Depression Gets to The Best of Us

Owen Wilson, one of my favorite funny male actors, is reported to have possibly tried to commit suicide. I don't know that he has anything like bipolar, but I am including that in this journal as an example of possible depression. People don't realize how deep depression can go. The thought that you won't "come out of it" can be a bit much.

Even celebreties like Owen are suseptible to life and it's stresses. One can only imagine that life started to be perceived as too much for this successful male actor.

I have thought a lot about suicide lately. Especially in having a brother in law who has not dealt with health problems related directly to his weight. John Candy, for instance, left us way to early.

They say that the class clown is masking feelings of sadness or dispair. We would really like to think that they feel as happy and fun inside as they feel outside, sadly that is not always the case.

Owen, get better. We need your laughter and fun in our lives. Your fans support you in your new journey to deal with this, and hope very much that you come out the other side not only alive, but happy in your life and the people around you who love you.

By Popular Demand Devvy Dog Thai Ridgeback 8 Month Old Puppy (Client's Dog Here for Board & Train)

Lovely Weather Again

Ahhhhh, weather in the high seventies again, and not the nineties. Just lovely. I was taking like three showers a day, changing my clothes about that many times, while training the dogs before. Now I can be in cute little outfits for the whole day again and not wonder if I have started to reek!!! LOL.

My camera is back, so pictures of the Thai Ridgeback puppy at Mannerly Mutts Academy for dogs are bound to show up soon. How sweet, it cost nothing to get it fixed. So relieved as I am totally in love with that camera.

The phone thing works okay, but then I need to take the extra step to e-mail each one to my computer. Yuck. And you can only take so many on your phone of course.

****Another blogger plus recently added, is that it automatically saves your posts now.

Tuesday Terror-Tormented

Okay, I have not watched a good horror flick. Due to the requests for good horror flicks, I am attaching the link to my other blog that lists all the horror flicks I have recently seen, and what I think about them. http://mannerlymutts.typepad.com/middle_aged_princess/horror_movies/index.html

There was a recent gem that I found called Tormented. A little hokey in that it was on the cusp of 59/60, so you got some interesting "lingo". All in all, it did remind me of a ghost movie that I think Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant's woman. Something about a widow that had an illicit affair in Victorian or earlier times with a soldier. I will have to look it up later. I am not really sure it was a ghost story or a redo of a famous Greta Garbo movie where she jumped in front of a train at the end, after a similar affair.

My Husband Is Trying to Poison Me, Again

I used to like chopped liver. That is until....yesterday night around 2:19am to 6:00am for the main fireworks.

Husband thoughtfully bought American Kosher chopped liver for me. Felt it tasted funny but still gave it to me. I just thought it wasn't made that good, and so I gobbled up some.

Didn't feel anything funny until I woke up at 2:19am with the distinct feeling that something ugly was gonna happen if I didn't get to the toilet pronto. Then from that time until 6am it would stop after six times, and then 15 minutes later it would start all over again like the first time.

Now there have been other incidents with my husband. My most favorite that comes to mind is when hubby put the stool softeners in the aspririn bottle. Um, I unfortunately got a headache and thought I took some aspirin. My husband was like "couldn't you tell those pills weren't aspirin?" Gee, no, never thought to question what type of pills might be in the ASPIRIN bottle.

Tuesday Terror-Dead Silence

Dead Silence is the movie of my day. And it has family estrangement in it, so I'ma gonna use it!!! I don't really want to ruin any of the mystery so I will summarize it briefly.

Couple, who are married and in love, receive ventroquist dummy in unmarked package at their door. Some mention of like "oh isn't that like the scary poem our parents used to tell us?" Sadly didn't prompt them to throw out doll right there. Tragedy strikes. Cops on wrong trail. Husband to solve crime, and the mystery begins......

After a trip back to creepy home town with creepier father with new young wifey. Not perhaps the best acting that I have seen, but decent plot and twists that had me not nodding off. Wasn't quite scared by it, per say. Even though it's about creepy dolls. Maybe I have just seen too many movies about creepy dolls.

