior to work is something that I have grown to enjoy. Practicing an instrument is another.

If you have too many habits, make it a habit to drop some of them. This would include frequent trips to the office stash of Reese’s Cups (one of my too frequent habits).

4. Walk more than you do now.

This is something that just about anyone can easily do. I have for many years owned dogs that will drive me crazy if I don’t get them out for a walk or hard playtime in a field. This is terrific motivation.

There are so many little things that I notice about the world around me by moving more slowly than I can by car, and my body is thankful for the chance to blow off some steam and soak up the outdoors. Even in bad weather, being both outside and simply walking gives me a mood boost.

5. Pick one day each week when you will not use social media or electronic devices.

This is very difficult for me. I really hate it at first because I am quite obsessive-compulsive with being “in touch,” but it’s very beneficial for my peace of mind to go off the grid and not be always connected to everyone and everything.

All of it is still be there when I plug back in the next day. Most things can wait and don’t need immediate response. The Arcade Fire’s “We Used to Wait” is a good reminder that not so long ago we communicated with more delay between the send and response.  Immediacy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and being off the grid is a good reminder of how the world keeps spinning without my interventions.

There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee on these tips. I will give you a full refund if you are not happier after putting all of these into practice for a month. Promise!

Down in the Heel

The dog has ruined my professional shoe collection. Surely these photos say it all.

The tan platforms were particularly painful, therefore the close-up.

BlogPaws

Scrap riots sound like fun...c'mon!

Had an awesome time at the Blogpaws pet bloggers’ conference yesterday and today! Thanks to all who attended the Building Your Blog Strategy panel, moderated by Sue Resnicoff of Del Monte Foods | Pet Products. (My pet’s favorite: Pup-Peroni.).

I enjoyed sitting with fellow panelists Karen Nichols of Catster blog and Michele Hollow of Pet News and Views.

My portion of the panel involved:

• Ideas and tools for creating and sharing compelling content.
• Tips and techniques for staying disciplined, engaged and most of all, motivated!

Here are the content tips I shared:

Creating and Sharing Compelling Content

1. Do Your Homework

• Research the topics that are of interest to you AND your target audience. Conduct a thorough search effort when you get started…and at logical check-points.
• Ask around and look for content “holes.” Is there a topic that’s not being blogged about? Is there value you can add to the discussion from an unexplored perspective on a topic already in the blogosphere?

2. Explore the Shallows and Dive Deep

• I will often share content on Facebook and Twitter that is of interest to me, then blog more deeply about the content. This is a good way to test initial responses to the topic and determine whether it would draw readers to your blog.
• Setting up a series of posts about a topic also gives you the chance to touch on the high points and dive deep over time.

3. Don’t Wax Poetic

• Posts should be no longer than 400 words. Preferably, make them closer to 250.
• Add images, audio and video. Keep in mind the needs of visual and experiential learners. Not everyone will be drawn in by the written word.

Staying Disciplined, Engaged and Motivated

1. Discipline: Create an editorial calendar.

• This will help you to plan your posts across the year and have a roadmap for success. Remember to set realistic goals for frequency. Start off modestly and build out to one or more posts per day, as it makes sense for your blog.
• Don’t be constrained by the calendar. You can and should be posting more frequently on topics of current interest.

2. Engagement: Build relationships and activate your voice…enhancing your reputation.

• Building relationships is the goal.
• Get excited about your content. If you are passionate, your readers will be.
• Be smart about your content and your replies to readers. Comments and replies should be dynamic extensions of your posts. Learn how-to’s from industry leaders, including their mistakes and successes.
• Assess your reader demographics. Are they your intended target audience?
• Attract and retain your target readers.
• Recalibrate your calendar on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly).

3. Motivation: Don’t go it alone.

• Bond with fellow bloggers. A support group will keep you activated.
• Get honest reactions from your friends, family and significant other.
• Take a break when you need to. No one will smack your hand for skipping a week when you need to take a breather. A blog vacation can rejuvenate your energy and help to grow new ideas.

Soooo sleepy.

I thought it would be appropriate to post this shot of Wylie post-conference. He got loads of new toys (more info in future posts) and was EXHAUSTED by the conference. He took networking to new levels in the pet play room while I presented. But everyone has to sleep it off when they overdo, right?

Puppies and Pad Injuries

Wylie wearing a bandage and doped up on doggie sedatives.

We’ve successfully made it through three weeks of recovery from a pad injury. Thought I’d post this for anyone who doesn’t know how to handle a pad injury.

What Happened

Wylie was playing in our local creek (Alum Creek) at my favorite dog park (Wolfe aka Woof Park) with his best friend dog Mo(zart). My friend Anne and I saw some broken glass and cleaned it up.

I noticed that while Wylie  and Mo were running around through the woods and in the creek, at one point he yipped. But he kept going, and I didn’t think anything more until we arrived home. I’m now confident that he stepped on some glass that sliced his pad. When I got him out of the car, there was blood everywhere on the back seat. Pads are very vascular, so you’ll have that!

