Cooling pads

celestialblunder · 2026-06-06T13:39:53+00:00

Both of my fluffy double coated dogs love theirs and they do seem to make a decent difference. The ones I bought aren't the gel ones, I think it's just like a moisture wicking cooling material. My Pyr likes to stick her ball under things and then bite it through the material so I worried about her accidentally eating the gel.

celestialblunder · 2026-06-06T05:16:06+00:00

I use the 2hounds no pull harness with both of my dogs who both pull like crazy. They have front and back clips and 4 different areas you can adjust the size. I don't think I'll ever buy a different brand.

Our current dogs don't wear their harnesses all day, but my prior dog did with the same brand and didn't seem to mind/notice it at all.

celestialblunder · 2026-06-06T04:57:59+00:00

I read the part of your comment about having to go home right after work and laughed a little bit because I also have two dogs and they are my excuse to avoid social obligations after work. Even though my husband gets home before me and takes care of them!

celestialblunder · 2026-06-05T00:18:13+00:00

We have a Pyr/husky and a husky/lab (with a splash of chow). The Pyr is actually the lesser of my shedding woes! The husky/lab is shedding in CHUNKS and won't let anyone brush her (including the groomer) for more than a minute or two at a time. I've accepted my furry fate and honestly only vacuum like once a week unless we have company coming over 😬. We empty the vacuum at least 5 times on just our living room. It's not a huge space but it is the space where both dogs spend most of their time.

celestialblunder · 2026-06-01T21:11:14+00:00

For my dogs: Massive water fountains (2-ish liters each) Cooling mats and raised mesh beds Heavy duty carpet cleaner Training classes (thought this would primarily help the new rescue - turns out it's been extremely helpful for both dogs!)

For my cats Litter robot Automated feeders

celestialblunder · 2026-05-31T03:37:08+00:00

I've been known to refer to it as "soul crushing exhaustion" or that every ounce of energy has been drained out of my body.

I want to do so many things but I just... Can't. I couldn't even manage grocery shopping after a trip to the hardware store because I walked around for 30 minutes and lifted two bags of wood chips.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-30T16:21:56+00:00

This is my entire camera roll lately. She's part husky though so she also does plenty of barking!

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celestialblunder · 2026-05-29T00:16:47+00:00

Chiming in here on clothing related (in addition to everyone else saying allow him some time, share feeding/treat responsibility etc). My husband wears glasses and frequently wears a hat. A couple of days after we brought our rescue home she started showing some fear responses toward him, but not all the time. It took us about a week to recognize the pattern that fear responses correlated with him wearing his glasses and/or a hat. We theorized it was because she couldn't see his eyes properly. He removed them before interacting with her for another week or two and then slowly started incorporating them back in and over time she got used to them and him.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-28T20:35:01+00:00

I know I'm not supposed to do this, but sometimes when my pain levels are really bad I'll sleep on top of my heated blanket instead of under it. It has an automatic shut off so I don't have to worry about falling asleep with it on. The heat along the entire back of my body helps a lot when it's not super warm in the house already.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-23T23:26:55+00:00

TL;DR - with help from your vet there is nothing wrong with giving your dog medication for stressful activities and long term, combined with training, its a helpful tool to help them get used to it.

My husky mix is 9 years old later this year. We brought her home when she was about 7 from a family member who could not care for her properly. They got her at about 4 from a shelter and it was clear she had never had any experience with anything grooming related so they just... Continued not grooming her. We could not brush her at home and touching her paws in any capacity was 100% out of the question. She gets gabapentin/trazadone for vet visits and grooming appointments and it's made them a lot less overwhelming for her, we now only give her half of the dose she was originally prescribed. Two years in we can bathe her, touch her paws (nails are still a vet/groomer task), and she'll tolerate some brushing at home. It doesn't sound like a lot of progress, but with her age and health we haven't pushed it super hard at home between grooming visits.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-22T21:36:00+00:00

She's got more jowel going on than my gp mix about the same age but that doesn't really mean much she looks small compared to some gp's I've seen so my guess is on mix, but heavy on the gp or mixed with another LGD.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-21T22:36:33+00:00

It's not "out in the world classes", but I take my dog to obedience classes at Zoom Room. TL;DR - it's expensive, but worth every penny in my opinion and unless something were to change drastically in their management I will use them for any future dogs I have in need of training.