Oh The Dog World Family

Dog trainers, generally, as a people are darned annoying. Hypocritical, narrow minded, racist, ......it sucks because those are the best ones out there. So you need to learn from them, but end up hating them in some way.

They are also small minded, insecure, and blah blah blah. Actually, I have met a few normal ones. So that would be like me right? That's my definition of normal so live with it. How frightening, huh? No wonder I have a hard time making new friends LOL.

All Is Well, Great Actually

I landed a huge board & train contract for 7 weeks for a Thai Ridgeback. So that's at least 4900.00 right there plus I get to train him all the way thru. Not easy to get pet owners to part with their dogs for any period of time. This guy is a restaurant owner who is still in his peak season of business, so he desperately needs someone to take care of some training problems.

Robert has a billion (okay exaggeration) loans in his pipeline right now. So he is feeling better about his decision to change companies and go with this one now. August was a no income month (actually covered the benefits), but things are looking like they will go smoothly. (knock on wood, and hope I didn't just jinx us LOL)

Friday Fishing

It's been a really lovely summer so far. It's been pretty decent days of the high 70s, so not hot and not cold, sunny, great breezes, hinting of fall but not even nearly into it yet. And so my mood has been way to good to be brooding over my estranged family. And an unfortunate incident in my closer family, without blood relation, is having me be a bit focused on that more. So I bring to you, other people's angst this week!!!

An Individual's Story From Another Country

Themes of Estrangement and Child Abuse in Science/Fantasy Epic Novels

Problems with A Brother Who Does Not Have Social Skills

Sarcastic Commentary with Estrangement as Family Management

Nightmares and Dreams

I watched an excellent profile on the serial killer, Michael Ross. For some reason it has fascinated me to understand how someone could be so horrific and evil. I guess part of it is arming myself in case I ever find myself the unwilling "guest" of such a person. I think there is little that could be done, but it's possible a bit of knowing how they work MIGHT save you. Or at least that is what I tell myself when I watch these indepth interviews. Much of this was in Ross's own words, and he was laughing and smiling through most of it. The thing that struck me that he said was "once they caught my eye they were dead." Now he could have been boasting, he was obviously proud of all the horror and sadness that he had caused, and it might be that some that "caught his eye" did escape. A chilling thought nontheless.

So that night, of course, I dreamed we were going on a vacation. We were in an airport, and our flight was delayed. I notice some guy looking over at us. Then this guy seems to be the person to help us put our belongings through the scanner, but he is scamming and takes off with my husband's lap top computer, and we are in hot pursuit. Then my husband becomes my cousin who is slight, just the way Ross liked him. And this guy keeps popping up everywhere we go. he is obviously up to no good and we are scared. It was worse than that, but I am going through this days later, like I hate, and lost some of the detail of the dream.

Dream next night Again me and my husband are going on a trip to Bermuda. We are in an airport but our flight is cancelled. So we need to drive there? Anyway, it's a dream about a fun adventure trying to get there not flying. All the details are somewhat foggy, but I remember that we did make it to the resort.

Greed, Corporations, Countries, Politics

In business, the complete disregard for human life astounds me over and over again. Robert and I were watching a special the other day on the "Don't Snitch" culture taking hold. First of all, the rappers who are wearing huge diamond studs in their ears, own multiple Lamborghinis, talk about this business of not "snitching" on people that commit murder and other heinous crimes with such ease. Then they are selling this same attitude to their fans. Just in a community, what a horrible way to live. These are people saying if their neighbor was killed in front of them, and they knew who did it, they wouldn't "snitch". That's scary and bad enough, but it makes me absolutely ill when someone admits that they are doing it for business reasons (IE yet more money and material things after already being well off) only that makes my skin crawl.

Look at what is happening in China. Just one more thing happened recently where a toy manufacturer committed suicide after his toys were blocked from export due to high levels of paint from a supplier that he trusted, and was his close friend (supposedly). I am not blaming the Chinese companies by the way, it is us. Our greed for cheap labor, cheap product, cheaper than it could possibly be manufactured and then need to ship over at a certain price point from third world countries is the cause of it. Shame on the greedy American corporations, and I am not kidding. I have seen it happen over and over again, and this is just the tip of the fall out on what will happen. How many people have died, become ill, become mentally damaged due to these things being distributed already?