What We Did

At first, I thought it would clot and heal on its own. I cleaned him off in the tub and put him upstairs in his crate to rest. He was tired, so this was no problem. He wasn’t limping or seeming to care about the pad injury.

When I went up to get him out of the crate after about an hour, it was still bleeding. At that point, we knew that we needed to take him into the vet. Of course, this was a Sunday evening, so we were not able to go to our family vet. Off we went to OSU Vet Hospital.

Treatment

We waited several hours, which we expected. For anyone who has an injured animal, be prepared for a lot of sitting around. But OSU is wonderful. We’ve been there many times in the past with previous dogs. The vets are terrific.

They stitched up the pad and bandaged it. We left four hours after arrival with a worn-out and woozy Wylie (post-anesthesia), two weeks’ worth of antibiotics and two varieties of pain med.

The most interesting thing that happened was when the vet told me we’d need to limit the dog’s activity level. “No time running around or jumping in the yard.” Okay, no problem. “Also, keep him from running or jumping in the house.” Um, notgonnahappen. He’s a puppy after all. Was this vet a cat vet? This last part was the reason for the second sedative, to keep his activity level low.

Aftercare

Three days after the injury, we took Wylie back to our vet to have the stitches examined and the paw bathed and rebandaged. Wylie was not a happy camper, and he refused the vet’s liver treat after she was done with him.

Wylie with head hung low, sporting his cone of shame.

Six days after the injury, it was back to our vet again for pad examination and bathing. This time, they left the bandage off, but instructed us to have him wear an Elizabethan collar (aka cone of shame) so that he would not bite out the stitches.

He also had to wear an old knee sock outside to keep mud from getting caked in between the pads. Up to this point, we had to put a plastic bag over the bandage to keep it from getting wet every time he went outside. The sock was less of a struggle.

By this time, he was done with the sedative and back to his usual energy level. The problem with this? Still not allowed to take him for a walk! He drove us crazy during this time. Lots of indoor games kept him occupied.

Ten days after the injury, he went back to the vet for stitch removal. Everything was in fine order, and he was cleared for regular walks and visits to the dog park. They wanted us to keep having him wear the cone of shame, but he did not mess with the pad, so we left it off. He was so dejected wearing the cone, we couldn’t stand to keep it on him.

Pricetag

Emergency vet=$500

Aftercare vet visits=$120

Could have been MUCH worse. We have had pet insurance for a while. I highly recommend it.

BlogPaws Conference

Are you interested in pets and blogging?

Join me for this conference in Columbus, Ohio, April 9-10, at the Westin downtown (pet-friendly hotel!).

More than 250 bloggers, writers and companies passionate about pets will come together for networking, learning and fun.

The best part? You can bring your animal with you. Wish me luck…I’m on a panel for Building Your Blog Strategy, and the puppy will be joining me.

We’re involving in Columbus All-Breed Basic Obedience starting next week, which should help us out tremendously. Meanwhile, let’s hope that he doesn’t have to wear his Elizabethan collar to the conference. It’s not very stylish. Wylie’s currently recovering from a pad injury.

The Company of Canines

I never knew how much I enjoyed the company of dogs until I didn’t have a dog. Over the past month, I’ve said goodbye to two canine companions—one expected passing due to old age and another unanticipated loss initiated by behavioral issues. Neither was easy, and both were quite different grievings.

Hera was a dog we adopted from the Humane Society as a puppy, back in 1993. My husband and I had been married for just three years when we brought her home with us. We were young and so was she. Her passing is a milestone in our relationship that bookends her adoption. We took her on vacation, worried over her every need and trained her to be a civilized beast. She was the smartest dog I’ve known. Despite being smaller than most of the dogs we had as buddies for her, she out-maneuvered every other dog. She was the canine equivalent of a chess champion. If she wanted a toy, she pretended that she was in love with another fetch-worthy item until the dog who had the toy she wanted couldn’t help but drop it with unwitting greed. Hera thought well into the future, a quality that most dogs lack.

Her face was unique. She had a black mask like a raccoon’s, and it grayed with age so that by the time she died it was 100 percent silver and quite striking. The last few years of her life, we had to call her name loudly even when standing next to her, and cataracts made her eyes mood-ring cloudy and she was apt to run into things. When she stopped being able to get up reliably on her own—at all—and seemed to be just biding her time, we made an appointment. She really, REALLY hated being carried around and resented us terribly for it. Her time had come. The vet came to the house, and the family gathered around Hera in the back yard on a beautiful day. It was a very peaceful passing, and she is forever resident underneath the big pine tree at the back of the yard.

Mobley was a big black hundred-pound mess of supposed Black Lab and Newfoundland melange. Since he didn’t like water and couldn’t retrieve to save his life, I am not entirely sure about his rumored lineage. His head was disturbingly large—providing ample breathing room for a sadly undersized brain. No dog welcomed the world of the backyard in quite the same way as Mobley. Every morning, he could not wait to get outside. The phrase, “He could not contain his excitement,” does not begin to describe Mobley’s insane exuberance. I was routinely knocked over by him either in his goings or comings. I still have bruises and scratches to prove it.

