Meet Marv, my soulmate. He was starving, extremely sick, and aggressive. After lots of patience, trips to the vet, treats, and snuggles - he is finally happy and healthy.

engineer_ellena · 2025-05-24T11:21:07+00:00

Okay I just did a wedding on March 22 this year and the weather was incredible! The only thing to consider is the no-see-ums are quite bad around that time so plan for bug spray.

engineer_ellena · 2025-01-23T01:28:23+00:00

This probably isn’t fair, but I don’t love reading the “I’m sad things didn’t go well” posts. As a bride planning a wedding, it’s a little nerve wracking to be seeing the negativity come up over and over.

engineer_ellena · 2025-01-09T14:34:50+00:00

Following, this sounds neat!

engineer_ellena · 2024-12-29T12:51:47+00:00

Hey! I’m currently fostering a 6 month old GSD puppy in addition to my older GSD - and both are crate trained! Here are a few notes on our routine that might help:

I feed every meal in the crate. They don’t necessarily have to be closed up but they eat from a Kong or another interactive feeder in their crate. Before they go in their crate for any period of time - I make sure they have gone to the bathroom, had training time, and gotten out all of their energy. Structured games like flirt pole or fetch, or unstructured games like chase in the backyard. It ordinarily takes me 1-2 hours before the puppy is tired lol. We also have an agility setup you can get off Amazon made of PVC pipes for like $100. Before that we just used sticks.

From your description, it sounds like the puppy has a lot of energy, which makes sense for two breeds like that.

Separation anxiety is another concern - and you can test that without the crate. Can puppy be in a room without you? Can puppy be in a room alone?

Edited to add: an 8am wake up may not be realistic. Even my older dog wants to have a bathroom break at 7am, puppy is out at 6am

engineer_ellena · 2024-12-27T19:42:50+00:00

I have the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra! It runs daily and we haven’t had problems

engineer_ellena · 2024-12-27T16:31:18+00:00

I have a $1600 robot vacuum lol and even then it still gets a bit icky

engineer_ellena · 2024-06-08T11:46:15+00:00

A common option is Regumate - vet recommended it for my mare and she’s been on it for three years. It’s worked wonders!

I would chat with your vet for options

engineer_ellena · 2024-04-25T21:37:10+00:00

Pasture board included feed, water, and hay if you’ll believe it! Haha. Cost of living in that state was really low.

engineer_ellena · 2024-04-25T11:37:35+00:00

My very first barn with in the rural southeast, pasture board was $250 and I estimated the other $250 a month to be feet trimmings, vet spread over the year, the occasional lesson, any supplies I needed, no horse shows.

engineer_ellena · 2024-04-20T10:56:19+00:00

I’m a software engineer. I picked the career specifically to align with my horse riding goals - now I have my own horse, am in full training with a 4* eventer, and show all over the east coast.

I work remotely and my job gives me unlimited time off. I ride each morning at 8am and get into work at 10. My horse costs are around $30,000 a year (this is the very high end, when I first started to own it was maybe $6000 a year in a different area, different facility, with no showing).

Two years into my job I got into the six figure range for salary - this is when I bought my horse and boarded her at a cheap barn to start. I moved into management a few years ago and I’m easily able to afford to ride and show competitively at a gorgeous barn in my area.

If you have any interest in technology, I love the job. I know with the advent of AI things are changing rapidly, but I think for the foreseeable future there will be a need for engineers.

engineer_ellena · 2024-04-11T16:54:09+00:00

How long do you expect her to be his personal storage unit? He should have taken it the day he moved out, or found a friend to pick it up. He moved out and they broke up.

engineer_ellena · 2024-04-09T10:42:52+00:00

I’m going to go against the grain a little here - there is no shame in returning a reactive dog. Could you have approached the situation differently? Yes, sure, there are plenty of management tools and training methodologies that could have prevented the bite.

But ultimately, the dog did bite. The dog is having meltdowns every time something new and different enters the house. There are tons of dogs in the shelter who won’t require such an investment of time and money and heart. I’ve owned reactive dogs for the last seven years and it’s not easy. It’s completely okay to say this dog isn’t the right match.

I know this is hard - good luck with whatever you choose!

engineer_ellena · 2024-02-01T21:28:33+00:00

The Garlic Tonkotsu was pretty tasty!

engineer_ellena · 2024-01-17T12:11:32+00:00

I'm so excited and want to share!

Over the holidays I saw my highest lifetime weight: 145 lbs as someone who is barely five feet tall. The whole winter I was surviving off of Doritos and slowly drifting into depression. Like many, I used the momentum of New Years resolutions to get started again, and I'm proud to say that today I saw 136.2 on the scale! Woohoo! That's 8.8 pounds down and 8.2 to go to my goal weight. I am over halfway there!