In my mind, that is JUST as evil as being a serial killer. It is in essence being a serial killer over the great green dollar. Very sad what some people will stupe to for a little profit.

Birthday & Busy

Well, it was MY birthday on the nineth. It was a great birthday. It started out with Rocket's, a Jack Russell Terrier puppy, lesson at 6:30 am. This gave me ample time to reflect that I was right where I wanted to be at this time in my life. I have started a busines in an industry I love, which is coming into it's own. I live where I want to live. I am even in the right place, because I am estranged from my narcistic parents, in my familial relationships.

My marriage is to my best friend and partner. I have three lovely dogs. My husband and I are both loosing weight and getting healthy. Jackie looks like he may make his CD with me this fall. Robert's job is starting to heat up with more sales than he can handle right now.

There was only one flaw, and it happened the day after my birthday. My brother-in-law had his second heart attack. He has not been taking care of himself since the first one, and he is lucky in that, he will be able to recoop from this one again. Unfortunately, my brother in law is not in the best place of his life right now, and he is a good guy with two young children and a wife. I think life has been too stressful on him in a lot of ways, and I wish I had the answer for him. Sigh.

Great surprise, a high school friend that I hadn't talked to for 20 years tracked me down on my birthday!! Also my cousin in law, but really my cousin though we are not blood related, called to wish me a happy birthday. Very cool. And I talked to my brother-in-law who wished me a happy birthday before his unfortunate mishap.

Post to Healing from Family Rifts Board on Avoidance and Dog World

I really appreciated a couple of posts here, especially as it related to a recent experience not DIRECTLY related to family estrangement but touching on some skills and realizations I came to regarding myself and my reactions to things.

My dad is incredibly passive aggressive and controling, so Idid "avoid" that most of my life after being beaten down (not physically but emotionally and verbally) over and over again for expressing my beliefs, feelings or emotions. This has leaked over into other aspects of my life.

I am a dog trainer, and people like Lisa, I also consider part ofthe dog world. The dog world is made up of very big hearted people with equally big opinions and prickly (understatement here)personalitities. The dog training and dog world is becoming more and more my family, AND it's a family in which you don't want to isolate someone important in spite of their "prickly" nature sometimes. Some of these people spend so much time with dogs, tha tthey may not have the appropriate human responses at times.

At this dog event I was at, I may have misinterpretted another's genuine like for seeing me and making a honest mitake in bringing up a painful subject for malice. I don't know this for sure, but was talking to a mutual dog person, and it made me see that I may have misinterpretted her actions, repressed it, and then come down hard after I came home from the seminar. In the past, I would have neither talked openly to this person nor to my friend/teacher/ and mentor about it. I would have simply avoided it and have it fester.

At the seminar, I don't honestly think I could have addressed it in front of the class to this person without completely blowing up right there. Her response back, if it is as represented by my friend and mentor, may have softened my response, but anything else other than an apology for bringing this up at the seminar would have set me off. See, we both volunteered training at the same shelter awhile ago. We both fell in love with the same dog, Jordan. I had a dog that was going to pass away from heart disease within immediately to a year. He had a good quality of life until his very last day, so euthanizing him for me, was not an option nor was bringing in a new stressor into his environment, though I would have killed to have Jordan be my dog eventually. I couldn't in all conscious ask them to "hold" Jordan there for me either.

Well, I had to leave volunteering eventually to be closer to home for my dog, and I was growing my business so I got very very busy.And, an incident, which I won't go into, happened at DRU to cause this person to leave. I had never enjoyed working with her or thought she was a particularly good person around dogs, and she seemed very jealous of me and my success with dogs. So I was friendly when I saw her at dog events, but only enough so I would't look like a complete witch in front of other people. In other words, I didn't encourage a friendship, but never really told her why. I always felt she was gunning for me, and I did in fact find out about something that she wrote about me on a public dog training board,which sounded both like she was missing me and dissing me at the same time.