Mobley was only six when we had to make the decision. A heart-wrenching decision. We had invited very good friends to come to the house to say their goodbyes to Hera. They brought their dog with them, and I should have told them not to. As he got older, Mobley became more and more aggressive towards other dogs similar in size to him. Instead of telling our friends to take their dog home, I locked Mobley in the house behind two closed doors while we visited with Hera, our friends and their son and dog in the backyard.

Everything was fine until circumstances went awry. Children came in and out of the house. Doors were opened inadvertently, and Mobley got into the backyard. As he burst out the back door, I knew it was going to be bad. And it was. Mobley viciously attacked my friends’ dog and grabbed its throat in his jaws. He would not let go. We did many things over the course of 10 very long minutes to get the dogs apart. My girlfriend was smart enough to think of turning the hose on the dogs, so that finally we were able to separate them.

My friends’ dog was terribly injured. Both my friends and I had been bitten. That night, my friends spent all night in the ER after taking their dog to MedVet. I went to the urgent care. We all got tetanus shots. As for Mobley, he  knew something bad had happened. He just didn’t know that he caused the problem.We were grateful that we had the presence of mind to send the kids all into the front yard while the dog fight was in process.

I rewound and replayed the entire series of events over and over in my mind all week long. I should have told my friends not to bring their dog. I should have locked Mobley in an upstairs room. We should have worked harder to socialize him. Why were we such miserable dog-owners? My failure to control my dog surely made me unpardonable, I told myself.

Mistakes were made, but there’s no rewind in real life. Decisions were imminent. We had to really be grown-ups about this. Because after things happened, we realized that we could not in good conscience adopt Mobley out to another family knowing that this could happen again. We knew we couldn’t keep him safe from other dogs. He could vault the fence and was strong enough to pull us over when leashed. We’d had dogs that we were able to find homes for in the past, either dogs we’d owned ourselves or fostered. And we knew that we had worked hard to train him. There was just something weirdly off with him, something that affected him early in life when his social skills were developing, so that once we adopted him at 2-3 years of age there wasn’t much that could be done. Perhaps he had been trained as a fighting dog. Who knew? He had been rescued after living with numerous owners before us. His behavior was getting more erratic. During a walk during his last week of life, he snapped at a person who wanted to pet him. He was not a bad dog, he was just a dog who would never really change. Although incredibly loyal and devoted to humans, he was a loaded gun with other large dogs.

We talked with our friends whose dog got hurt more than once a day for the week afterwards. And we talked with the family that owned Mobley before us. We told them what we were thinking. That despite the fact that Mobley was true and good in most ways, we felt that as his owners the only responsible choice we could make was to put him to sleep. Sadly, everyone agreed. The affirmation was both validating and painful to hear.

Mobley was a dead dog walking. Because there were bites to humans during the dog fight, we had to quarantine him for 10 days in the event of rabies. And so we bided our time. In some ways it would have been easier to put him down right away, saying our goodbyes and taking swift action. Our house was already quieter for having had to say goodbye to Hera that same week. But we knew that our decision to say goodbye to Mobley was the right one. His former owners came over for a visit. We took him for his last few walks. And we loved him for who he was, nothing more and nothing less.

The passing of Mobley was like his life: tumultuous. We took him into the vet. Because of his size, and because he got nervous around shots, we wanted to be able to help things go smoothly. Well, they didn’t. The vet had to give him two doses of a sedative to get him calm enough for the shot of sodium pentathol. He had to be double-muzzled to keep from biting the vet. And then the anesthesia had to be administered three times because he was so full of life. I am sorry to say that he just would not go quietly. The entire event took about an hour from start to finish. We were physically spent from helping to keep him still, and emotionally worn out from the trauma of making the decision and then seeing it through.

The kids were with a neighbor during all of this. On the way home, I talked with the mother and apologized that we were so late, explaining why. She said, “Well, God didn’t mean death to happen that way.” She didn’t mean to be harsh, and I wholeheartedly agreed with her sentiment. And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, dog-owner or dog.

It’s been about a month now since everything happened. I hesitated about posting this. Judgment from people about situations like this can be quite cutting. Fair warning: If anyone comments about the decision, giving advice about why we should have chosen differently, I won’t publish the comment and probably won’t read all of it. I just can’t second-guess the choice we made. Making the decision was difficult enough.

I believe that as animal “owners” we become the stewards of our animals. They are like family members. If you’d asked me a year ago whether I would ever consider having to take this course of action, I would have said no. And I would expect most people to not really understand getting to the point of having to make this kind of decision for an animal in their care. It is truly the worst possible decision to make.

We have been healing, but we’re missing our dogs. Hera and Mobley were incredible companions. We know that their souls have moved to the great beyond. With some trepidation, we are taking steps to get a puppy that we can train from the ground up. We’ll see where this goes, but if I had to guess I’d say that we will soon again be in the company of canines.