You - No One - Needs to Suffer Alone

I'm going off topic a bit, out of my normal scope of posts or conversations, and sharing something more serious and important with you today. September is Suicide Prevention Month, a tragedy that is some way has likely touched most of our lives, and September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day. Included below are several images I've collected over the years, added on Facebook in albums titled "Between the Lines"; content that feels essential and important to spotlight, and I will tell you why.

I Would Love to Volunteer But.....

The "Icky" Side of Volunteering, or Why You May Think It's Not For You

Helping out in our community, lending a hand, volunteering at an animal shelter.....questions/comments we hear constantly include "how do you do it?", "isn't that so hard?" and the very frequent "I could never go to the shelter, it's so sad there it would break my heart." Actually......what breaks hearts is NOT going to the shelter....but you may not know something, and thus the reason for this blog post.

Reactive Dog, Training Thoughts, and "Trigger Stacking"

The last time I posted something about dog training/working with a reactive dog, I got absolutely ripped to shreds. Not only did someone disagree with me, a trainer took my post and reshared it multiple times on their business page, listing day by day (for five days, I think), all the things I'd said that were wrong or incorrect in their eyes. That's okay; we are not all going to agree all the time, however I would not have gone that far to tear someone else down, but I post about training dogs because I realize other people struggle with their animals too. Not all are as challenging as ours, but when I came across this graphic on Pinterest, I found it particularly interesting as it addresses the cumulative effect of various "triggers" - and how one thing can be okay, two perhaps still manageable, but add in the THIRD stressor and suddenly you have a dog that is overloaded with anxiety or fear.