Saturday, October 17, 2009

I work part-time at a doggie daycare located near where I live. Best commute a person could have. I have been working there for six weeks. It's a perfect job for me at this point. I do the bulk of the dog walking during my daily shift at the daycare. So, I am walking a ton. I wore a pedometer for a week to get a sense of how many steps I was taking in an average day. 14,000 steps. When I'm not walking dogs, I'm socializing and monitoring them in the daycare. I'm around dogs all day. And we already know that I prefer the company of dogs to humans. I have my favorites, and it's always nice to see them and walk them when they come in. I have learned so much about dog behavior that I can't even begin to quantify it. So much. And for the most part, I'm having fun. Even when I was walking dogs in a steady rain in the cold on Thursday afternoon, I was having fun. It's good for me to be outdoors, even though this has been a horrible Fall so far. On the nice days (that I can vaguely remember now), I really enjoyed being outside walking dogs. Anyway, so that's what I've been doing. And in that time, I have felt better than I have in years. Years. Since the last time I had a job that I loved. That was teaching English in a private school. My dream job. But I digress. Actually, I find that working with dogs all day is not altogether different from teaching in some ways. You always have to be alert to what the group is doing. You need to know how to quiet the group down if it gets excited. And you have to be able to get the group to focus. My new classroom is a big sturdy pen, and my new students are a diverse gathering of neighborhood dogs. And just like with human students, I am trying to teach the dogs something, and in turn, they are teaching me more than I expected.

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