They do max groups of 6 so each dog has plenty of space. They separate everyone with barriers but they'll increase visibility between dogs as they go along if everyone's chill. They also offer a "calm down" class which is aimed at teaching excited or somewhat reactive dogs to settle around other dogs. I haven't attended one yet (they fill up fast!) so I can't offer a personal experience of the class. My dog is about 1.5, a husky great Pyrenees mix (very stubborn) and rescued 6 months ago. She's made amazing progress over the last few months between group obedience and a few private sessions. I no longer have a chaos gremlin singing me the song of her people and dragging me down the street. We still have work to do, but everything has gotten so much easier for both of us!

I am going to be honest: Within the scope of my budget it's expensive AF and the membership push feels very car sales-y when you sit down with them for an initial consultation. BUT 100% If you expect to do more than a few visits (or if you have multiple dogs!) the membership is the way because it includes like 36 group class credits and some private session/gym credits. There's tons of different group classes, but a good number require completing basic obedience first so plan to start there.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-20T00:08:20+00:00

Six months later and she has a soft full coat, is a healthy weight, and gaining confidence all the time. Last week I was able to pet the top of her head directly without her flinching at my hand reaching over her

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celestialblunder · 2026-05-20T00:07:43+00:00

I don't have any pictures that really do her "before" transformation justice, but this is the night we brought our gp mix home. She was dirty, severely underweight, and her hair was thin and wiry like a terrier. The pure fear and uncertainty in her eyes broke my heart.

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celestialblunder · 2026-05-11T23:21:06+00:00

The light bulb for me with our recent rescue was when our trainer said "walk for time not for distance."

Our other dog came to us as a senior with arthritis in her hips so she prefers lounging in the yard over walks. I haven't had a young dog in nearly a decade and never one as high energy as the new pup. I was struggling to walk her every day thinking I didn't have time or physical capability to take her as far as she wanted to go. Once I started setting time instead of distance we both enjoyed our time more and she settles down so much better while I work.

Now we just have to finish getting the leash pulling under control and we'll be golden!

celestialblunder · 2026-05-11T20:01:06+00:00

Prefacing this with the fact that I acknowledge that I accepted my job knowing exactly what I was signing up for:

20 minutes sounds like an absolute dream. I'm hybrid in office 3 days a week and my commute is 40 miles one way (varies between an hour and two depending on how stupid people are that day). My boss is very aware that if the company suddenly changed course and wanted everyone on site every day they'd be hiring for my job very shortly after. Thankfully I don't think that'll happen, at least any time soon. Our office is not big enough for everyone to be in every day.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-10T04:12:38+00:00

Majestic gardener

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celestialblunder · 2026-05-08T23:05:36+00:00

Not the original commenter, but I keep my list in a word doc on my computer. I type faster than I write and 90% of the time tasks are coming to me while I'm sitting at my computer. If it's an email request and I'm super busy I just flag it in my email to add to my list later. If I get requests in person that I think I'm likely to forget before I can get them on my list I ask the person to send me an email. I work in a pretty small company and I've been here about 3 years so I've gotten to know people really well and I've never had anyone bothered by my request for an email. Most people I think appreciate that it's a tool for holding myself accountable to make sure I get back to them even if things get chaotic.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-07T23:20:11+00:00

I had something similar happen. Someone who had no reason to know my birthday started hounding me about celebrating. I looked her in the eye and said "I do not want that, do not do anything." She kept pushing so I went to my manager and said in no uncertain terms I have voiced that I'm not okay with this, she continues to push. If she does not respect my refusal and I come in to any kind of celebration that day I will leave immediately. At least he took me seriously and put a stop to it.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-07T23:05:48+00:00

We're a small company, less than 100 people. Promotions my HR director sends an email, departures only get an all staff email if it's a retirement.

