mdd0127 said:
It's been my experience that people that get into rescuing dogs as a profession frequently get sucked into a power trip kind of attitude.
That doesnt' seem to be the case with the AZSBR people, though I have no idea about any of the others, as I havent' met those.
I can't blame any of them for wanting perfection in adopters--I did that as best I could for Nana's puppies. But sometimes, there is no perfect home for a dog, and you can't keep them yourself for the rest of their lives for whatever reason, so accepting someone that you know will love them and do the best they can for them is the best you can do.
If I were in your position and wanted to rescue a dog, I'd just look in the free section at craigslist....or just wait for one to come tumbling into my life.
That's how I got all four of the ones I just lost: Fred and Loki and Nana (and thus Hachi). Bonnie was the last one I'd actually gone out looking for, from AZHS after i'd lost Lady (who herself came from the county pound).
You can't be fixated on a certain breed though.
I'm not; it's just that there are some of them that I have become a bit attached to in my short time with them, and I want to see them again, at the very least. And I want to give them a home, too, but I knwo that's not possible yet.
I've been looking at *all* of the large/giant dogs that need homes but that can wait until I have a place to be with them, yet that I can still go visit as often as physically possible until then.
The problem I have right now is that I am not doing well without a dog of my own to take care of, that needs *me* to be there for them. I don't really have much of a reason to get up and do anything (yes, my mind knows there are lots of reasons...but my heart does not care about any of them). So, I need to find one I can be there for. When I had been there with the SBs, and had spoken with AZSBR, it had seemed like I had found that solution...but being unable to get a useful response from them since then is depressing.
I want what is best for the dog(s)...but I don't think I can heal without one.
I know what I need to do (wait it out)...I just don't think it is what I *can* do. Some things are getting worse, and I know that I would be better off with a big fuzzy companion to see every day, and knwo that they need me as much as I need them.
I am presently looking around for apartments and guest houses where I could have such a dog, so that I can have a place to actually be with them, and could then adopt one instead of having to arrange visits, which seems to be an unlikely-to-work-out scenario given the present lack of responses. There are a few that would be fine in such a place, since I could walk them outside in the very early morning and then later at night, during the hot part of the summer, and then pretty much anytime once fall hits, and then the first part of winter, until my house is rebuilt and I can move back in by end of year, hopefully.
If you want to socialize with dogs in the meantime, advertise low cost dog walking or something. People don't trust free and tend to immediately suspect general good natured behavior, like wanting to hang out with dogs for no other reason than hanging out with dogs. If you charge a small fee for your services, the people who's dogs you're helping will think you're in it at least a little bit for the money and will understand that as motivation. Our whole society is scared to death of everyone else, in particular, people that don't fit into their preconceived notions. I hope this all makes sense????
It does make sense, but it is not something that I can deal with, not now. The best compromise I can come up with is to visit rescue events and animal shelters, but those are both very stressful for me, and sometimes make things worse than they were before I went, especially when I meet a dog I could bond with if I stayed even an hour.
As far as your nightmares go, have you tried sleepytime extra tea?
Yes. it helps me get relaxed but that is all. So far I have not found anythign that will do any more than get me *to* sleep--after that, the nightmares take over. Lucid dreaming doesn't work properly, either--I get started where I want to, but after that it mutates and becomes something horrible, and then I can't even get to bring that same dream or situation up again, becuase I am so afraid of the resulting nightmare from it, or so horrified by the images, that it is ruined, and makes me more stressed out than just letting whatever comes up happen--at least that way I get to *start* sleep instead of just laying there imagining all of the horror and none of the happy.
Unless i were to take things that just actually force me to remain unconcious and dreamless for the night, I'm not sure there *is* a solution. I can't take anythign that would keep me asleep and still allow dreaming, because i will end up locked in the nightmares unable to wake up, and that would be far worse than not getting to stay asleep because of them--I would wake at the end so stressed out that I would be unable to function. I've already been there before, while my mom was really sick and after she died.
I wish I could find an easy answer....but there aren't any.
The only one that I am almost absolutely certain would help is actually having a big fuzzy dog of my own here with me right now. That would present problems of it's own, but I would just have to see what they are and deal with them as they happen.
bhileman said:
If you want to meet up some evening and spend some time with my big-ear-furry-friends and talk EV let me know! Always anxious to meet fellow enthusiasts and dog lovers. Let me know and I will PM you to figure out a time and place.
PM'd; I'd love to try this, even though I don't think it is my ultimate solution, and I don't know if it will help as much as it hurts but it is worth trying.
dogman said:
Lots of dogs need a home out there, and once you are settled, the ones meant for you will magically appear.
Very very rough, but you just need to hang in there best you can, till you have the house back. Try to start thinking forward much as you can.
