Being an Adult Sucks Sometimes

When I was a kid, I COULDN'T WAIT to grow up. I hated being a kid. Didn't have many friends until high school - and let's face it, we basically thought we were adults in high school anyway.

Sitting at the "kid's table" at holidays and special functions was like torture. I much preferred adult conversation to child's play.

I tried to get a work permit and get a job at 15, but nobody would hire me, so I went looking for a job as soon as I turned 16. I worked for two terrible weeks at a fast food restaurant, then quit and worked at a grocery store for the next couple of years, and apart from when I was attending college, when I worked during breaks anyway, I haven't been without a job for more than a few weeks at a time since.

My mom took me to get my learner's permit the day I was old enough - 15 and 3 months. I took and passed driver's ed and got my driver's license on my 16th birthday.

In less than a year of working part-time, plus working nearly full time in the summer, I saved $2000 so I could buy my first car. My aunt and uncle matched that money because they wanted me to have something more reliable than what $2000 could buy.

When I was 18, I started getting credit card offers in the mail. I decided I should get one before going to college. You know, "for emergencies."

Little did I realize that I would come to define an "emergency" as wanting Domino's Pizza on a Friday night after burning through the money I'd saved over the summer.

And so began my money troubles.

...

Cut to now. I'm 33. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder six or seven years ago, and it's reasonably well under control at the moment. I'm pretty sure I have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) but stimulants, the usual treatment, made my heart race, and I might be allergic to the non-stimulant treatment. Oh well.

I am currently in a group therapy for emotional regulation called DBT - Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Through DBT, I'm fully realizing just how much my subconscious is ruled by a 5-year-old who like to throw temper tantrums.

I've never been very good at forcing myself to do stuff I "should do." That is why I weigh nearly 250 pounds and I'm a slob with chronic financial troubles. Anytime I think, "I should eat better/exercise/clean my apartment/manage my money better," the 5-year-old kicks in and screams, "NO!!! I don't wanna!" And most of the time, like the wuss I am, I let her win.

(Side note: this is one reason I do not want to have kids. I can't even control the child that lives inside my brain; I would never be able to control a real, live child.)

So here I sit. 33 and single. My savings account is empty. My checking account is $850 in the red until I get paid on Friday. My only credit card is maxed out, unusable, and behind on payments. I took my car to get emissions tested on Monday - and they were unable to test it because it "wouldn't stay on the dynometer." My car already needs a new clutch and lots of other work done to it, which I am trying to wait to fix until I get my tax refund in a couple of months, but now I need to get SOMETHING, I don't even know what, fixed before I can even COMPLETE the emissions test, much less pass it, so that I can renew my license plates before the end of the month. I almost had the opportunity to move in with a friend and save nearly $700 a month on rent an utilities, but that fell through. Now I'm finally emotionally ready for a roommate - but stuck in a lease until November.

And what do I want more than anything?

To go back to the simple days of being a kid, where my parents took care of most of my basic necessities and I didn't have to worry about anything more stressful than homework. I feel like I wasted my childhood away just waiting for an adult life that sucks.

To any kids, teenagers, or young adults who might read this - enjoy your youth. Even if adulthood doesn't get WORSE as you get older - it certainly gets more complicated. Enjoy the simplicity of youth.

And stay away from credit cards as much as possible.

NaNoWriMo

This year, I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to start writing a new novel on November 1 and write 50,000 words (the length of a short novel) by the end of the month.

I completed the rough draft of my first novel, a romance novel, at 67,000 words and 230 double-spaced pages in 22 days.

A little something about myself: I'm not very good at finishing what I start. I've started half a dozen novels before, usually during manic episodes (I'm bipolar), but this is the first time I've actually finished one. It feels amazing!

Right now, I am heeding Stephen King's advice and letting my rough draft sit for a while before I go back and do my rewrite, so that I can approach it with fresh eyes.

In the meantime, I am trying to write another novel, but without the excitement of NaNoWriMo spurring me on, it's slow going.

Anyway, after I rewrite, fix up, and edit my first novel, I would like to get it published. It looks like self-publishing of some sort may be the best way to go. Even if I do strictly an e-book, I've heard a good editor is well worth the money to help you structure your novel in the most reader-friendly way possible.

