Diary Day – Jan. 3
When I went to bed Saturday night, I tried to be as calm and ready for sleep as I could be since I knew Sunday was going to be extremely busy. Unfortunately my cats had other plans and decided to do laps around the house sometime in the wee hours of Sunday…and then one of my dogs decided to hack up a lung and wake me up after I put the cats in their room. So much for sleep.
When I finally did get up today I immediately looked at my calendar and mapped out what I had to do first.
On days when I have a pet nail trim event, in addition to pet sitting clients, I always feel like I’m rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off. But then again, days like this make me more productive in a way. I’m forced to get up and get on with things, which makes me happy. Sitting around on the couch all day isn’t my cup of tea.
So I finished my early morning cat visit then head back home to feed my dogs and cats and get ready for my afternoon visits and nail trim event in Anderson. Once I eat lunch I sit down again and look at my calendar, double-check my phone calendar to make sure all of my tasks are scheduled correctly, load up my car with 2 6-foot tables, my rolling suitcase full of signage, table clothes, sign-up sheets, promo stuff. I gather my nail trim supplies and double-check to make sure I have everything, then tell my pups goodbye.
Once I arrive at Anderson there’s already 10 people waiting on me. Dogs are barking and people are chatting, socially distanced and masked up of course.
I proceed to set everything up, sign people in and ask them to spread out around the store and to not block the aisles or the register area then I get started with my first customer.
What normally is an hour and a half event turned out to be almost 3 hours because there were so many pets needing their nails trimmed. Since March of 2020, many groomers and veterinarians stopped taking on nail trim only clients so that really boosted my little side hustle. I was extremely busy before but now, at times, it’s standing room only.
Towards the end of 2020 I knew I was going to raise my rates and bumping them from $7 to $10 didn’t seem like it inconvenienced anyone really, thank goodness. Raising prices always makes me a little queasy but for the service they’re getting $10 is a bargain.
Once I stopped letting people sign in I slowly worked through all of the dogs and cats. I worked on educating new puppy parents about the importance of regular nail trims and how to work with their dogs (and puppies) that hate having their feet touched. That’s the best part for me. Educating people and helping them understand how they can help or cause frustration to their dog makes my soul happy. If people would just make the connection between their tenseness or frustration and their dog’s negative behavior, things would go much smoother.
After I finished, I paused and looked at the list of pets I met and smiled. I made a lot of pets more comfortable today and hopefully made some people happy too. After loading everything up in my car, I swept up the area and moved the clothing racks back where they were so it looks like I was never there.
Driving home, I just want to go home and change clothes and shower but I can’t; two more dog sitting visits were on the schedule. One immediately when I got back to Muncie, another one was scheduled for 10p.
In between those two visits I fed my dogs, showered, set my phone alarm for 10p then laid on the couch to binge watch In The Dark on Netflix. Thought I’d fall asleep but didn’t then rushed out did my last visit and came home, looked at my calendar to see what Monday looked like then went straight to bed.
As I laid in bed processing my day, I was thinking about how blessed I am to be able to do what I love and how thankful I am to be just where I am at this moment.