u/TooExcitable

i hope this was the right flair!

hi, all. first, some context: i live at home with my grandpa during the summer and winter when i’m not living in my dorm. a month and a half ago, my aunt got my grandfather the cutest little beagle and he named her baby.

she was a father’s day gift for my grandpa after we put his last dog down around christmas (miss you forever, fred 💞), and i really want to make a point to keep her from becoming “my dog” like fred was.

well, he went on vacation for a week, so i was with her most of the time. now that he’s home, she’s obsessed with me. she sleeps in his room though i don’t know if she’d choose to now since he brings her into his room at night. once he wakes up and takes her outside, however, she’s a rocket into my bedroom, waking me up with kisses and climbing on me. i love it, and her, so much, but i don’t want her to be attached to me when i go back to school :( i can come visit with a bit of planning since my school is pretty close, but for this first year, i think it would be best if i kept a distance and let her attach to my grandpa.

- i can’t always close and lock my door since the upstairs AC is in my bedroom, so i build a little wall on the stairs to keep her downstairs with my grandpa. it worked a bit when she was younger, but now she tears the wall down or finds a way over it to scamper upstairs and barrel into my room. (i call her Gorbachev lol).

- when i do close my door, she’ll scratch and cry for me to let her in, and it breaks my heart to not scoop her up and give her kisses and snuggles. eventually, she will usually stop and go do something else, but the fact that she wants to get into my room so bad when my grandfather is downstairs and available for her is not good.

- i give her lots of treats when she’s good since i want her to be as well-behaved as possible for a beagle puppy when i go back to school. for example, when she goes potty outside, when she’s a good girl in the car or the store, sometimes as a distraction while i’m doing housework lol.

- i’m trying to instill my propensity for extra treats into my grandfather, but he’s only just starting to fully grasp that he needs to give her treats when he wants her to repeat a behavior (ex. peeing outside).

- i’m also trying to get him to agree to bring her on errands with him. i tried to get him to take her on the trip, but he thought she was too young and didn’t want her to end up ripping up or peeing in the cabin he rents with his club. i’m hoping he’ll take her to the store at least when i’m gone. he also says he wants to try rabbit hunting with her which i think would be a great bonding exercise for them. i’ve been sending him some stuff on hunting beagles and how to get them ready for it.

i leave for school in about a month. is there any way i can avoid her feeling abandoned? what are the best ways i can transfer her attachment from me to him? she’s his dog, and as much as i love her, i’m going to be gone for months. above all else, she’s my grandpa’s dog. he jokes about her being “my dog”, but i really want to make sure they both know he’s her person.

Brief intro: I’m 24, in college full-time, so off for the summer which means living at home. Sometimes it’s nice having less structure, but sometimes it makes me feel stir crazy and unproductive. I intend on staying in school until I get my master’s and am debating a doctorate, but I have a couple years to make a full decision.

Every now and then, I get a little overwhelmed by school and life and come across videos of SAHMs or tradwives gardening, shopping, cleaning, and imagine myself in that scenario. I never intended or wanted to be a homemaker, but every now and then, when I felt burdened by college or work, I would daydream about only having to worry about housework.

Well, when my aunt invited me to housesit for a week, I got a taste of the patience and devotion needed to fill that role. That involved watching five dogs. (And two cats, as well as garden work, pool stuff, and monitoring a snake and some fish, but that is usually not an issue).

I love puppies. I love helping. I especially love having a house to myself. All of these combined meant that I enthusiastically offer to housesit for my aunt every year when she goes on vacation. For the past two years, it meant watching her very low-key chihuahuas. Not housebroken, but they’re little, so their messes are also little and not a big deal.

Well, try adding a Great Dane into the mix. Potty trained and a sweetheart, but a stubborn wrecking ball who just wants to play. Unfortunately, the chihuahuas are terrified of him and avoid him like the plague. He is also loud and does not stop barking once he gets going.

And then, add a 14 week old beagle puppy into that mix. She’s my grandpa’s (who I live with) puppy, and as he went on the trip, I took her along. She is the cutest thing alive, but my God is she crazy! She’s in her t-rex phase, biting, screaming, annoying the other dogs, and is also not housebroken. She and the Great Dane are buddies and he plays with her, but sometimes she just loses control and can’t calm herself down.

This week has been full of being bitten, having to keep the Dane and the beagle from eating each others food (and failing, because the Dane found her bag of food and ate ALL of it. Not a lot left, but still!). Even if their food is available they still try to eat each others’ food. I was giving them bully sticks and elephant ears to keep them busy enough to get some household chores done, but then one will steal the other’s, or one of the chihuahuas will swoop in to steal food or a bone.

Trying to keep five dogs from licking up a cup one of them knocked over is insanity. Cleaning up poop with paper towels? The beagle will try to grab the paper towel full of poop right out of my hand, and sometimes even try to eat the poop before I can clean it!

I’ve had a friend over for a couple of days to watch the puppy while I go to work. The chihuahuas and the Dane can do okay on their own, but we’re still crate training the beagle, so I don’t want to leave her alone for several hours until she’s a bit older. I consider myself somebody who loves my time alone, but good lord, she has been a godsend helping me with housework and watching the babies.

I’ve been fantasizing about going back to school and my dorm, and sometimes I even look forward to going to work, which is insane since I’m a retail worker lol. I’m sure I’ll feel even more thankful for the reprieve since it will feel meaningful and be in a field that I love. I genuinely do not think I would have survived in a society where my expected role without exception was to take care of the house and family exclusively. I’m just ashamed it took this long.

TL/DR: I love dogs, but watching 5 of them for 50+ hours by myself with no break made me realize how thankful I am that I’ll be able to work outside of the house. Shoutout to women who are SAHMs or homemakers, you guys are powerhouses and I could never do what you do without going insane. Thank goodness we live in a world with many paths open to us, and while I always knew that women’s suffrage was a wonderful thing, I feel like I can appreciate it so much more. I wish it had struck me sooner.

hey all! i’m going into my senior year of undergrad and we covered some of kolk’s work on trauma in my class focusing on the biopsychosocial perspective.

i recently picked up the book at a thrift store and was chatting with my LICSW about it during therapy as i’ve found it fascinating despite only having read a couple of chapters, but she told me she wasn’t sure that i should read it and should look into better books by better people, and that she found him to be problematic.

when i asked more, she told me about the allegations made against him, and while doing a little digging, i have also seen people claim his work as problematic in its portrayal of victims of trauma. i haven’t read far enough yet to really understand what about his portrayals are traumatic, but i’d like some expertise from people who’ve been in school, and in the field, for longer than me.

should i keep reading?