John’s Blog

I don’t think that I could ask for more beautiful spring weather, especially for New England. We have been having almost two weeks of temps hitting or above 70 here. Which I must say is very refreshing after the winter we had (record setting snowfall). I have been trying to get out and enjoy the weather as much as I can. Which brings me to something that has been bugging me. We have three dogs, and for the last year we have been taking them to the local dog park. For them it’s great, they have a very large fenced in area where they can run and play off leash. The park even stayed open over the winter months, and with all the snow. However, on April 1st they closed due to muddy conditions. Now I completely understood that. I went by about a week later to check, the park was still closed, but it was dry as a bone. So I sent an email to the board about it. The response I finally received was that they were doing “maintenance” on the park and it would not reopen until the first weekend in May. The funny part about that, is that it is also when membership fees are due. Coincidence? I think not. I have spoken to many other members of the park that are just as upset that I am that with this great weather finally here, they are choosing to lock us out until May. But in truth, there really isn’t much we can do. They are the only game in town. So for now, we just have to wait for them to reopen and continue taking the dogs for long walks in the evenings after dinner. And it’s not like I mind walking them, it’s great exercise for both us and the dogs. But it is not as good for them as getting to run and play without the restraint of a leash.

On the subject of dogs, I have to give credit to out local SPCA. Over the weekend we took our dogs to their annual rabies clinic. Not for their shots, our vet had already taken care of that. They were offering something new this year. Micro chipping through Home Again. Many people don’t see the point in this service, however we do. Two of our three dogs came from rescue organizations. They were pulled from animal shelters where they would have been killed. The Home Again micro chip is implanted just under the dogs skin, and these days almost all vets and shelters have the scanner. When an animal is brought in it is scanned. If a chip is found they can attain the owner information from the service. This helps to not only identify lost dogs and return them to their owners, but also combat dog theft. The clinic they were offering was doing the implant for a greatly reduced price, only $35 per dog, about half what most vets charge. We got the clinic just before it opened and were almost the first ones in line. The whole process was done very quickly, from registration, payment, to actually seeing the vet doing the work. We were in and out in less than 20 minutes. Overall a very well run and efficient function, kudos to the SPCA.

Other than that, the hunt for a job drags on for me. I am approaching one month of being unemployed. Now granted the first two weeks I wasn’t really actively seeking another job, since I thought I was only temporarily laid off. I found out otherwise later (see earlier posts). So, since then I have been deep in the hunt for another job, and honestly, it’s not going well. This is the first time I have been out of work in as long as I can remember. Now I know that I am not going to land my dream job in a day. But the reality is that I am facing a horrid job market, especially in this area. I have lowered my standards on what type of work I do, for the sake of getting the income flow going again. However, the one thing I cannot lower too far is the salary I can accept. I know what I need to pay the bills I have, and unfortunately most of the employers in this area are paying well below that. I have had many phone interviews, and even one in person last week. All that interview netted me was a response along the lines of “We feel that you are too over qualified for this position and wouldn’t be happy here. We are looking for someone who will be a long term employee and with your experiance and background we feel you wouldn’t be a good fit in this position. But we will keep your resume on file should a management position come available”. All i could say in response was that while I did agree with them, you have to start somewhere and I would be more than happy to start out in that position until such time as a management position became available. They however did not feel the same way. Honestly at this point I starting to get discouraged, and more than a little stir crazy from not working. I mean since I have been working since I was 12, almost all of that time at least full time or better. So sitting here twiddling my thumbs is not exactly a good thing.

Well, hopefully things will turn around soon. If not, I may have to look at relocating, and that is something that I know will not be agreeable to the wife.

So this morning, at 4:30am none the less, two of our three dogs woke us up to go out. My wife was nice and volunteered to take them out since I have been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately. She takes them out, and I fall back asleep. Not 15 minutes later she comes back in with them and is telling me to hurry up and get out of bed. The reason? Well that would be that they had a run in with a skunk, and boy did they stink.

I got out of bed ready to spring into action. The only problem was that we had nothing to use to eliminate the smell. I had her keep them on the porch while I did a quick Google search. I came up with one home remedy that we actually had the ingredients for. We bathed both of them with it, and you know what? That’s right, they still stunk to high hell, and at that point so did our house.

The only solution I could find was wait until 9am, then drive 40 miles to Petco and get some Nature’s Miracle Skunk Remover. The stuff works great I’m told. We just washed them down with it, so we will see soon how well it actually works. It has to dry completely on them, then we have to bathe them again. I am also working to rid our house of the foul smell as well.

So far I am running on about 2.5 hours of sleep and coffee, and I have a ton to do today. So like I said, it’s not shaping up to be a good day.

So last February my wife and I adopted a rescue dog named Bella. She was two years old at the time. When we got her she was a little thin and very scared. It seemed as if at her young age she had already had a hard life. She was very timid and still recovering from her last litter of pups. From what our vet told us it looked like she had had multiple litters in her short life. When we saw her we knew that we just had to take her in and give her a good life. Which we did, she is well fed, and happy, even goes to the office with me every day.

Then in July my wife and I got a pure bred German Shepherd puppy. She was all of eight weeks old when we got her. She was a great puppy, lots of energy, and very smart. She too goes to work with me as well and loves it.

We were both very content with our two dogs until last week. We were approached about taking in another dog from the same rescue organization that we got our first dog from. The dog they were trying to place was pulled from a shelter in Ohio, where if an adult dog is not adopted within 48 hours they are sent to Canada to a lab that does medical testing. The lady called me up about her and followed that up with an email with pictures of her. She was such a beautiful dog. A two year old German Shepherd mix, just like our first dog, but with much different color and markings. Well once we saw her we could hardly say no. So now we have three dogs in our home. I couldn’t be happier to be giving these dogs a good life. The two dogs that were rescues do require a good amount of work at first. Our first dog does not like to be left alone for very long as she has abandonment issues, and from what I have seen of our latest addition she is the same way. But still, to me I would much rather have that, than see good dogs put to death because someone couldn’t care for them. What is worse is the fact that you can easily tell by spending any time at all with these two girls that they were abused. But they have a good home now. Now I just have to figure out how I am going to get three dogs to the office with me lol.

My wife and I have been hunting for a house to rent lately. We currently live in an apartment and our lease is about to run out. We moved in here when we first moved down to New Hampshire and it worked out great. But almost two years have gone by now and we have really out grown the place. With the two of us, plus our two dogs, it is just getting to cramped.

We looked at a house last night, but I just don’t have a good feeling about it, and don’t want to lock myself into a year lease on something we will end up regretting. So the hunt continues, but the problem is finding a nice place, that is centrally located, allows pets, and that the rent won’t break the bank. Who knows, I am hoping today is the day we find something we like. I have a ton of emails out and phone calls. So guess it’s just a wait and see now.