 News and Success Stories
August 29, 2009
After a busy second semester and a trip to Europe I finally made up my mind and decided to no longer offer Dog Massage and completely concentrate on horses. It hasn't been an easy decision and I have been torn back and forth. However, I really enjoy studying Equine Science and working with horses, it just feels right. That doesn't mean I don't care about dogs anymore. I wouldn't know what to do without my canine companion and I absolutely adore dogs! I will still volunteer with Best Friends Animal Society at their Mobile and Super Adoptions to place lots and lots of great pooches into their forever homes. I updated my website to acommodate my decision and I added a new section called Horse Care. By Horse Care I mean the equivalent of petsitting, but for horses. Check in on them, pamper them, excercise them and so forth whenever you are unable to do so yourself. For now I can only serve the Burbank/Glendale and Pasadena areas for horse care due to my job and living situation.
I also started a new job on weekends (one day, either Saturday or Sunday) at the Mariposa Trading Post in Burbank (adjacent to the Circle K Rental and Boarding Stables right at the swinging Horse Bridge). Please come on down to meet me and enjoy a cold drink, coffee, icecream or hotdog on our nice patio!
On Monday I will start my third semester at Pierce College and I am very much looking forward to see all our school horses again and pamper them through my classes.
January 20, 2009
I am back from my trip to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, UT. What a wonderful place, I don't even have words to really describe it. The peace and serenity of the canyon, the towering red rock walls, the quiet and starry nights, the racket of the wild turkeys in the woods, the soft nickers of the horses in the morning, the windchimes tolling in the wind, the hawks and eagles circling above, the quiet whisper of the breeze through the canyon, the morning concert of the donkeys at the approaching feed truck! The first night I went to get a sleepover dog in Dogtown. I had Dazzle, a year old Hound, over for company. She was one energetic puppy and "stole" anything that wasn't bolted down. She left her "autograph" (teeth marks) on the remote control and the alarm clock, chewed the bow off my slipper and had me chase her around the room trying to get my book out of her mouth! Once she calmed down she turned out to be a real snuggle bug and actually crawled under the covers in the middle of the night. On the first day I volunteered at The Fairway (one of the complexes at Dogtown Heights). The second night I had Fiero over for company. He was a very polite mutt, a little older and very calm. He was so nice and kept watch over me all night. The second day I volunteered at The Garden in the morning and at Old Friends in the afternoon. Both are complexes in Dogtown Heights as well. Old Friends was special from the first second I set foot in the building. There was such a great energy around those dogs, they are all such old souls. I decided not to get a sleepover dog that night, for once I needed a good nights rest and I also started volunteering at Horse Haven the next morning. Horse Haven is in the Canyon and Dogtown is up on the cliffs. Horse Haven was awesome! I especially loved riding the Feed truck in the morning. Even though it was freezing cold on the truck bed, the views of the canyon were all worth it. I loved the way the horses would come up to the fence, nickering softly, waiting for their breakfast. After feeding we had to clean all the feed buckets and then we groomed horses until lunch hour. In the afternoon we mucked out corrals. I volunteered with the horses for two days and I so enjoyed it. It re-affirmed my desire to work with horses full time. I was very sad that I had to leave again, my time at the Sanctuary was just too short. I will be back for sure! I am thinking of possibly doing a 6 week internship at Horse Haven once I am done with Pierce College.
December 27, 2008
I can't believe it has been more than two months since my last entry, time just flies. Meanwhile I finished my first semester at Pierce. I loved all my classes and I am still waiting to find out how I did. I enrolled for Spring Semester already. This time it will be Horse Husbandry, Intermediate Riding, Equine Health/First Aid and Equine Management Techniques. Three of the classes are Lab classes, so I should get quite a bit of hands-on, yay! In January I will head out to Utah for five days, visiting and volunteering at the Best Friends Animal Society Sanctuary. I will stay in a cabin on Sanctuary grounds and volunteer two days at Dogtown and two days at Horse Haven. I can hardly wait to go out there and hope it won't be too cold and snowy. I better get myself some snow chains before I go. Just in case...