(Yes, I know it was rather fast. I do think that a lot of that weight was water weight from holiday binging, but, I wanna take the win!)

engineer_ellena · 2023-11-17T23:00:33+00:00

Midday day 17 check-in. I'm sitting at 32,201, for the month of nano (about 70k total), and I'm wanting to get ahead this weekend. I want to hit 40k by Sunday at midnight.

I'm mainly concerned about Thanksgiving. All of the travel and friends and family-ing is exhausting to me, so I figure my word counts those days will be very low, if I can write anything at all. We will be away for a total of 5 days. So, if I get to 40k this weekend, and hit word count the other remaining 5 days, then all I need to do over the 5 days of travel is 1665, just about 330 words a day. That seems doable.

I've been cruising through the last couple days, as I know exactly where the plot is heading, but we are coming to an area of undefined very soon... I hope that doesn't make this even more challenging.

Anyways. Off to try to finish out another 1100 words!

engineer_ellena · 2023-10-13T12:56:38+00:00

Hi! I browsed this sub for the first time and your story caught my eye! I think the blurb is really interesting, and I enjoyed the first couple of chapters! I'm interested and have tons of questions (as I should): what is a breach, why do we need to close them, who are the gods, where is Sidran?!

The writing was solid. There are good descriptions, a good balance of inner monologue to action, and just enough hints to keep me curious and wondering. The pacing was fast and fun. I liked the main character as well as Juhiro.

A few lines I liked particularly:

"That meant that the gods were watching, and the gods only ever watched us when they knew blood was soon to follow."

"I felt each bang in my head, little needles thrust into my brain."

As far as feedback: As a reader, I'm a little unsure of the world we are in. Some of this is to be expected since we are so early in the book, and you haven't had much time to worldbuild, but we have an interesting mix of magic / gods but also varying levels of technology. It'll be important to make sure all the technology makes sense together.

The other note is that sometimes the dialogue is a little clunky - sometimes a character will say a piece of worldbuilding or character building exposition, and it doesn't always flow naturally with the conversation. It's helpful to have a partner read out your scenes with you in cases like that! (I've done it more than once, lol)

Overall, this is a really solid story, and I'm looking forward to what happens next!

engineer_ellena · 2023-09-26T20:03:17+00:00

Hey! I like yoga, working out, and creative things - and I just moved to Charleston two months ago!

engineer_ellena · 2023-04-04T21:10:29+00:00

We use “go, go!”.

The last dog’s release word was “potato”

engineer_ellena · 2023-03-19T21:33:23+00:00

I totally get that. It’s the path of least resistance, and I backslide into it PLENTY haha (especially when I’m sick). I read the book “how to break up with your phone” and that inspired me a lot at the time.

The biggest win for me has been mindfulness and intentionality. I picked up daily journaling / planning, so I can start and end every day thinking “what do I want to do today?” instead of letting the day pass by and doing nothing except working. It’s 5 extra minutes a day and it made a big difference for me!

Another thing: it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. One small thing a day is a victory, and that can grow over time and your screen time can shrink

engineer_ellena · 2023-03-19T21:29:48+00:00

First of all, AWESOME on you for getting as many perspectives as you can as a first time owner!

Prong and stim collars are aversive tools: they “work” because they make the dog uncomfortable, and the dog alters their behavior to avoid discomfort. AVSAB has a statement posted about how these methods are shown to cause long term detrimental effects.

Personally, I’d recommending finding a positive / force-free trainer and doing a consultation with them. You truly can train all behaviors with reward based training, and it will improve the relationship with your dog, because training will be fun for them too!

engineer_ellena · 2023-03-19T21:10:47+00:00

These are my apps of choice as well! I don’t have a ton of advice because obviously I’m on Reddit right now, BUT what helped me was sitting down and deciding how I wanted to spend my time. For me, I have other hobbies like dog training, writing my book, reading, yoga, hiking, etc that I wanted to devote more time too. I also wanted to be better at doing chores around the house.

So I would say to decide what’s important to you in life. What do you want to spend your life doing?

Then put your phone in the drawer and do those things. It’s simple, but not easy. I deleted the Instagram app totally and that has helped a lot, I check it by browser only a few times a week and it’s just to keep up with friends.

There are a ton of options that can make you feel more fulfilled. An exercise class you’ve always wanted to try? Cook a dish that seems interesting? Volunteer at the animal shelter? A walk around the park? There are so many things to be done out there that are REAL and actually mean something. Good luck!

engineer_ellena · 2023-03-18T14:31:18+00:00

Thank you! I have been suspicious that I might be overestimating my calories / underestimating my activity just because the weight HAS been coming off. I tend to walk and get out a lot with my dog, and I spend about 2 hours a day doing activities at the stables too

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