The problem is, that costs money, money which I don't have. So I'm thinking that I might do a kickstarter fund. I guess right now I'm testing the waters to see if any of my friends, family, and other blog readers might be interested in helping me fund my first self-published book? If I do a kickstarter, I will have a summary and/or excerpt of my novel so people know what they are funding.

In any case, I will probably start blogging regularly again to increase my social media presence in advance of potentially self-publishing my first novel.

I welcome comments, though I do moderate them to weed out some of the spam.

Tips For Grooming Difficult Dogs

When I was a new groomer, I HATED grooming difficult dogs. The wiggling frustrated me, the biting scared me, and I didn't yet have the tools to handle dogs that, for whatever reason, don't like to be groomed. It wasn't until I started my current job 4 years ago that I had the time and space to acquire the tools to handle the difficult dogs, and now, after 11 years of grooming, I actually seek out senior and difficult dogs. My favorite part of my job is figuring out how to make sure each dog has the best experience possible for their grooming.

It is my belief that in order to be truly comfortable grooming those difficult dogs, you need 3 things: time, patience, and experience. I can't help you find time or patience, but I can give you some tools that I believe can aid your experience level.

The biggest tip I can give you is to constantly pay attention to the dog's body language. With the possible exception of senile dogs, dogs don't bite for no reason. Usually they are biting out of fear or pain or even the memory of pain caused by a previous groomer, which I guess qualifies as fear. Once you figure out what a dog's trigger is, they are so much easier to handle.

Here are a few examples of dogs that had been labeled as difficult or aggressive that I have been able to work with and, in some cases, "rehabilitate."

My greatest success story is probably a Great Pyrenees that I've been grooming for over 3 years. The first time I met him, his owner told me that he had been muzzled by 4 previous groomers. One groomer had muzzled him for his feet, one for his butt, one for both, and one for the entire groom. That's interesting - usually dogs bite for the same thing every time they get groomed. What's going on?

The first time I groomed him, he was trying to climb out of the tub during the bath, which was a little frustrating but not a crisis because he was tethered. Since I wasn't sure how he would do for the blow dryer, I left him in the tub. As soon as I got near him with the dryer, he started doing what I call bite-barking. He was barking and snapping his jaws shut, but he wasn't aiming any bites at me; I was able to see that he was afraid of the dryer but didn't want to hurt me. 

When I wash and dry a large hairy dog, I like to put in my ear buds with hearing protectors over them and listen to my favorite peppy music. Usually this is just to avoid boredom, but during loud and/or difficult dogs, it helps me to stay calm and tune out distractions. With my music going, I was able to stay calm and I dried him the best I could from an arm's length away. We don't have kennel dryers, so I just did the best I could with the velocity dryer. 

Luckily I was able to coax the big guy up onto a table once he was as dry as I could get him. The first thing I do to (almost) every dog when they get on the table is nails. If you'll remember, feet is one thing he needed to be muzzled for previously, so I was cautious, but I wanted to give him a chance. 

He was a little bit fussy for his feet and nails, but he never once tried to bite. Interesting.

On to shaving his butt sanitary area. When I went to pick up his tail and move it out of my way, he sat and turned in order to yank his tail out of my hands. Fascinating. Maybe I'll leave that for last and have somebody hold him while I shave that area. Brushing went well, even for his butt - as long as I didn't touch his tail. Brushing his tail was a fight but I managed it OK. I had somebody hold him up so I could shave his butt and he tried to get away but never snapped once. 

All done and no need for a muzzle. Why didn't he snap at me when he had apparently snapped at 4 previous groomers? I believe it was a combination of things. Partly, I was able to stay calm and not get flustered by his bite-barking. Dogs are very sensitive to your energy; any groomer who's had usually good dogs act up when they are having a bad day can attest to that. By keeping my energy calm, he was able to stay calm.

Another thing that worked in my favor was not pushing him too far past his comfort zone. I uphold humanity over vanity above all and even extend that to: sometimes settling for "good enough" is exactly the right thing to do. I could have gotten that dog's head dry, but I would have lost any amount of trust he had developed in me, he would've gotten more stressed than necessary, and he would've been far crankier for the rest of the groom. I like to think long term - it was more important for me to earn his trust than to get his head dry.