October 25, 2008
We are already halfway through Fall Semester and the my classes really did start to pick up. I learned so many new things already and I am excited to learn even more good stuff. All my classes are really fun and interesting. We finally got to ride in the Horseback Riding class. It just took a while to get all 17 of us on the same level for grooming and tacking! We also had two classes that we couldn't work on the horses because it was just too hot outside. On Horse Production we had our first big test and I did well, I am satisfied with the result!
Two weeks ago I volunteered with Best Friends Animal Society again. They had a big Adoption Festival at the La Brea Tar Pits. On Saturday I went out to the East Valley Shelter to help grooming that were scheduled for the Festival. We wanted to spiffy them up to enhance their chances of getting adopted. It was a heartbreaking and at the same time fun day at the shelter. The first hour I spent choking back tears and hiding out in the grooming room whenever my emotions got to much. But then once I got over the initial heartbreak I had fun taking care of those beautiful pooches waiting for new homes at the shelter. On Sunday we started early, luckily it was a very beautiful day, not too hot. After helping unloading cars for the rescue organizations I was asked to help out at the Little Angels Pug Rescue for the day. It was hard work, but it was well worth it. We got several applications and I hope that they all turned out to be good. I realized once more after that weekend, that working with animals is really what I want to do. It felt so right and so purposeful! Such a difference to how I feel about my dayjob!
September 27, 2008
We had a little bit of a scare the past two weeks. I discovered a weird and very fast growing bump on Lola's neck. I kept an eye on it, but then when the bump started looking all inflammed and red I took her to the vet, thinking it could be an abscess. The vet called me up and told me that it is a growth and that he is going to remove it and send it in to the Lab for a biopsy. I agreed to the surgery and Lola came home with a scar about 2 1/2 inches long. I was really worried about the growth though, since malignant tumors usually grow really fast. The wound healed well and on Monday we got the good news, that the growth was benign. It turned out to be a Histiocytoma, which is not uncommon in young dogs and grows very fast. We got the sutures out today and Lola is happy to be able to wear her collar again, rather than the harness she so dislikes!
September 9, 2008
I just started the second week of my first semester at Pierce College. I like all the teachers I got, they seem to be very approchable. This week we really get started on the material. The first class meetings were more information regarding the class, passing out syllables, taking roll and adding people, etc. My classes are about 2/3 girls and 1/3 guys, which was expected. I got all my books together, but still need some horseback riding stuff, nothing big though, just a couple of grooming items, horse shavings and a couple more jeans.
The weekend before last I had my Animal Communication workshop. Very interesting and rather mind-blowing! Anybody working with animals should take a workshop like that, it is very eye opening! I can very much recommend Carol Gurney! She has a great method that she developed herself. I sure learned a lot about myself and also got some great tips straight from my own pooch!
Last weekend I volunteered for Best Friends Animal Society for the first time. We had a big yard sale at their L.A. Offices. I think we did pretty good! I believe though, that we could have done even better if the sale would have been on Saturday rather than Sunday! Maybe next time. It was also very hot on Sunday, which I am sure deterred a few people from coming out. I had a very good time with all the other volunteers though, all very nice and caring people. On Monday I was quite sore from lugging around stuff when we cleaned up. It was a good sore though. :) Next event I think I will be volunteering is the Super Adoption Festival at the La Brea Tar Pits on October 12.
August 16, 2008
Lola is feeling better after she had another bout of nausea and diarrhea last night. Good thing I did not have to go to work today, staying up all night again. This morning she was playing with her ball again and she was able to keep water and some food down since. Yay! Well, what I really wanted to write about today was, that it is now already a year since Lola and me made the roadtrip out to Colorado to take the Massage class. A year full of life lessons, experiences and personal transformation. When I look at myself now compared to a year ago, I see a different person. I am so much more calm thanks to my Reiki self-treatments and I have more confidence in my abilities than I ever had. My journey however is far from being over. This year has a lot more to come with me going back to college!
