I’m on my end of Summer/early Fall rewatch. It’s giving “uppies.” WHY DOES SHE THINK ITS SEXY OR GIVING ANYTHING OTHER THAN TODDLER. I am generally a Lindsay stan but this is disgusting.
I posted here last week about some really awful employee relations and systemic issues I was dealing with in my last 5 days of my old job. I’m back to say I made it through!!!!!!!
I had my last day yesterday and am leaving it all behind for a 30% raise at a much more stable Fortune 500 starting Monday. Last night I had sangria and pizza and today I have therapy and am taking myself shopping for some new workwear.
I’m so grateful for this community, lots of people reached out with kind things to say and offering support; it was so validating to hear that my experience was not normal. Thank you so much. Cheers to a new start!! (Or ANUSTART for any AD fans lol).
TRIGGER WARNING: Self-Harm/SI
I’m in my final 5 business days of the worst HR job I’ve had up to this point, and ofc nothing is getting easier on my way out. My mental health is tanking and my anxiety is through the roof because of these things that have come up. I must qualify these things with the fact that I work for a state agency (going back to private sector in a couple weeks) and so the protections for problem employees are outrageous. Here are the things I’m dealing with:
- Employee threatened su!c!de to their boss bc they haven’t gotten a title change or comp increase. Their title and PD has been reviewed like clockwork every 6 months at their request and we’ve found no evidence to support theyre 1) working beyond their PD or 2) supporting a comp increase as the second highest paid for their title in the whole employee population. Only person ahead of them has more years of experience. Said verbatim “I will either kms or get an attorney for what [employer] has done to me.” This employee has a storied history of saying outlandish things to get what they want, but with something as serious as this we can’t accuse them of “crying wolf” obviously so they were inundated with emergency mental health resources. Their response was “why would I need this?” Uhhhhhhhhhhh. Okay. Did all I can do without 51/50ing them. Then accused me of discrimination and favoritism. Okay.
- Diff employee, same team, refuses to work onsite and was been surfing from reasonable accommodation to reasonable accommodation for years with flimsy medical documentation. When not covered by an RA, everything under the sun prevents them from working onsite. My dog is in urgent care. Family emergency. Brief medical procedure wiped them out. Overslept alarms. New medication side effects. Incredibly slippery and very difficult to they’re lying but it’s literally every single time they’re meant to come in. HR Compliance won’t let us discipline without airtight responses despite allllllll the documentation being there. They’re extremely trigger shy and I have no power.
- Direct coworker is completely MIA and doesn’t communicate with me or the other person on our team, or our supervisor. Leaves work to pile up for us to do. Doesn’t tell us when they’re remote. Sparingly tell us when they’re OOO. Claims they’re being harassed by their client group and doesn’t feel “safe.” There are others witnessing the instances where “harassment” has taken place and all other parties confirm that the accuser is actually the aggressor in these scenarios. Couches it in “empowerment” and “boundaries” and thinks everyone is out to get them. To the point where no one, including myself and my other coworker, feel comfortable being around them or working with them. Anything you say could be an affront.
- HR leadership is aware of enormous bottlenecks and failings in HR Operations for very high volume processing that directly affects our client groups and does nothing to hold HR Operations accountable or improve processes/systems in place. This is the third time we’ve had our normal hiring cycle since I’ve been hired and we still face the same problems as 3 years ago. No requests for feedback or ideation on how this could be better.
There’s so much more but I am so exhausted honestly I just needed to get this out for now to people who understand how awful this all could be to deal with. I’m so miserable.
We have a 3 y/o cattle dog and 10-month-old hound mix who love playing with other dogs any chance they get. They’re very good about boundaries and reading social cues, and know they can only play rough with each other and not others, we’re really lucky both of them are the way they are.
That said, we’ve been going to Currie park for years with our older dog and lately the vibes have just been… not great. We thought we avoided some trouble by adjusting our schedule to going earlier in the morning, assuming people who are not as dialed into their dogs behavior/needs wouldn’t bother getting there by 9am. But even this morning, we were there bright and early and witnessed 2 different fights break out.
Anyway, are there any more chill dog parks that you all like? Our dogs are pretty even-temperament with some zoomies and some chill. You really can’t beat the amount of space at Currie but willing to compromise if the vibes are better. I know this can be a problem at any park given anyone can get a dog and some people just plainly shouldn’t have them, but I’ll try anything to give them a better experience!
