From the vantage point of professional pet care providers, The Secret Life of Pets probably makes the case for daily pet sitting services given the behind-closed-doors, high-rise hijinks of its fluffy, feathery, and scaly cast of characters while their owners are out for work. Continue reading
Writing and dog walking.
(Or litter box cleaning, for that matter.)
Never the twain shall meet—or so I thought.
Literary arts are very much a natural extension or complement of performing arts. When I was more heavily involved in music many years ago, a great deal of my prose and poetry revolved around and were inspired by music. For a long time, I fancied being a lyricist and a music journalist. I had the opportunity to flex my creative muscles by having my works distributed in school literary publications and on an online indie music magazine.
As much as I love pets, having been surrounded by them since conception, I never thought I’d write about them on a fairly regular basis.
Enter PetSittingOlogy, a digital marketing agency and a continuing education hub for pet care professionals. Aside from training in pet-related skills, keeping abreast of tech trends is included in the mix, covering web design, web development (including WordPress development), SEO, social media, graphic design, and web content curation and creation.
In early 2015, PetSittingOlogy began a storytelling project to get professional pet sitters to jump on the blogging bandwagon by documenting their various memorable experiences on the job as infotainment for pet parents, current and prospective clients, and the general public. As one of the fifteen story contributors featured in the project, I also took on the task of editing the collection of stories, which has been proven quite massive at approximately 16,000 words. I had to put it on the back burner.
In true Renaissance/multipotentialite fashion, I zigzag through different interests and career paths, and the pet industry was the point of reentry into one of my lifelong interests—wordsmithing. My writing habit became intermittent a few years after college graduation. I managed to revive it for a while, only to almost quit cold turkey again. But writing has always been in my DNA. My active involvement in the dynamic PetSittingOlogy community helped me get back on track.
In the process of ramping up into professional writing, particularly for the online media, I’m culling early materials, creating new projects, and revisiting and repurposing some clips—one of which is the PetSittingOlogy story collection—while lending an editing hand for the group’s seven-day blog challenge at the time of writing. Due to time, energy, and budget constraints, I’ve decided to work on the excerpts of the collection posted here, pared down to about 6,000 words.
Represented in this abridged story compilation are sunny walks in the park, snuggles galore, unlikely heartwarming friendships and encounters, blood, sweat, tears, and yes, pee and poo as well—all in a day’s work. This is the real (poop) scoop behind what really happens in the normal operations of pet care professionals.
One of the blogging projects in the PetSittingOlogy community is what we jokingly refer to as OOB (out-of-the-box)—selected monthly topics that are not directly related to pet care and ownership but may be of interest to pet guardians or pet fanciers ranging from hot vacation spots to a guide on the proper care and feeding of Ewoks for animal-loving Star Wars freaks out there. (May the furs be with us!)
After all, if you look closely enough, everything is related. Nothing is an isolated incident. There is a common thread that I weave throughout my entire blog. I explore the intersections of the arts, spirituality, health and wellness, philosophy, and everything else including the kitchen sink under the sun with the animal world.
Without further a-doo (pardon the pet bathroom joke!), listen to and/or read the story excerpts below. You’re in for a treat. (Yet another pet pun right there? You bet!)
Share far and wide with everyone you know!
Read the script here: PSO story excerpts
Voiceover talent: Becca Shepherd (happybex @ Fiverr)
It’s that time of the year where good ol’ Cupid is in action! If you don’t have a two-legged Valentine in your life, what better way to get unconditional love than having a pet? Continue reading
hold on to the roots
rock steady—easy does it!
ground (zero) control
toss and turn and let it burn
let’s return to center stage
This is my second week of learning to let it be, let go, and let God.
Funnily, the exercise started with a string of minor annoyances, big enough to rattle my usual excitable, anxiety-prone, hyperactive mind. Enter the earth and sky meditation, based on the common grounding technique of visualizing light and energy from above, flooding our entire being from head to toe, crown to root—roots from the base of our spine reaching deep into the earth, locking us in a stable, firm, unshakable position—and filling our heart center, radiating everywhere to animals in need of peace and healing. Without any pressure or expectation, we invite them to take as much or as little energy—or none at all—as they wish. Trust between us and the animals is established, resulting in an effective Reiki treatment, even if we don’t immediately sense anything at first. It’s the moment for us to let them take the lead in this energetic two-step. Continue reading
This is a five-part series corresponding to five weeks of the Animal Reiki Workshop, for which I signed up in a short while after the fact after Boston, a fellow pet sitter/friend’s pit bull, was suddenly struck with immune-mediated hemolytic anemia (IMHA). I wanted to help in some way after learning that natural approaches have been used successfully to treat various diseases, including autoimmune disorders. I had already wanted to sign up for the workshop for quite some time, so the timing was spot on.
Reiki, literally translated as spiritual energy or spiritual life force, is a Japanese holistic healing system incorporating touch and meditation. Used to treat both humans, animals, and even situations, it promotes balance, relaxation, pain relief, and stress reduction among many others. Continue reading
This is the first of a series of guest posts on nearly everything under the sun, intersecting with the wonderful, wild, wild world of animals.
Kicking off the series is this post by Thea van Diepen, the Kitten Psychologist, a fellow wordsmith/language geek/multipotentialite.
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She waves at you from under half-combed hair so greasy you want to believe it’s just wet. There are actual smears of dirt on her face–which you realize as you manufacture an expression approaching nausea more than the intended pleasant greeting is not nearly so aesthetically pleasing as Hollywood would have you believe–and when she opens her mouth to speak to you, it smells like something died in there. Several times.
Would you let this woman take care of your pets? Continue reading
‘Tis the season to celebrate the animal kingdom! Christmas music through the ages makes references to animals in the titles and/or the lyrics. Here’s a compilation of classical/traditional and popular Christmas pieces and tunes, courtesy of fellow musician/cat lady/blogging partner, Meri Dolevski-Lewis, in our joint cybercorner of the world, The Freethinkers. (Note: edits are mine.) Continue reading
It’s the holidays, and you’ve got a hankering for a getaway or even a pretty bad case of cabin fever. But maybe you’ve already blown your budget on a Black Friday mad shopping dash or you simply don’t have the slightest idea on what to do. Look no farther than your own backyard for some low-cost or no-cost festive fun 24/7/365—or 366 in a leap year, which happens to be just two months away at the time of this post! Continue reading
Pico “Piccolo” declares and celebrates the Chiweenie Heritage Month.
I enjoy a great deal of cross-cultural, linguistic, and literary geekery, especially when paired with the animal kingdom.
That said, I’ve compiled a few fun facts on that intersection. Impress your fellow critter lovers with this trivia list of artful doggery! Continue reading
