Must Love Dogs

I had my first official day of dog grooming school last Saturday! The main thing I’ve been doing is learning how to properly bathe and dry them, clean their ears, and clip their nails. Clipping their nails is scary as fuck, you guys. I accidentally cut a little too close on an Italian Greyhound’s hind paw and it started bleeding, and he already nearly fell off the table prior to that when I was drying him. Soooo, yeah. Not good! Despite how nerve wrecking he was, I didn’t let it get to me and managed to soldier on with the other dogs I had to bathe. I think I’m supposed to start learning how to do sanitary cuts this week (buzzing off fur underneath the tail and belly area), and need to be able to name different parts of a dog’s anatomy since I’m getting quizzed on that on Friday.

It’s really hard work. I wasn’t expecting it to be easy, but my poor back was in a world of pain from having to bend over the tub.

So, why dog grooming? It’s seems pretty random considering that I got my degree in Creative Writing. But like I learned in the soul sucking Business of CW class I took my senior year, all writers take on random jobs to support themselves. My degree isn’t helping me out much as far as jobs/careers are concerned. Maybe it would help if I wanted to be a teacher, but I have absolutely no desire for that. Being a tutor is enough for me on the education front! I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to do as far as work is concerned. Ideally, it would involve traveling opportunities, writing, and working with like-minded people,  but what job is that? So then I thought about working with dogs. Ever since I got Rory, my heart aches even more when those damn Humane Society commercials with Sarah McLachlan come up. Or if I see a stray dog, it hurts too because I hate the fact that they don’t have a loving family to spoil them rotten. I knew I didn’t want to be a vet or vet tech, but I wanted to help/work with dogs in some capacity. Dog grooming presented itself a few times since my aunt saw an ad in the paper about a local dog grooming school last year. I always brushed it aside whenever she brought it up, but last year it came up again and it just clicked. So that’s where I am now!

I’m also taking an online creative writing class which is going fairly well. I started working on a new story last night and ended up writing over 1,000 words! Still not sure where the story is going, but it feels really good to be creating fiction again. 🙂