(Also, yes, I know staffed dog day care is the best option for behavior monitoring. We’ve been to the Hounds & Tap a handful of times and also send them to Central Bark for daycare, this is just supplemental.)
Not the sword kind. Any recs for a fence company doing residential fencing? I tried searching for it on this sub and didn’t come up with too much. I’ve already reached out to A-1, Badger, and Superior for quotes but wanted to know of any hidden gems. TIA! :)
Our puppy Gary is a 9 month old hound mix (half coonhound, half mutt), we’ve had him since 3 months old.
Gary’s favorite filler activity between all the enrichment (slow feeder, treat balls, benebones, walks, toys, fetch, etc) is playing WWE smackdown bitey face with his 3 year old cattle dog brother. It’s generally not the biggest issue but the barking and yipping and general howling/vocalization gets to a point sometimes where our house is just an echo chamber of screeching. He never plays this rough with other dogs at daycare or the dog park so it’s a total sibling thing, not an overall behavioral issue.
The only thing I can do to break him out of it currently is give him a treat-based toy for enrichment but nothing else really sticks. He does get enforced crate naps still so I know it’s not that he’s overtired. He gets daycare, walks, and dog park too so plenty of variety for his peanut brain.
Are we just deep in the teen phase right now? He’s sort of always played in this way with his brother since we got him, but I worry that once he’s full grown and really doesn’t know his strength then it’s gonna be more of a problem.
I wrote to you all last week about Gary (https://www.reddit.com/r/Hounds/s/6rNgvH4dL7). This week, I experienced an extremely scary situation with his health and I am beyond infuriated with the state of his care from his now former vet. I need to share this for other puppy parents because this was reckless behavior by that vet that endangered his life.
As I'd written, Gary was having issues with what I thought was his allergies. We got his allergy report back and it lit up so naturally I thought his ongoing coughing, sneezing, red eyes, etc was due to this. He was on Apoquel, so I thought his allergy load was overwhelming his immune system.
Cut to this past Tuesday - Gary is coughing so hard he can barely do anything. Up at 5am I could hear him coughing from his crate and after we got him up it became clear that he could no longer control it and we needed to go to the vet ASAP. We got an appt for 11am with a vet at our clinic that was not our normal doctor as our doctor was out for this week. She was very good with him. He had a 104.9 fever and they took him for chest xrays. It was pneumonia, not his allergies. I'm glad I listened to my gut and took him in. He was given a cough suppressant, antibiotic, and NSAID for the fever. He has since basically ceased coughing, his fever is gone, and his eyes and nose are getting more and more clear every day. He is back to his normal, chaotic energy and even driving me a little bananas. I'll keep him on these meds the next 10 days until the antibiotic is finished.
Here is my source of complete and utter frustration with our now former vet. When we left the clinic the vet we saw called me as I mentioned at the front desk that I needed a refill of apoquel but would come back to pick it up. The vet was shocked and said we needed to stop the apoquel completely because apoquel is contraindicated for puppies under 12 months due to pneumonia concerns. My now former vet had prescribed this to him at 6 months and had refilled the prescription FOUR TIMES SINCE APRIL and no doubt gave him this life threatening condition. The vet I spoke to as careful to say that she couldn't draw a direct correlation, but the signs were there. She immediately switched us to Cytopoint, and I took Gary back for his first injection on Wednesday.
The new vet called today and checked on Gary's progress. I told her how well he's responding to the meds and we got into a discussion about the cytopoint as well which he is doing PHENOMENALLY on so far. Barely any itching. My former vet recommended HP food and I asked her about a written prescription to order it.
This is when she shared with me that 1) if he's already on the cytopoint, he doesn't need HP food as you want to see how the cytopoint works and if there is breakthrough itching you can better identify what's causing the reaction. HP food is like medicine, you don't need it if you're already being treated by an injection. 2) Food allergy tests for dogs and humans are strikingly similar in their unreliability as there's no one definitive way to confirm an allergy, you're just watching for what causes a clinical response. 3) We talked about us considering the immunotherapy and she asked whether we would do drops or injections. I told her the prior doctor had pushed us towards drops. She explained the drops are a stop gap and have no memory. You're not building up the immune response over time to "cure" the allergy, it just helps alleviate the symptoms. Injections are better for longer term cures as the immune system learns to react less and you gradually increase dosage over time. With drops, you'll be giving it to them likely the rest of their lives. 4) He should not begin immunotherapy during an allergy season because his immune response is already likely too high to make significant impacts. He should begin the immunotherapy around the first frost when allergens in the environment are lower and he/we can better manage the response.
