Motley Moose – Archive

Shauna

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Like most professions, jobs that involve personal contact with clients, it’s inevitable that we have a few favorites, people that we linger with over lunch a few minutes more just because, send an e mail to say nothing more than hi to start a conversation. There are professional boundaries though, I have succesfully adhered to them myself in the many relationships developed in my own businesses, rather easily.

But I’ve never had animals as clients before.

It’s an odd adjustment to make, thinking of beautiful, vibrant and happy animals as clients but we are a business, one that offers a great service but a service nonetheless. I love all my charges but there are a few that over time become family and that’s where it gets hard, really hard when they leave.

One, Bones, a fiesty and playful boxer recently moved away to enjoy a suburban yard, that I could accept. Rus, a third level Shutzhund trained German Shephard was sold after competition judges found the tiniest of defects in her gait, guaranteeing that she would not advance any further. That was just too difficult to understand and more than worthy of a diary to be written to tell her story, the pain lingers.

And then there was Shauna who passed away last week.

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This is Dedicated to My Pal Shauna

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The What, I walk dogs, I care for cats and occasionaly an odd assortment of little pet creatures. By industry standards at three years plus, I’m a longtime veteran.

I had planned on telling you how phenomenal my employers are, about how our mission statement might be a model for other businesses to emulate, but I made the doing the fun part first mistake of writing about the woozles, heh so this diary will be too long if I did.

The What part can wait and probably deserves it’s own diary.

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The Why, well that’s easy. I’m an animal lover, always have been and always will be. My wife is too and the joke around here is that we have 10 pairs of legs in our family: 2 humans, 2 pooties and 2 woozles. There hasn’t been a time when I didn’t have a pet and when it wasn’t a cat or dog, it was a lopp eared rabbit.

The more immediate question is why now, at 58? That answer has some history, all recent and none of it very positive really. Although I’m happy doing what I’m doing, the journey to get here was painful and there are scars still healing.

I’ve been self employed almost my entire life and I’ve reinvented myself three times, starting three completely different businesses on a shoestring, chasing a passion. At 48 I was ready again. I loved to cook, I’ve always wanted a little cafe and at that age, cooking seemed like a career I could continue until I was ready to retire or unable to work. Industry people I spoke with had their doubts but I know what I can accomplish when I make up my mind, so I went for it.

I spent two years learning in kitchens, working 14 -16 hour days, commuting for hours and honing my craft. I applied for line cook positions at two restaurants and set up both interviews in one day. The restaurants were across the street from each other and I was hired for both jobs, one morning shift, one afternoon.  

I worked my way up to managerial positions at both spots, trying new recipes, designing menus and managing staff. I was seemingly on my way, it all pointed positive until the the bottom fell out of the restaurant business here in Chicago, between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2007. It was the foreshadowing of our Great Recession and of worse things to come.

I was laid off from both restaurants the same week and I spent the next two years, the most difficult years of my adult life, without work. We’ve all heard the horrible stories about the new discrimination of fifty year olds, I was suddenly a statistic with a very odd resume. I never gave up looking and in a very quirky,

‘I really don’t care what I write on this application because no will really read it’, answer to a question about something I was passionate about, the answer got my app noticed.

I wrote paragraphs extolling the many virtues of our Honda Element. Worried sick about having to sell it because we were getting so heavily into debt, I was already beginning to miss it. I recieved a call from the interviewer the next day. We spent an hour talking Honda, he finally decided to buy the one he had test driven, oh and I was hired.

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