See she didn't realize I was out there training in public already when I was talking to people, as I did not share that info with her, and she felt I was talking to others without the experience of handling dogs/clients one on one. I felt and still feel that out of jealousy she was trying to hurt me. So in the first few minutes of the seminar, she made a bee line for me, and announced Jordan was put to sleep, that noone thought to call me, and despite my telling her that I did not want to discuss this at this time (this was an important 9 hour a day, three day seminar to get through, and I had to force not dwelling on this at the time, though I felt like she just balled up her fist and slammed me in the gut). The next day, she AGAIN brought Jordan up, and how he wasn't the right dog for me. Again, I just immediately and obviously changed the subject, turned away from her, and just cut her right there.You might imagine, I was repressing and getting angrier and angrierat the time.

After the seminar, I got home and found some pictures of Jordan and the flood gates opened. Saturday night and all Sunday, I sobbed and sobbed for my good friend, though two years had passed since he passed. To me, thinking that he had found his home and been happy,it was like it happened that day, and that I had left him at the shelter just recently. It was horrible.

However, I did confront the situation rather at that time with theperson involved. I have not heard from her, and my intial comments were rather harsh, and MAYBE undeserved. I could not get her on the phone, but did let her know through e-mail, both before how dissappointed that I was in her to assault me so, and then after that I apologized IF I misinterpretted her actions. I am not so niave to give her the full benefit of the doubt. However, if I was wrong, doubtless we will hug and cry together and go on as a strong force in the dog training world.

See, in this world, it is so important to stick together because of the deterioration, thanks to the Animal Rights (as opposed to welfare) movement in the industry. if we don't stick and work together, we will be gone, and we all have something to offer. If I am right,there will be no hugging and crying , but at least I both let her know my feelings, and opened up the door to reconcile and not be afraid of me when we next meet.

Without dealing with my own family estrangement, I don't know that Iwould have had the strength to say that, nevermind to say out loud in the seminar "I do not wish to discuss this with you at this point". I have learned that while we need to act like adults,holding in your true feelings and not dealing with the issues does nothing to improve your relationships.Sorry for the long and boring post , but I wanted to share this reak thru moment for me as well.

RIP Jordan/Sorry For The Halt In Regularly Scheduled Programing

Soon after my last post, the first of some dog trainer guests came over. I have been attending a dog training school run by Margot Woods. It got a bit busy once visitors came and the school got started, needless to say.

Best money that I have ever spent in my life. It is hard to describe what could possibly go on in a dog training seminar that would make that much of an impact to non-professional dog training people or your average pet owner. Really the difference one can make in their dog quickly is stunning.

I don't mean in a day, and more importantly I don't mean with sloppy training. No one around this area (and Margot has come from Far Away) dispenses this kind of information, education, demonstration, and results. The art of dog training has long been diminished into something else, and also it has not been given it's due respect. I don't know how to adequately communicate (yet) the lack and why that is a scary thing for EVERY dog owner, lover, and dog industry professional. Needless to say, if you enjoy owning dogs, the state of our future looks bleak if the trend continues as it does in league with the animal rights movement.

Now I am wondering if this and what is about to follow should more appropriately go on my business blog. However, those in the industry and clients go to the business blog, as well as attendees of this seminar, of which one, I am not about to speak nicely about.

The very first day of the first morning of the seminar, this individual (who is far removed from a dog trainer) announced to me that a Doberman I worked with at a shelter in the area had passed. I believe I know when he passed, and people at the shelter and this person would have known Neptune had passed on, who was the only reason I had not adopted one of the few favorites I had there. Everyone there knew that Jordan was a favorite, and I had left messages with several that if anything ever happened where Jordan came back, that I would want to be contacted immediately as a possible home for him.

By the way, he went to a home that concerned me in the first place. I had actually left volunteering at this shelter when he was placed. Additionally, I used to joke (thinking they wouldn't give him to this home) that I would as soon kidnap Jordan from there than allow him to be placed before I left. Well, he went to that home that did not have a strong training background.