These days, he doesn't bite-bark for the dryer any more. He'll even rest his head on my shoulder while I dry him, though he's starting to get spoiled and insist I scratch behind his ears any time I have a free hand while drying him. I can get his head most of the way dry. He even steps willingly into the tub and onto the table. He still doesn't like having his tail handled, so I handle it as little as possible. With a 120-pound dog, I think it's more important for him to like and trust me than to make sure his tail is brushed to fluffy perfection.

Now, I know some groomers will argue with my methods. Some groomers think it's better to force a dog through the things they don't like: "They have to learn to get used to it." I think in certain situations that method is warranted, particularly when dealing with puppies. But I don't think that's a one size fits all solution. After all, long term, if you force an already difficult dog through the things they don't like, they're just going to become more and more difficult and stressed. Stress can kill, so I try to avoid it as much as possible. 

Another dog I have been working with is a Silky that had become so aggressive for his face that previous groomers were hardly able to trim it at all. He had a lot of pin mats in his overgrown beard, so I am assuming that he had a naturally sensitive face and groomers had been somewhat roughly brushing pin mats out of his face for most of his life, so he naturally associated the brush or anything else coming near his face with pain. Naturally, the solution for this particular dog is to stop brushing mats out of his face.

That first groom, even trying to cut the mats out of his face as gently as possible was difficult because he was afraid of ANYTHING near his face. After the first two or three times I groomed him, I gained his trust and he learned that I wasn't going to hurt him. I recently groomed him for about the sixth time, and while he kept his eyes squeezed shut and occasionally tried to keep his face away from me, he didn't even give me any "Elvis lips," much less snap at me. 

I keep his face trimmed very short to prevent any mats and I use my thinning shears to cut out any mats that I do find, and he's actually become quite good for grooming. I still keep my guard up because he is still clearly fearful, but as time goes on and he trusts me more and more, he will relax even farther and become quite a pleasure to groom.

Many dogs are only difficult for one thing, such as nails. When this is the case, I try to save that one thing for last so that they aren't still upset over the one thing they hate while you are doing things they might otherwise cooperate for. Also, in dogs that hate having their nails done, I don't go for perfection. The longer you spend trying to get the nails as short as possible, the more stress you are going to cause the dog and the more they are going to hate it. Conversely, if you do the nails as fast as possible, they may learn to calm down a little bit because the calmer they are, the faster you can go, and the sooner the torture is over. 

I have been grooming a Westie for nearly 4 years who used to be so difficult for her nails that it required 2 groomers wearing aprons and standing in the bathing room, then cleaning up the mess she had made before washing her (for any non-groomers reading this unsure what mess she was making, she would pee and/or poop every single time while trying to bite anything that got near her). Over the years, she has struggled less and less and less, to the point where I can now do her nails by myself at the end of the groom with her head well-tethered, and if she snaps at all, it is a half-hearted attempt meant to show her frustration rather than aiming to injure me. I attribute her improvement in large part to the fact that I don't spend forever trying to get her nails perfect, I just do one clip per nail and move on. 

Sometimes dogs who were fine for grooming when they were younger develop issues in their older age. I go into much more detail on grooming senior dogs in this previous post. Some issues they might develop include "laziness" due to arthritis or hip dysplasia, fear biting when they start losing their sight, and dryer senility. 

The key to grooming difficult dogs, in my opinion, is always trying to figure out WHY they are being difficult and how to best work around the problem. Remember: humanity over vanity, and sometimes good enough is perfect.

I hope I managed to help you at least a little bit. I'm sure I have more tips rolling around inside my skull but this post is already quite long. Feel free to comment with your own tips for grooming difficult dogs!

Grooming Senior Dogs

In my opinion, groomers should not approach grooming senior dogs the same way that they approach grooming younger dogs. Senior dogs need special consideration; without it, they can become stressed out or even aggressive. Stress CAN kill a dog, and few people have the patience to groom aggressive dogs, so let's talk about how we can provide the best possible experience for each senior dog.

For starters, many older dogs, especially the larger breeds, develop arthritis, hip dysplasia, or other medical conditions that can cause pain. Many times, the owners may not even be aware of the changes in their beloved pet, as dogs are accustomed to hiding their pain. 