August 11, 2008
My dog Lola got really sick last night. She just kept on vomiting every 20 to 30 minutes, keeping me up all night. She was also extremely restless due to the nausea and I could tell she was in pain. After a rather violent dry heaving spell, I got her to lay down and offered her Reiki. After about two minutes she surrendered and relaxed and was fast asleep shortly after. Her breathing slowed down and she sighed a couple of times. I could hear her stomach rumble and work. About five minutes into the treatment the rumbling stopped. I continued to offer her Reiki for about half an hour, when she woke up and gave me a look that told me that she had enough. She fell back asleep and did not have to vomit again for more than an hour and a half. Reiki really did give her some relief and much needed rest. I still had to take her to the vet in the morning, since she was rather dehydrated. She is now peacefully sleeping under the Bougainvillea in the yard. She was able to drink water and eat a little bit and so far kept it all down. Yay!
August 1, 2008
I am trying to advertise more now that I have my website up and running. I actually have an advertisement in a magazine! You can find it in the Equine Wellness Magazine in the Wellness Resource. It was so exciting to open that magazine and see my ad for the first time. Quite frankly it still is exciting to see it, just doesn't get old. I also advertise on Shammies World (a great website for all stuff pet related) and also on petfinder.com (super website if you are looking to adopt a new pet, they are awesome). Every once in a while I will also put an ad up on craigslist. However, I have been getting flagged constantly lately, without a plausible reason. It seems to be quite an issue on craigslist lately, some people simply have nothing else do to than to flag perfectly fine ads. Anyways, just wanted to share.
July 12, 2008
I wanted to take a Range of Motion and Stretching course for horses with Equinology, but the class was unfortunately cancelled. I looked around for other courses to take that will benefit my services and decided to finally take an Animal Communication workshop with Carol Gurney. She is up in Agoura, CA and is offering a workshop on the last weekend in August. I just signed up for it, yay! I am very excited! I bought her book on Animal Communication a while ago, her method really makes sense and I can't wait to finally meet her in person.
June 11, 2008
I took Lola to the Equestrian Center for a walk (I always walk around it twice, nice walk) and we checked on the Bulletin board real quick to see if I need to replenish business cards. On the way back out to the bridle trail, I noticed two people trying to get a horse out of a turn-out paddock. The horse was freaking, running and jumping in circles, eyes rolling, head up high. The man and woman could not get close to it. I watched the spectacle for about a minute (the horse was gorgeous) when I got the inspiration to offer the horse some Reiki. I drew my Reiki symbols and offered the horse and situtation the energy. I immediately felt the energy pull in my hands and the horse stopped dead in his tracks, turned around and looked at me. It then came over to the fence and just stared at me with curious eyes. I could see the horse relax, the eyes weren't as wild anymore and the head started dropping, it was just standing there, all the fear and panic had just "fallen off". The man was then able to calmly walk up to the horse, put the holder on and lead it out of the paddock. It followed the guy like a lamb. I then felt the energy pull in my hands lessen and stop. I felt such joy, I started to cry. It was such an amazing thing to witness! Reiki really does work! This experience made me a true believer! :)
May 29, 2008
I enrolled at Pierce College earlier this year and just now was finally able to register for Fall Semester. I am majoring in Horse Sciene (not clear yet if it will be a AS degree or a Certificate of Completion). I will be taking three classes next semester, Horse Production (Basic class for the major), Equitation and Horseback Riding. I am very excited and can't wait!
April 24 - May 19, 2008
During my stay in Switzerland I worked on four different horses. Two of them did not have any specific problems and I gave them full body massages for relaxation and overall well-being. They both enjoyed it very much, heads low, eyes closing. My Mom was amazed to see how much the massage relaxed the horses. The other two did have issues. One of them, a beautiful gelding was very saddle sore and also had issues in his neck. His owner warned me, saying that he would not stand still, especially if touched on the left side of the neck. He fidgeted around a little bit in the beginning, but once I really started deep work he totally relaxed and let me do my job. He stood completely still after that for the full hour! His owner later took him to training and she told me that he was working really well and didn't mind the neck so much. Over the course of three weeks I worked on him intensively (twice a week) and I could tell a difference in his reactions on the back and neck. He wasn't as tight anymore right behind the shoulders and in the sacrum area. His owner also said that he wasn't that fidgety anymore and she was able to groom his neck without any trouble. The fourth horse had very stiff front legs and a tight neck and shoulder (she is 19 years old). Unfortunately I wasn't able to work as intensively on her due to her owner being away on business. But she also enjoyed the treatments very much and seemed to walk much better afterwards.
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