OP: these are all great feelings to have that people are positing below. But please just be aware that at different stages of you getting to know that person or being with them - it can change and that’s very normal. So don’t get scared.
Being with someone you really like and getting to know them can give you a lot of feelings. You could really be attracted to them sexually. You could really feel at peace with them. You could actually feel so safe and protected with them then without them with you. You could feel heard and validated by your conversations and interactions when together. You could even feel a huge empty feeling when you aren’t together because you kiss him/her due to how they make you feel.
I have to say that my little 9month old shih tzu was a terror from the moment I adopted him. I was also grieving so hard over the loss of my precious boy, this little guy fell on my lap form someone who couldn’t care for him (couldn’t feed him or get him vaxxed AND was also living in a hot home in Arizona heat of 115). My heart got the best of me and I adopted the little guy, his name is gizmo. My other little guy, my soul dog, his name was Berry and he passed on due to a vicious dog attack in my front porch. Gizmo came in to my life exactly 2 weeks after. I often wondered if my Berry sent gizmo to me to humble me lol. Berry was so relaxed, so loving, so protective but yet stood his ground and wasn’t a barker or a growler… he was also a miniature poodle so maybe it was just his personality? Well gizmo is the opposite. Loud! Very playful - loved to toss his toys around and has a huge collection that I keep adding on to. He goes nuts over skates/skateboards/bikes while we are at the park - will bark his head off and not accept redirection. Does not like people talking to me out in public. Does not like visitors at our home. Hates when any one knocks at our door. Very alert and protective of me even with my own family. The list really does go on and on.
However… I do agree that at some point some dogs do calm down a bit and or some need more help. My gizmo is now 3 years old but his ways remain slightly the same (he has calm down a little bit but he is still feisty/adamant). I never had the heart to send him to a boarding camp because the 3 that I found in my state had great reviews and then they have the negative reviews that did stand out - I still game them a call. None of them would let me go out and visit the place where my dog would be. None of them would go on the record to say that they did or didn’t use shock collars. I definitely am against shock collars and kennels. My boys roam freely and I love it. All to say that the blues do go away for some of us but for maybe other half of us (it still kind of lingers around for a bit in a way that we learn to just live with it & not even let it affect us much).
OP: I am proud of you and also super proud of you for not quitting and getting back on the horse!! I went through something similar years ago and I feared not being good enough to return back to school. Went back but had a bad experience with my job line, nursing. Got treated like shit where I was and ended up quitting after getting hired and working for 1 year and 6months. Now 9 years later I really want to go back and find a job at a hospital that does treats me right but I am fearful….. So I am proud of you. I wish I could push on just like you and it is what I want but I just don’t know how 😭
OP: I shocked at the update. Thank you for fighting for your daughter and showing up for her, you are who she needs and 100% should be with. I am happy your daughter caught most of what she could on video, so you know it’s not going to easily go down as a he said she said. Please tell her to be safe and it mention the situation to any of the people who live in that home. I would just fear the retaliation if someone knew she recorded the event…. Wishing you the best OP. Please keep us posted on how things play out.
So stinking cute and I don’t even know WHY someone would dare to call your baby any names!!! Awful person!! Sending the handsome buy tons of kisses for being the cutest 🫶🏻
Why am I so tempted to get red dead on the switch but it kills me because I have it on the PS4 but know I would play the heck out of it on the switch since I can take it everywhere and also just lay back and play it in bed (my best place to play). I also never really beat it so yeah.
Congrats OP!!! Wishing you tons of success with all your future plans on writing and being an author!!
OP: I had never heard it and I love it!! Thank you for sharing 🫶🏻
OP: Bonding cans be different for all dogs, depending on the age and what their situation is (a rescue dog that’s been in a shelter for some time, a rescued dog you may be fostering who is coming out of a bad situation and also a pup you might’ve swooped up from a home with a clean slate). Bonding can be different for all of those situations as some of them often don’t know how to feel safe until they are actually safe.
