Life Balance With Our Animals

When we started this tiny website/blog, we had one Great Dane.  We still have her.  Then in 2022 we added a tiny cat to our mix and we had two animals.  Jump to 2024 and we’re off the boat and back in the US.  We live in an area with a bit of extreme climate….heat, wind and blowing sand.  We’re now sitting at 23 animals total, most of which we acquired in the last year.  We love the chaos but we work hard and purposefully to find a life/work balance.

I’ve heard that “busy” is a new status symbol, but we know that busy is just a reality of life…especially with kids, animals, jobs and house to manage.  This is all ok, this is real life and I would not have it any other way.

I was working with our donkey team yesterday, continuing to gentle the donks.  They are not accustomed to hoof handling, cleaning or eventual trimming yet, so I work with both of our donkeys a couple times a week to handle their hooves and gradually introduce them to new concepts, such as wearing nitrile gloves to work on hooves.  Things take time with animals and as busy people , I think we just don’t always SLOW down enough to realize that my hurry and busy-ness actually communicates to the donks in a non-verbal way….letting them know I DON’T have all the time in the world, in turn making them more nervous and antsy, harder to deal with.  We now have three dogs.  We go from an aging eleven year old to a one year old and a six month old- two puppies.  The puppies are still puppies! And both of them are giant breed puppies with giant breed boredom that we just have to deal with and we do.  We are slowly losing another couch, toilet paper is always fun to destroy in the living room and shoes better not be loose anywhere.  But these are puppy antics to be dealt with as we go….training and exercise help all things puppy.

Kids in school certainly take up time, as does trying to work weekends and manage a household and deal with animals who all need attention, feeding and care.  In the very hot environment we live in,….fresh and plentiful water is a must.

The point of the post is simple.  All the things I’ve written about above are the busy part of life, but you must also find time to balance that with clarity and some time to do what’s needed for stress relief and mindfulness…the balance part of life.  For us, it’s still a work in progress.  In addition to everything else mentioned above, I’m attempting to fit in a 20+ hour per week ultramarathon training plan…but I’m a realist, so the training plan flexes when needed so I can fit in the unexpected or finish daily projects as needed.  This is all ok.  We have to be ok with it in the first place to accept the occasional chaos then rationalize it and then move past it all.  You can do all this too.  For a guy like me who’s not into status symbols…..BUSY is just real life, not some status symbol.