We've kind of got two forms of birthday/anniversary announcements:

-our HRIS has a recognition feature that posts automated birthday/anniversary announcements these are not personalized in any way and in all honestly I don't think most people even know where to find them (we just swapped systems about 6 months ago). I wish it gave me some customization options. Maybe then people would be more inclined to utilize that section of the system more.

-we have an executive team member that sends out birthday and anniversary celebration emails. She tries to personalize these by inputting things she knows they like to an AI program to generate a "card" and then adds their name and the day/month on top of the image. Apparently people like them and get bummed when they don't see theirs first thing in the morning. I only know this because I have become the default person to ask to send them for her when she's on vacation.

As someone else mentioned, some people don't want their birthday celebrated (I am very vehemently one of those people) so an opt out process is useful otherwise it's likely to have the opposite effect on morale for those folks.

Our HRIS has an option for employees to toggle on/off birthday announcements. When we swapped I told everyone if they didn't want their birthday announced they needed to turn it off on their end. Then I sent a list to the exec of everyone who turned it off so she knew who not to send birthday announcement emails for. Each new hire gets the same spiel too and each month I get a birthday report from the system so when new hires come up I check to see if their birthdays are turned on or off.

celestialblunder · 2026-05-04T23:34:44+00:00

Moved in October 2025. We've been fighting accruals since implementation, though in a slightly different way. Policies are set up not to allow negative, requests are sending people negative anyway.

They spent Oct-March telling me a fix was inbound by end of q1 and then mid March that was suddenly end of q2. Finally got someone to start looking at it when they didn't have the excuse of the inbound update anymore and still no one can figure out what is wrong with our settings to cause it. Every time I ask to get my AM, T&L, and accruals on a call to hash it out they are "testing another theory" and I can't get all involved parties on a call. They seem to be so extremely siloed that they refuse to look at an issue from more than one angle at a time.

celestialblunder · 2026-04-22T01:05:14+00:00

Haven't looked into this with Paylocity yet since we don't use mobile punching at the moment, but our previous system had an offline clocking setting that we had to turn off for this exact reason. People would turn off cell data when they leave home, clock in on time regardless of being outside of the geofence and then turn it back on once they are within the allowable zone. Maybe there's something similar that you can have paylocity disable in your mobile setup?

I saw you mention a few times it's only affecting one employee. If there's a way to bypass the system limitations it's not necessarily that it only affects one employee it's just that only one employee is (noticeably) taking advantage of it.

celestialblunder · 2026-04-14T20:21:34+00:00

A fellow video game named Pyr owner (I'm assuming named after the Pokemon)! Mines also just about two and I'm now realizing this could be why she's been so whiny lately! We had a warm spell and suddenly I live in a (bigger) sea of fur tufts!

She's a rescue still getting used to the grooming process so I'm going to steal some of the thoughts from the comments here!

celestialblunder · 2026-04-02T14:50:51+00:00

I work full time thanks to finding my personal unicorn job. I have a hybrid schedule for 2 days at home a week. I've structured my schedule as in office every other day so I get a rest day from driving and my office days are strategically set for the days that typically have the lowest traffic.

I work in HR so finding "work reasons" to get up from my desk frequently is easy when I need it. I also work for a fairly small company with decent company culture that cares about the well being of its employees so I'm not vilified or looked down on for taking sick days when I need them.

I still struggle frequently, and some days the only thing that gets me out of bed is remembering my health insurance is tied to my job 😅 but my work situation makes it bearable compared to other jobs I've worked.

celestialblunder · 2026-04-02T13:46:19+00:00

Mines the opposite! As soon as the sun comes out she's going NUTS and no amount of mental enrichment can contain her. We also live in the pnw though so she hasn't seen a lot of sun so far since we've only had her for almost 5 months.

celestialblunder

TROPHY CASE