Blog: The Part Of Pet Ownership That No One Takes To Heart

Hiya, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my US based folks or those who celebrate! If you’re going back through the log of my blogs & noticing that last week I was noticeably it’s due to two prominent reasons. The first is that my immediate family celebrated the holiday last Friday & thus I was busy cooking, socializing, & entertaining. The second reason is the topic of this week’s blog & while I don’t intend for it to be a downer, I’d be lying if I said the subject matter is a walk through the park. Nevertheless, it is something I feel drawn to speak on in this season of life as well as this season of the year since many people will soon be giving or receiving the gift of a furry, feathered, &/or scaled friend & should understand what exactly it is you or your loved one is signing up for.

Some of you may be aware of the ‘zoo’ that I have at my house; two golden retrievers (Harvey (12) & Peter (3)), two domestic shorthair cats (Jade (13) & Max (5)), & a 185 gallon saltwater fish tank. In addition to a jungle of over 150 house plants. Today we’re going to be focused on my eldest golden, Harvey, for the purpose of our narrative.

I grew up with animals, we always had big dogs when I was young, Newfoundlands to be exact. Over the years we also had cats, fish, frogs, & two terriers, but I always wanted a Golden Retriever. I remember a friend of mine’s parents from elementary school used to breed them & the movie Homeward Bound featured an old golden named Shadow, so I’m sure that’s where the obsession started. Despite the want, we never got goldens so after I moved out I rescued Harvey from an abusive mill at the age of six months old. He was incredibly hard to potty train as he’d spent his entire life up to that point on concrete & was afraid of grass. It didn’t help that my apartment at the time had concrete floors. Harvey, despite my early frustrations with him, is & has always been the perfect dog. He is loyal & loving to a fault. He is gentle & has the most kind heart of any being I have yet to come across. He was instantly my guy, the gold (pun intended) standard to which I shall now hold every dog for the rest of my life, but Harvey’s biggest fault & the one to which all great dogs falter, is that he grew old.

It’s hard, you know. It’s so damned hard to watch your best friend, your buddy, your companion, your most goodest of boys grey around the muzzle, then struggle to find their footing, then have a hard time getting up & lose interest in their toys or their favorite snacks. It’s so unrelentingly hard when those beautiful, loving brown eyes begin to cloud over & their breath begins to get labored & you start to have to think about the beginnings of the end of your time with this purest of hearts that you wish endlessly would beat on forever. & unfortunately this is the part of pet ownership that far too many find to be just way too difficult.

The shelters are full of animals whose previous owners truly didn’t understand. They didn’t know the commitment, emotionally, physically, spiritually, that it takes to raise & care for an animal & I feel sorry for them. Not just for the abandoned animals, of which the majority are over half their lifespan in age, but also for the people who will never know what it is to spend the course of their life being unconditionally loved by an animal.

About a week & a half ago Harvey fell. We were out on a walk & he just kind of crumpled. From there he spent the next couple of days incapable of getting up, when he’d try to stand or walk he’d fall or his legs would drag, he wasn’t eating, wasn’t taking treats & I truly began to think that this was it, this was going to be the last week that I had with this golden angel who poops in my yard & gets taken on daily walks around the block. Ev & I canceled our flights to Kansas City & loaded up both of the dogs in the the car to drive the 16 hours round trip not only so we could tend to Harvey, but also so my parents, who have so much love for my dear boy, could say goodbye to him. Over the next week he didn’t get that much better, though he did eat & regained a bit of his footing, & for the first time since I’d been bringing him back to Kansas he didn’t ascend the stairs with me to sleep at the foot of my bed.

Evan & I did our best to prepare for what we thought was surely the end; we told our friends who had special connections with Harvey to come say their goodbyes, we set Harvey’s paw print in a mold to have a token or remembrance & I don’t think there was a day in which I didn’t have to go off on my own for a while to break down & weep. It’s a truly impossible thing but you do it because you wouldn’t give back a single minute that you shared with that animal.

I’m sure I’m not too many blogs off from writing about my dearly departed dog but we’re not there yet. Harvey went from the shell of a dog he was last week back to somewhat of his older self. The vet explained to me that small scale strokes are common in large dogs of his age & there’s a potential that’s what happened, but I most fortunately get more time with my guy, time where he is still the happy, smiling dog I love with every cell of my heart & for that I am so infinitely grateful. But I know there will come a day, sooner rather than later, where I will have to say goodbye to my red, shaggy rock & I will face that with a broken heart & tear stained cheeks but I will be there, with him, til the end because how could I not be?