Would you force your arthritic grandparents to stand for an hour straight without a single opportunity to sit? Would you yell at them if they tried to sit or if the effort of standing caused them to shake? No, you wouldn't (or at least I hope not). So why do so many groomers do this to the senior dogs that they groom? I wouldn't use a butt strap to force my grandmother to stand for an hour, so I refuse to do it to a dog. 

Sure, it takes a little creativity to groom a dog when they are sitting instead of standing, but there are plenty of things you can do while the dog is sitting, such as their face and front feet. I know, I know, you have to do the whole body and feet before you can do the head (or however your specific routine goes; you get the point). Your senior dogs will benefit greatly from a little flexibility on your part. Humanity over vanity should be the groomer's credo, and that should apply to letting older dogs sit a little and not just to shaving matted dogs. So give that dog a break from time to time. They will appreciate you for it and so will their owners.

I work at a place where we groom every dog straight through; we don't do any kennel drying. Personally, I prefer this method over block scheduling, but that's a discussion for another day.  

Some dogs, as they get older, start to have problems with the velocity (HV) dryer. I've heard some groomers refer to it as a "dryer seizure;" I call it a "senior senile moment." Whatever you've heard it called, you know exactly what I'm talking about: You're drying a dog and they're doing fine...until they aren't. Something switches inside their brain and they start freaking out, barking, peeing, pooping...PANICKING. The best thing to do is immediately turn off the dryer, calm down the dog, clean up the mess, and if you choose to continue drying them, do it with the nozzle off.

After a senior dog I groom does this a couple of grooms in a row, I decide it is time to stop drying them. It just isn't worth the stress put on the dog. When I talk to the owners, I explain it like this: Imagine you're talking to your grandmother (yes, more grandparents) who has Alzheimer's. You're having a perfectly normal conversation until suddenly she looks baffled and says, "I'm sorry, who are you again?" And then you point a leaf blower at her. 

Since cage drying isn't an option where I work, I give my customers the option of bathing the dog themselves the day before their grooming and letting them air dry or else I will do the haircut on the dirty dog, then do the bath after the grooming and send the dog home damp. Yes, dirty hair doesn't cut very well and is difficult on your blades and shears, and yes, a dog washed at home may be curly and stringy instead of fluffy...but isn't that better than a dog who gets so stressed from the dryer that they die in your care? I could never live with myself if that happened to me, and most of my customers are so happy that I am concerned with their dog's well-being that they don't care that I can no longer get the haircut as nice as I used to.

Another thing to be aware of is that a dog's behavior may change as they start to lose their sight or hearing or acquire new pain. They may suddenly become snappy when they never used to be. This is not a time for force; you are not teaching a puppy that biting is not OK. Listen to what the dog is saying. 

Why did they snap at you? 

Maybe you moved their leg in a way that wouldn't bother a normal dog but is aggravating their hip dysplasia. Maybe they are developing cataracts and you approached their face too quickly. Maybe they are losing certain frequencies of hearing and now your clippers sound different around their head. Listen to what they are saying, and work around it the best you can, so that both of you can have a safe experience with the grooming process.

In the end, senior dogs still need to get groomed, but we can all ensure that they have the best possible experience and don't go home sore or overly stressed out. 

Do you have more senior dog grooming tips? Leave a comment!

The Not-So-Triumphant Return of The Writing Groomer

Well, Hello again!

It's been more than 2 years since my last blog post. A variety of factors have kept me away, but a renewed sense of passion and urgency about writing has brought me back. I have made myself a goal of writing at least 500 words per day, every day for one month. Now, that may not all be in the form of blog posts. It could be journaling or working on one of my novels. But in some form or another, I do intend to get back in the habit of writing every single day.

I've become a little shy about posting pics of dogs I've groomed until I get permission from the owners, so my blog may be a little text-heavy for a while. So what might I post about without the cute dog pics?

I am planning on writing in detail about my techniques for grooming senior and difficult-to-groom dogs. I might write about my daily life. I might write about current events. This blog is certain to expand beyond just grooming, so I hope you're up for the ride!

These are my dogs, Hailey and Dillin.