My bonding looks like: hand feeding, cuddling, sharing snacks, pets, soft grooming that they may tolerate like hair brushing, playing with toys, watching kid movies with them that are interactive with noises (usually find out if a dog will take interest in it or if they just sleep through it - I’ve had dogs that love watching tv so long as I am with them and other who just plop on me and sleep through it) and of course napping/sleeping together. Other ones would be taking them on drives and or to the park. Spending time with them. Of course you don’t want them to grow to have anxiety so you would start very early on leaving home without them for a few and then increasing that. I definitely am not a fan of kennels, never used them and I don’t like them. I’ve always taught my dogs to respect the home and used the gate system to slowly increase their area around the house. My dogs have free range of the house and I like that so much.
The thing that OP will have to do is going to be the hardest. Listening to what lead up to that event. What happened or what is the reasoning behind her significant other forgetting her dog in the car. What was he doing? What was he so preoccupied with? I am curious to know if he always took her dog around and if he ever had forgotten the dog like that before. Not sure if OP will see this and respond but my curiosity is getting the best of me.
Regardless… this is either going to make or break them. Everything is really riding out on how the other person responds and takes accountability for his actions. Regardless of the situation, this is an awful situation to be in and anyone who loves animals would take this to heart.
OP: This is an awful tragedy that no one really knows how to respond to until we are actually going through this. I can only imagine what I would do and how I would feel in this scenario. I love my dogs and I would definitely die for them. It sounds extreme but I would most definitely run in to my home even if it was in flames to carry my dogs out to safety, even if it meant only having their then dead bodies with me. I wouldn’t want them to go alone or to not have their ashes or hold them for the last time. I would even fight a crocodile or a bear or panther for them. That’s how deep my love is for them. I would most definitely blame my careless partner. At this moment you may not want to hear him out but at some point you will want to know what caused him to forget your dog inside the car. To me there isn’t any logical reason that would make sense, besides if it was a life altering situation where you were tending to an alarming situation and you didn’t even think k about anything else going on. Even then I still wouldn’t forget about my babies. I am so sorry this happened to you and I am sending you a great big hug. I hope that you and your partner are able to overcome this and see this through but if that isn’t the case then I strongly suggest that you make him aware of it. In the end he needs to understand what your dog means to you and that no number of apologies would ever replace your dog.
OP: Thinking es can match! 32F who is also a gamer, open to trying other games. A great friend and also needing a friend (finding friends yay isn’t as easy when you get older and just like others. I have lost a lot of my childhood friends myself). Definitely looking for a long term friendship that isn’t one sided nor temporary!
OP: I think we would make great friends! 32F on the west coast who is super chill and also looking for new friends to chat with. Looking for a sincere friend who isn’t an ass. Let me know what you think!
OP: I have been here and I am happy I never did anything about it besides finding ways to just move on and attempt to live life with or without them. I am not making excuses for the people who have hurt you and how they have treated you. If you can please just think about how they don’t deserve you and how you can come out of this with your head held high. Maybe it’s all about moving away, finding new people to love/care for that will also care/love you just as how you show up for them, maybe it’s about finding yourself in a world where you already feel lost and not seen but finding your way. Don’t give in to this when in the end in a way you know they don’t care, let that push you further on in life to keep going vs giving up.
Since I was 5 years old I felt a huge separation from my mom. She would life about me to the family. She would mentally and physically abuse me about anything, even if something not related to me was going on. I was kept away from food and access to food was limited (I ended up getting an eating disorder that doctors didn’t understand, I wasn’t eating because she was keeping food from me. I then went on to gain too much weight when I finally was able to eat since family stood up for me but then it made me more sick soon after… I have a love hate relationship with food that isn’t healthy at all (I wish I was better with food and weight gain, any time I think about it. It brings me down a lot and I do my best to regulate food but it brings me back to those core memories). My mom would torture my feet due to a fire incident that involved my feet burning, I had 3rd degree burns that wouldn’t heal from how bad my nutrition was… I was on tons of meds and creams to get my feet back to liking normal (she couldn’t understand why my healing wasn’t fast and would “try” to heal me by putting hydrogen peroxide on my feet sometimes 3 times a day). I would scream bloody murder at the top of my lungs, no one ever came to rescue me.. I would cry myself to sleep, it was the only way I could fall asleep and it made me feel better. I had a sibling who stuck up for me but he would also get the end of the same thing as me… I am 32 now and I spent a lot of my childhood years wishing for natural death for myself. That I wouldn’t wake up one day or that I would wake up in a new home with new family who loved me and made me feel safe/loved/cared for bs what I had. I tried moving on past all of this and it was hard. But I came through winning… It wasn’t easy but I did it. It takes time and it takes a lot of reassurance to do it, from you.