Jordan was a dog that was reactive and difficult, but with the right relationship and handling was a doll and DRIVEN. I can't even imagine what a dynamo this dog would have been in a training home. A picture of his eyes looking straight into mine, as one of his ears was rakishly bent over one eye like a cowlick just came to mind and AGAIN brought tears to my eyes. He was such a great dog.

This person that announced this to me, had been jealous of the fact that I started a business and that I liked and worked with Jordan so much. This person has not been able to train anyone of their three dogs, much less get them to be able to live in the same room in her house EVER. Somehow despite this lack of any kind of talent or ability whatsoever, she managed to befriend the training director at the shelter, and had actual input into training program and her thoughts on the dogs and their abilities.

We had butted heads after she published her angst against me, as she did not initially know (as I had told her, only the training director) that I was working in the public already, training. She posted publically on a board about me, and did say something cryptic about Jordan at that time. No one gave me a heads up on the actual situation, and I had only thought she was disparing of Jordan getting adopted at all. Now this shelter keeps these dogs until they find the "right home" (obviously this doesn't always work out so well) unless there was something very drastically wrong medically or tempermentally. So I was only worried because Marylin was giving input, and I thought putting feelers out about adopting Jordan herself. Anyway, there was no love lost between me and this person, but I felt the shelter and the training director would be looking out for Jordan to the best of their ability, and then Jordan became adopted.

Neptune died, and I saw this person again at a seminar. Over dinner, this announced another dog, Moondancer, had died due to kidney failure. I let her know that in the future, if one of these dogs that I worked with was "gone", and there was nothing that I could do, I would rather not know about it. The training director at the shelter was close to quitting by this point, and soon this SHEEP would follow in suit, as this person's only strength was creating even a bigger rift at the shelter that she was at between the training director and the director of the shelter. This person is a manipulative, destructive, groupie, trainer wanna be, of the worst sort. Their manic jealousy and ------pure evil------ is just a part and parcel of their personality.

Anyway, this person knew what was going to happen to Jordan during the seminar and shortly thereafter, where I was, and how to contact me. At this point, there was no contact.

Fast forward a few years later, this weekend at the seminar, now this person feels it necessary (and by the way this has seen me out there training since, as she seems to have nothing better to do than cling onto actual professional trainers) to tell me of Jordan's death. Almost with relish, and without any preamble on my part to encourage discussion. I make it clear to this person, I would rather not know nor discuss it with them. Of course it was with me for the rest of the day. I was too slow to school my features so she would not know what this person had done to me, though I managed not to cry (or punch this person in the Fing face).

Then, the very next day, this person is again in front of me, and starts telling me that Jordan would not have been for me. This pissant who can not even Fing train their own dogs, suddenly knows who is good for me. This person compliments me on my Jackie, who is awesome, and disses my Leon, who this person has seen on exactly two occaisions. That Jackie is better for me than Leon, who has an injury and has not been in training. This person can not even recognize the reason that Jackie looks like he does, is that he has been in training, and he was a total nut job before and aggressive to other dogs for crying out loud. I love Jackie too, my point is that this ...... piece of shit can not even recognize what dog training does, and what would have happened with Jordan. The potential for these dogs, as far as this non entity is concerned is only in what can be seen in a moment in time that passes and is changed.

And for this, I wasn't contacted, and Jordan was put to sleep in the home that was selected for him. He may have had a far different life, but this egotistical nobody had influence that decided his fate, and her jealousy and inability to see her own limitations, in the end, cost him his life.

Jordan, I am sorry that I did not walk up to your kennel my last day, and stuff you in my truck. Truly I am. If I had known or suspected that my pleas to be contacted would not be taken seriously, I would have done it for sure. I promise you that. Jordan, you taught me so much, and there is less joy in the world now that I know you have passed. This person let me know when I could do nothing about it, and kept it from me when I may have been able to make a difference. Please forgive me for that failing. I love you Jordan. This person was neither of our friends, and didn't give a shit about you. I am not have nice thoughts about them right now.