I Have Been Blessed

I have been blessed. "Everything happens for a reason" is one of my mantras and it is very true in my case. I live on about 8 acres in a rural community in southern Minnesota. I have two great careers. I work for Wendy Nan Rees and CANIDAE Pet Foods. I am the operations manager for Wendy's company as well as being the executive producer for Wendy's radio show "Wendy's Animal Talk" on www.healthylife.net.  

I write articles for CANIDAE's Responsible Pet Ownership blog. While doing research into adopting a "special needs" dog, I found Wendy. While I was working for Wendy, one of the people she hired sent me information about a listing she found for a company looking for a writer (CANIDAE) and the rest was history. Of all the bloggers that CANIDAE interviewed, I was one of the two they initially hired. Now there are four writers for CANIDAE's Blog; Julia Williams, Linda Cole, Suzanne Alicie and me. If you would like to read any of the informative, insightful articles from four women who all love animals and come from varied walks of life you can go to the CANIDAE RPO Blog and see for yourself.

I moved from the "rat race" of suburban Chicago life to Minnesota, and I do mean the rat race. I worked for a company that was a 75 mile commute one way every day, six days a week. In Illinois, we used to say there were 3 seasons: winter, traffic and construction. Unfortunately, I was intimate with all three. I thought I was going to retire from the company I worked for and ended up training my own replacement, though I didn't know it at the time. Apparently my ideas were too stale or too radical for them. I resigned and began the process of trying to find my niche in the pet industry again. I worked for a boss that had a horrific temper, I worked for a boss that made a pass at me, and I worked for a wonderful man, whose company I left because my brother came home to Illinois and offered me a job in Minnesota. The rest, as they say is history (or herstory as it were). LOL

 My boyfriend complains about the traffic at "rush hour" in our town, which may last for about 10 minutes after 4:00pm in the afternoon. I threaten to take him down to Chicago and drop him in the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway on a Friday afternoon when both the Chicago Cubs and White Sox are playing ball, and tell him after he lives through that, then he can complain to me about the rush hour in our town of 19,443 people. (Note to the Census department or whoever is in charge of changing our city sign, I think the number of citizens on the current sign is wrong.)

It is funny how nature imitates life or how life imitates fiction. I grew up on two acres in a suburb of Chicago and thought that was the country. I spent hours with my childhood friend exploring the woods around our houses. I brought home creatures, and creatures followed me home. Now I am back in the country where I belong, and animals are still following me home.