You got this and you can do this. Put yourself first and keep fighting. Don’t give up. Keep showing up for yourself and find yourself. Recreate yourself if you want. Write down all the things you want to do, what makes you upset, what you want to stay away from, how you want to change, what you want to change and things like that. Get creative. Dive in to books! I found myself loving books due to that was my only way to avoid family. I would stay in my room reading for hoursssss, I could read for days and just find myself lost in books. I owe that to an old elementary teacher who encouraged me to read and find what I like, she also let me take books home so I could read at home.
I am here for you. You are not alone. All of Reddit wants to see you win.
Don’t give up!!!
Totally possible! I adopted a dog from a friend of a friend and I put off picking him up quickly due to I went and bought all the things so he felt at home. A week later he was with me and for about 3 days he was very scared and just not eating or drinking anything (at least in front of me, we shared the bedroom in my family home). Well we became inseparable. I would cry thinking of him leaving this world… We spent 6 years together. I got him when he was 2 years old. He ended up getting attacked by a dog and passed on, it is still the most hurtful thing I have gone through. I still cry for him and will often lay in bed wondering what life would be like with him if he was still around. He was my souls dog. He was my best friend. He was so calm, relaxed, intelligent, non reactive and just so loving…. when life gets hard for me all I can think of is wanting and wishing to have him with me so I can feel better (it was a thing to just lay in bed with him and ball my eyes out, he offered so much comfort in so many hard moments in my life).
So yes, there’s nothing wrong with a quick bond. I actually think it’s amazing that you two know you are each others “person”. 🫶🏻
Happy birthday dear Reddit friend 🙌🏼🎉🥳 I know it is a sad day and you don’t feel celebrated, I hope that this turns around for you and that the feeling soon leaves your mind. Do what makes you happy, if it’s crying your eyes out then do it (in my opinion crying it out makes me feel better afterwards).
Since I have horrible allergies and I will not get rid of my pets… they sleep with me in bed daily. I change my sheets 2x per week. This includes my protective sheet, bed sheet, flat sheet, pillow cases and whatever blanket I’m using. I also love doing laundry so opt for this instead of getting rid of my pets lol. Btw, the over the counter stuff for my allergies don’t work and so I have a steroid nose spray that is wonderful for all my allergies (more so flu like symptoms).
Honest question as I am in this boat as well.
How can we build / create the discipline so that it sticks?
OP: Simply approach your wife and let her know you need to speak to her. Make sure you remain calm and collected as you speak to her. Tell her what she means to you, how you never dreamed of anything like this happening but you feel you must share it with her so that this doesn’t come out later on and makes you look bad. When she says what or ask what you are talking about. Let her know you are going to show her a text and that she has to remember who sent it and who received, since this didn’t happen the other way around. Please give her space as she reads the text but remain there as support. Things may get awkward but remain there with her and let her know you aren’t leaving her side unless she wants to you step away.
Things could get messy with the sister. But I would appreciate this as a woman if my partner was in this position. I would also want to know now vs at a later time. A later time gives me motive to not believe you and or imagine that there is more to that text.
OP: I am sending you a great big hug, yep a total stranger in the internet but I wouldn’t ever cross the line like your sister. I hope good things come your way and that soon this is all behind you like the wind. May you find your true happiness and may that person honor you in so many ways that overwhelm you with great happiness 🫶🏻
OP: I wish I would’ve learned this a long time ago. It is the best thing ever 🙌🏼
OP: I sent you a message. You have tons of people here on Reddit who are willing to hear you out and help you in some way. Just reach out to someone, maybe someone here can help you look at things in a better way than those around you. Please just stay and keep pushing. Just take life 1 day at a time, keep trying but don’t be hard on yourself. So many of us adults are just getting by while others make things look so easy, but it’s not so easy when you actually see what they’ve had to go through to get to where they are at.
OP: you definitely outdid yourself in this planning! I definitely did not plan this deep due to I just bought all the outside things necessary and was able to budget/spend all I needed throughout the period of becoming a first time dog mom. But I would have definitely loved to have done this if I could do it all over again.
Have I Budgeted Enough for First Year of Dog Care + Adoption?
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