Positive Thoughts

Over the past few weeks I have been focusing more intently on positive thoughts, what I am grateful for and what I want to see more in my life. This doesn't discount the 'negatives' that are still in play, though negative is such a relative word, but it certainly takes the focus away from the bad stuff and keeps me headed on a more positive track thus increasing my speed towards the good in my life and keeping it front and center where I can enjoy it always.

I was thankful that Olive got a chance to be adopted a few days ago, though today she had to come back. It turns out that she is much more dominant towards other dogs, or more appropriately, more possessive of human attention than I realized.

There are many things I am still learning with these fosters and even though I have learned so much with my own yard, and almost feel like a sort of expert there (though 'expert' is also a very relative term!) I am realizing that even though the lessons here at home have been mastered there is still much more knowledge I am hungry for. I am finding those new lessons within these foster dogs and furthering my understanding of life through the adopters who we match them up with.

Adoption is a very fascinating process... when it works its technically a happy ending but when it doesn't its not negative, there is so much more to learn!

That is where all this positive comes in. As I heard once from a large animal trainer, "If I don't try something new, I will never learn anything different." and I hope all the adopters out there realize that when an adoption doesn't go through it is not a failure in any sense, but more so the ability to try something new and learn from it, ultimately transforming us into better people through the process.

Olive is just such a case that I am learning so much more from. Through her time spent in the other home we learned so much about her, what her limits are and what home she should be placed into.

When I started fostering through the shelter I was thrilled to have a great track record of placements. The shelter staff grew to enjoy my visits since it meant another adoption had taken place and I was there to pick up another dog. But now that Ive been doing this for so long I'm starting to realize that in order to keep a positive track record its not just the numbers that are adopted but more so the successful placements.

So I suppose this is a good time to spill a bit more of the 'beans' and announce that we will be opening our own Sled Dog Sanctuary in Talkeetna... this is a lengthy process full of paperwork (that I hinted on previously), plans, set up and LOTS of thought before we can even begin to bring in any dog under the sanctuary title.

This all came about with our move to Talkeetna and my inability to foster dogs outside of the borough. Its a technical issue that turned out to be a blessing in that it led us to our 39 acres on the Parks Hwy that already has a five acre parcel on the road that would be perfect for our sanctuary setting.

There are so many thoughts and plans in place that I will be able to go into at length later on but I feel its fitting to announce the initial idea since we will be caring over so many of the lessons learned through fostering for the borough into our own little dream further down the road... literally! :)

And, as Cesar Milan often says, it is the difficult dogs I am most grateful for... dogs like Olive... who are showing the way, not through their perfect behavior but through showing us what we could do better to accommodate special needs animals like herself.

One of our goals is to have a handful of foster homes to rotate these guys through (not quickly but for months or weeks at a time) getting them used to stimulation from other environments, other training techniques and to evaluate where they need to live to be the most comfortable for the rest of their lives.

So thank you Olive, thank you to all the adopters and potential adopters out there looking to adopt their forever friends and thank you all so much for all the positive thoughts you put out into this grand world of ours! Through trial and error we are shaping this world to be a better place we all can enjoy! :)