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I dont' think I can. Things are getting worse again, not better. Maybe they will reach a low point and get better again, but I am not going to be able to continue working at all if they get much worse than this, or even fi they just stay the same. "thinking forward" is a great phrase, and sounds great, but it doesn't help my feelings or anything else inside my head and heart. I'm already "thinking forward" about lots of things, including dogs, but it isn't helping the main problem at all.
Talking about it sometimes helps a little, but it's pretty hard to do, since I really need to talk about it when it is happening, those times that I can talk at all, and I would need to talk to someone that already understands what has happened so far, and knows what's going on, and that it actually matters to. That's almost always impossible. Talking about it afterward sometimes helps take the "edge" off the memory of the hurting, and the aftermath, but it doesn't help me get past the hurt while it's hurting. Most poeple seem to feel that I should just "deal with it" and go on, and that I just have to live with it. Maybe I do--but I can't. Not yet.
The past few days have not been very good ones; I had to leave work at least a couple hours early again on Friday. I suppressed as much as I could as long as I could, but eventually it just overflowed and I had to sit in back and cry it out, and after what I guess was more than half an hour I still couldn't go out there. I kept waiting it out and trying, eventually after what might have been an hour I managed to get up and walk back out on the sales floor, but almost immediately something else (dunno what) triggered more tears and I tried suppressing them, a customer saw me and went the other way instead of coming to ask the question I could see they wanted to ask. I went to the manager on duty and let him know I wasn't going to be able to stay and work any longer, and he ok'd me going home.
I went back to the break room and sat and cried more, until probably another half hour later I managed to reach a point I could at least see where I was going and got the bike up and out the front of the store, and started home. I had to stop and wait a bunch of times cuz I couldn't see, or cuz I coudln't think and didn't know where I was. Eventually I got home and went up to my loft room and basically just hid there trying to get past everything I was feeling and thinking and remembering. I must've remembered to turn off the bike, or else Bill or Anna did, cuz the batteries werent' dead the next morning when i went out to see about it and recharge it. But I woke up still wearing my uniform and my helmet was still on the handlebars with my glasses in it--I guess I never even put them on for my ride home.
Saturday morning was supposed to be me meeting up with someone to go to my house and do more cleanup, and I was planning on moving a tree so they won't have to cut it down, but he never called or otherwise tried to contact me (until much later after it was way too late, and I got an email that he'd overslept). So that blew that whole plan. Later that afternoon/eve I was supposed to meet up with another couple of friends, but I got no call from them either, and eventually got an email that they were just too worn out to do it.
At least they all did actually tell me they coudln't make it, but it would have been a whole lot more helpful if they'd done it early enough for me to be able to do something else, instead of just sitting around waiting for them, getting more depressed every minute about all the things that are not going well.
After all that I then started working on the computer Bigmoose had sent, to clone my salvaged main drive out of my burned up tower to another drive from Bill. But that didnt' really work out very well the first couple of tries, because the Acronis software Bigmoose had on the machine refused to recognize the destination drive correctly no matter what I did, and the several free cloning programs I tried failed in various ways, usually copying ok but leaving the drive either unbootable even with a repair, or with no recognizable partitions. Eventually I found my old CompUSA techshop stuff for flashdrive use that included Ghost, and that copied it right over--but that was a whole day later, after i'd already had to let the thing run overnight for one of the other copiers, and trying several options the next morning (Sunday).
Then i had to go to work, and after I got back I reinstalled windows from a CD Bill had, because all of mine are still over at my house (at least, I think they are; I'm not sure if they still exist). It was the same version but was an OEM instead of a retail like I'd used on my original install, so it wouldn't take my key, and I was not in any mood to deal with MS's activation phone thing that I know won't work automatically and is going to require lots of hoops with someone on the phone who I will end up yelling at because they wont' be patient with me (and it will probably cost money cuz XP isn't supported anymore). So I spent a long time (hours) finding a process to at least let me log into windows so I could even see if it was worth saving the installation, or if reinstalling form scratch would be better.
It did work, and it had preserved most of my settings and customizations (which had taken years of work to get right). So at least I probably don't have more than a few weeks or months worth of work to get Windows back to where I need it to be for my purposes. But since it will still reset and need activation after 30 days, either I have to find a way to reset the product key to the one I actually have for my copy of WindowsXP, or else I have to find my original cd and reinstall *again* and hope it works then. Otherwise, I have to go thru the reset-to-30-days procedure every 30 days, which while annoying is at least not complicated or destructive.
Anyway, so now I have a computer to start working on music with, although there are still a number of t hings I have to do before I can begin actually doiong that. Once I can do that, maybe it will also help relieve some of my stress.
Not nearly as much as a dog would, but it has to be better than nothing.
I must've tripped over it or something at some point, or pulled on it when moving the computer itself, etc. 