By comparison, our former vet wanted us to spend $142 on HP food, $315 on drops, and prescribed our dog an allergy med that made him severely, severely ill. I am livid with the former doctor's utter negligence and complete disregard for the safety of our dog and the money grabbing of the food allergy test and pushing us to things he doesn't need. I am truly disgusted.
I asked the vet we saw this week to be our primary vet going forward and candidly told her I was feeling burned from the apoquel and immunotherapy recommendations and she happily is taking us on. I cannot believe the vet we were seeing before is allowed to practice veterinary medicine. When he returns from vacation, I will be speaking with him directly to have him justify him endangering Gary's life and costing us almost thousands of dollars in less than 3 months for treatments that 1) made him sicker and 2) should not have been recommended at all.
I just wanted to post here again and thank everyone who responded to my very overwhelmed post yesterday. (Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Hounds/s/7GoBeNnsFM) You guys shared stories that gave me hope about the path forward and I’m so grateful. Since finding out the depth of Gary’s allergies, we are:
- Going to ask the vet about moving from Apoquel to Cytopoint injections. The amount of pills he’s getting per day for fairly mild improvement is just not cutting it.
- Moving him to Hydrolyzed Protein (Royal Canin) food with a written script from our vet. In the meantime, we moved his food into the freezer to minimize/kill storage mites.
- Going forth with immunotherapy. Big thanks to those who gave us a better idea of what that could look like!
- Deep cleaned the area where our dogs crates are including washing bedding, moving an air purifier into the room, and getting a dust mite-targeting spray to help minimize their reproduction in our home.
I hope to have a positive update to share in a couple months as we continue our journey. Thank you again, and ofc there is a puppy tax photo of Gary and his brother Pippin napping during fireworks last night. Neither care about sounds like storms, fireworks, etc so at least we have that going for us! And another pic of just Gary napping. He lives a pretty comfortable life outside of the allergies so I’m grateful for that.
I feel like crying even writing this post.
Our coonhound mix is allergic to everything. And I mean, fucking. everything. I’ve never had a dog or pet for that matter have so many health problems.
We finally did an allergy test and it’s so overwhelming to read the report. His food sensitivities are out of control, his environmental allergies basically mean he’s allergic to air, he’s already gotten 4 apoquel per day (5.4 mg, 2 in morning, 2 at night) and he’s still honk coughing, having runny nose/snot rockets, itching until he bleeds in some places, and now they’re talking about doing immunotherapy for him.
He’s only 9 months old and immunotherapy should be effective for his age, but we’re so overwhelmed with the cost of everything and his quality of life. Fuck it, I am crying writing this. Has anyone dealt with something this extreme health wise? Please tell me it gets better because I’m so fucking stressed about this regardless of all the other shit we’ve had to deal with in 2026.
I am blessed/cursed with a full chest. I had DD’s at 12 and am now 32 with DDD’s/F’s. I have approximately 2 bras I like from Target that I basically alternate with each other for an entire week. I know the answer will be “it’ll last longer if you invest more in them” yadda yadda. I’m on a budget, I can’t spend $80+ per bra. Please tell me 1) how many “good” bras you have on rotation and 2) your “gets the job done” prices and brands. I don’t care if it lasts only 6 months I’m fine with spending up to $50 for that much use in a year. I like unlined with underwire usually. Cups make my chest stick out even more and don’t even THINK about pushing this shit up. If I want to feel like I’m going to the renaissance faire, I’ll put on my corset and push em to the sky. Thank you!!!!!!
I wasn’t a MTT watcher so AS is my first exposure to DCC tryouts. I get that we got a lot of context and dancing from the first two seasons but I feel like we missed out on a lot of the normal tryout process/actual dancing in S3? It feels like it was way more about Kelli/Judy/TPTB than the girls themselves. We didn’t even get jump splits before they announced the team? I feel like K/J watched S1 and S2 and decided they wanted less of their process shown because it painted them as being harsh leaders and therefore we got less dancing and more “feedback” scenes. Idk, maybe I’m reading into it but as a former dancer I came here for the technique and observation not a seminar on TPTB or the Cowboys org.