This past week & a half has been a rollercoaster & in all honesty, if I were to put into words how I’ve been feeling, the answer would be fragile. I wrote this blog with tears streaming my face, but I bare them with all of the pride in the world, because over the last twelve years I have had the utmost privilege of being loved, unconditionally, even on the days where I definitely didn’t deserve it, by the best dog I could have ever dreamed of & I have loved him back. But I know, at the end of it, when all is said & done & I am left to come home with nothing but a collar, I’ll know that for all of the love I gave him, he will always have loved me more & I would do it all again in a heartbeat knowing how it feels when it’s time to let a great dog go.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: You'll Worry Yourself Sick

I think it’s no secret at this point in our society that our emotions & the things that we give “energy” to end up coming to fruition. Call it laws of attraction, quantum physics, etc, we now have fairly solid volumes of evidence to indicate that where we place our minds, especially where our health & wellness are concerned, ends up becoming our reality. I’m a very strong believer in this & so too are many people around the globe, whether they realize it or not.

I’m going to be using the term “energy” quite often in this blog. I don’t necessarily mean a physical voltage or anything of that nature, although that is also part of it to a degree. Instead I tend to mean more about your physical, mental, social, productive, & spiritual energy. The finite amount of internal processing power we have to give in the day to day or the moment to moment.

I want to circle back to something that I said in at the end of the first paragraph before we go any farther. I mentioned that a lot of people, globally, practice & believe in this philosophy, whether or not they realize it. I mean that simply in the context of prayer. Millions, or even billions, of people around the world pray daily, some more than daily. They put thought & energy towards a desired outcome, an aspiration, &/or a need. A lot of the time these come from a place of lack; Lord, keep me safe, heal my father, help me accomplish my goals, etc, etc, etc. & I think the laws of attraction would tell us this behavior only repels our desired outcome. Our prayers are not but energy put towards what we have each decided to call our own creator. I think there’s no denying that this all functions well outside of the religious or spiritual worlds as well.

So why make this the topic of today’s conversation? Why put energy towards it?

Well, it seems over the last week I’ve been running into synchronicities. This topic seems to be popping up left & right. It’s appeared in conversations I’ve had with at least three separate individuals, it’s appeared as one of the primary topics in one of the books that I’m reading, it’s been on the Tik Toks & Instagrams I’ve been receiving. Really the frequency of its occurrence has been startling!

I think it’s also worth mentioning that I’m not here advocating for toxic positivity, which is very much a real thing. I’ve just noticed that when you live believing the worst it tends to come to fruition.

So what is worry? Why do we as a species have it? The simple answer is that is was designed to keep us alive. Worry is what propelled us forwards as a social civilization, worry towards where our next meal is going to come from, whether our kids are safe, whether there’s a predator lurking in the brush that we can’t see, but I personally don’t think it serves us as much in our present society & way of living as it use to. Worry is how we kept ourselves safe & sustained but it can also very easily be debilitating.

Much like almost anything else, too much worry can be incredibly harmful. It locks us down, prevents us from taking risks, I’d even go as far to say that it prevents us from living altogether. But the worst part of worry is that it can literally cause you to worry yourself sick or even dead.

Worry is brought on by adrenaline, it’s a form of anxiety that saps your adrenals & can cause anything from chronic fatigue to anemia. When we force our body into constant survival states of fight or flight, a state we’re only supposed to be in in short bursts to keep us alive, it wears down the body pretty quickly. This, in addition to being bad for the heart, is bad for the immune system at large. There have even been studies of people who have worried themselves into organ failure, tumors, chronic sicknesses, autoimmune diseases, etc.

Again, not harping on exclusive positivity here, I think a little worry is good for you, but as the saying goes “worry is away present energy towards & unknown tomorrow.

What am I advising? How do I recommend you behave? How do you limit your worry?

I, for one, compartmentalize my worry into rational or irrational. Is what I’m afraid of a rational thought or likely to happen? If no, then I do my best to brush it off. If it continues to nag me I sit with it & try to find the reason behind its existence in my brain. Why am I worried about this? What caused me to worry about this? How can I show my body that this is not something worth worrying about?

In the context of prayer or manifestations how do we reframe our wants & navigate away from this place of lack? Always go from a place of gratitude & joy. Instead of “heal my father” think of how joyous the miraculous reparation would feel or how incredibly it would be to reach your goals! Instead of asking for safety be grateful that you have been kept safe thus far! The key to all of this is of course belief & not letting fear, doubt, worry, & suffering embed their hooks into you & literally drag you down into sickness.

I know all of this is easier said than done. I know, especially for those of you with anxiety it’s like you telling me to just be happy as someone with depression or to pay attention as someone with ADHD, but I promise, as someone who literally had shot adrenals, that there is a path forwards that leads to an easier, more worry-free future.

As always, much love to you all,

-C