Our puppy is a 26 week old hound mix, mostly bluetick coonhound. We brought him home at 11 weeks. We socialized him like CRAZY the first 5 weeks to get him through his fear period, and he’s always been very outgoing and happy-go-lucky. Wiggly body language, never tail tucking, approaching people on his own with enthusiasm, he’s been great.
Last night, we took him to a brewery that we go to all the time with him (but probably haven’t been in 2-3 weeks, or so) and he was bugging out. We got there and he was totally fine and settled with a high-value bone, and when my husband’s volleyball team came over (who he’s met before) he totally freaked and snapped at a couple of people. I tend to think it’s resource guarding, but I had already taken the bone from him when I saw they were walking over. I walked away with him to reset, and towards the end of the night he was back to his normalish self and approaching the people he snapped at for pets (I had completely taken the bone away at this point). However, it was highly unusual for him. I’m guessing it’s a combination of not having been there in a while and resource guarding? But I’m not sure.
So today, to make sure this wasn’t a people-reactive issue, I took him with me to two pet stores for some socialization. At the first store that he’d been to before, he was totally relaxed but none of the employees said “hi” to him, which I was sort of hoping for. So I took him to the second store and outside of the store he was very wary of a guy standing at the ATM nearby, he was tall and said puppy was cute, but puppy was tail-tucked and all wary of him until we got into the store. In the second pet store, it took him less than 2 mins to adjust and he was happy to be there, taking treats from the employee and said “hi” to a puppy friend. But then, when we got home we went for a walk and his hackles were up about two kids nearby just walking their bike/scooter through the park? We walk through parks all the time with both our dogs around people biking, walking, walking with other dogs, etc, and I’ve never seen him do that.
Here’s the thing. He goes to doggy day care every Monday, training every Thursday, and the dog park and other social places on the weekends. At the very least, day care/training/dog park is common each week so there are at least 3 social outings. We had a couple deaths in the family in the last month, so we haven’t been able to prioritize elsewhere other than those 3 big hits every week. We already have a dog that’s wary of people and we often socialize them separately because our older dog doesn’t handle those shared spaces as well as the puppy does.
I’m really hoping that this was a one-time, resource guarding fluke and we can just work on that and this isn’t turning into full-blown social anxiety or reactivity. Is there something I’m not doing right? Are we hitting another crucial “fear period?”
I’m so burnt out at my job. For context, I’m Lead HRBP in a team of 3 who support a few thousand people in our client group within a large org. We just absorbed another program from a closure, increasing our client group by 20%, and are supposed to be splitting the work 3 ways, and that’s just not happening (spoiler: I’m doing it all). We’re also underpaid by about 40% compared to market (used to work in comp, so that’s informed by actual data). I’m making the majority of, if not all, the strategic decisions for our HRBP team and unit. I’ve already asked for a title review and raise and been told it’s simply not in the budget all while more and more work is piled on. Our leadership team is a joke and actively withholds information from its own direct reports and we find out about process changes and major updates as they’re announced to the rest of the stakeholders and employee population.
Beyond the whining, I am SO desperately in need of a change.
I’ve been looking for a new job since last Fall. I’ve gotten to final round interviews a couple of times, only to get dispositioned. I’m a B.A. with 6 years experience in the HRBP track, with no MHRLR or SHRM-CP/SPHR. I’m almost certain I’m getting beat out by people with a few extra letters behind their names. (To be clear, absolutely no shade to anyone who does have their Masters or Cert, I’m working on getting SPHR soon - it just feels like that’s the hinge point in a lot of the searches I’ve been part of).
Is it just me or is the market flooded with either jobs that are entry-level requiring 2 years of experience, or the opposite end specializing in 1 discipline with 8-10 years required?? If a middle management position exists, it’s something restrictive like “union experience required” (ugh, no, don’t have that either) or entirely onsite with an insane commute from my metro area. And then the unicorns where I do advance, it feels like I’m getting very slightly edged out. I’m just sick of it!!!!! Get me out of here!!!!!