Transcript
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Hello, my friends and fellow animal lovers, welcome to the Story of my Pet podcast.
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I am Julie Marty Pearson, your host, proud fur mom, pet lover and all-around animal advocate.
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I'm so happy to have you here to listen to the incredible pet stories that I have collected from around the world.
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I hope you enjoy this episode and I can't wait to share this pet story with you.
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Hello, my friends and fellow animal lovers, welcome to another episode of the story of my pet.
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I'm excited to welcome a new guest to the podcast.
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I am going to be talking to Nita Sweeney today.
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Before we get started, I'm going to tell you a little bit about her Mindfulness coach.
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Nita Sweeney is the best-selling wellness author of the award-winning Running and Mental Health memoir Depression Hates a Moving Target I love that how Running with my Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink and co-creator of the writing journal.
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You Should Be Writing a journal of inspiration and instruction to keep your pen moving.
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Also love that.
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Her third book, make Every Move a Meditation Mindful Movement for Mental Health being an move a meditation, mindful movement for mental health being an insight, was featured in the Wall Street Journal and her latest book, a Daily Dose of Now 365 Mindfulness Meditation Practices for Living in the Moment was released in the fall of 2023.
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Nita lives in central Ohio with her husband, ed, and their yellow Labrador retriever, scarlett.
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We have lots to talk about, nita.
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Thank you so much for being here.
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Welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you so much.
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Yeah, love this topic.
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I know I love talking to people especially you know everyone.
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But when someone really has a story, like you do, about how their pet really got them through one of life's struggles, I have such my own experience like that and I always love to meet people who have been through it and have been able to use that to help other people.
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But before we get into your books and all of that, I always like to ask were you always a pet lover?
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Did you grow up with pets?
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Oliver, did you grow up with pets?
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I did.
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The first dog I remember.
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The first pet I remember was our dog Tiny, who was a Pomeranian cross of some kind and she was fierce.
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I think we didn't have her spayed and so she accidentally got pregnant by the neighbor's giant German shepherd.
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And so this tiny little dog had this giant litter of these giant puppies and I just that's what I remember from really young having Tiny around.
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And then we moved to a farm when I was four or five and then we had a variety of different dogs but a lot of terriers.
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I think Tiny might have had some terrier in addition to her Pomeranian.
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She was very fluffy, she looked like a little fox.
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Oh, how cute.
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She was a very cute dog too, and we had rat terriers and probably fox terriers.
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There were just a lot of little black and white smooth-coated dogs that we had for many years.
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At one point I had a golden retriever and I went through.
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When you live in the country 4-H is a big thing.
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I don't know if you know about 4-H.
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Yeah, we have that.
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We have.
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Where I live in California there's a lot of agriculture around us, so we have a lot of that here.
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Yeah.
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So the 4-H club that I ended up joining I tried sewing and I did work with.
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We had horses too and I worked with my horse a little bit, but I really loved treating dogs.
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I loved to treat them, do tricks, obedience, and so I was actually the Ohio State Fair champion twice with my little dog, tony, who's the most just this little black and white rat terrier and was very cute and smart as a whip, easy to train, and he was my buddy for a long time.
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And I didn't have any pets when I was in college that's not true we had a hamster a completely illegal hamster at the door, but then I don't think.
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Then I went to law school and one of my roommates had a dog and then another roommate had a dog, but I didn't get my own pets until actually I was out of school again.
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But ever since then, really since I've been an adult, we've always had a dog.
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Mainly we're a dog family.
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We've had a number of dogs.
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Right now we have a yellow Labrador and that's the dog in my first book, depression Aids, moving Target, which that book people don't realize, I think, necessarily, even though there's dates in it.
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It was actually set.
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Oh God, it's almost been 15 years ago or 14 years ago when that all started, and Morgan was already four or five, so he's gone now.
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But we have another yellow lab, scarlet, and they're just lovely.
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The Unconditional Love, that's the thing which I'm sure you talk about all the time.
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Going back to your first book, depression Hates, a Moving Target, which I love that title.
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Prior to obviously writing it, you experienced what inspired the book.
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How did all of that happen?
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What was the process where your dog helped you get moving and get you through a difficult time?
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I used him as a decoy.
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So I was not a physically active person never really was and I had hit a real rough patch in my life.
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I've had a few, I have chronic depression, I've been hospitalized, managed the whole thing and a friend of mine started running and I thought that was ridiculous because that's who I was at the time and she was a high school friend, so she was the same age and at the time she was about the same kind of size and ability.
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That I was not the size that matters, but there was something about that.
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She looked like me and I knew her and she's running what.
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And so when I eventually got brave enough to try that, I leashed up the dog, not really thinking about running with the dog, but more that people would just think I was going for a walk with the dog, and not that anybody was even home when this was happening, but that's, I tend toward paranoia a little bit also.
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And so that's how it started.
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And there's a plan that my friend was following called Couch to 5K, and so Morgan and I did Couch to 5K together, where we started with 60 seconds of jogging you walk.
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I think it was like a five minute walk and then 60 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking and then 60 more seconds of jogging.
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And so it was very doable for both of us.
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And she just became almost like my coach, because if you have a bond with a dog, you notice they have there's like a look that they'll give you.
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Or and in the book I talk about how he would tilt his head, or actually, the very first time we went down to that ravine and I had a digital kitchen timer with me because I didn't have a sports watch at the time.
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And I'm standing there.
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I don't know what I thought was going to happen, but I was scared to start.
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And at one point he's sitting there waiting.
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He looks up at me as if to say why are we down here?
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At least let's walk, or something.
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You took me down here, what are we doing?
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Because it's an area where we walk a lot anyway.
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And then at one point he just walked over and peed on a bush.
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I said if you're not going to walk, then I'm just going to get busy.
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It was as if he was saying to me you can do this, come on, let's do this.
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And so I hit that button and off we jogged for our 60 seconds and he seemed very excited.
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Oh, we're going fast.
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Oh my gosh, we're going fast.
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And he was such a well-behaved dog.
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We rescued him from the Humane Society but he was very well-treated.
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I swear somebody's ugly crying over him still that somebody lost him because he was about six months old and he was just.
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He was housebroken and he was everything yeah, especially at that young of an age for him to be so well trained.
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Someone had spent the time and effort with him.
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But as a kid we I had something similar.
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My dad adopted our golden retriever, Goldie, from our local shelter.
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They thought she was probably around two give or take and she was perfectly well-trained, the most well-behaved, loving dog you've ever met.
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And we always said somebody lost a great dog.
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Well, things happen for different reasons and it's always great when you find those perfect matches for you at the shelter.
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Yeah, it was really quite amazing because he was just so good.
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So that's how it started.
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And then at some point I ended up joining a training group and it was a pretty big group and so I didn't take him with me to run there, but we would still run through the neighborhood as I was training for different races and got more involved Because it was a thing where I didn't mean to do it.
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And then I fell in love with it for a number of reasons, and so now I run with Scarlett sometimes, if I'm not with the big group, but just having him beside me, the companionship and I would look down, he'd look up at me, and if we'd go on longer runs I'd take a little snack, a little bag of kibble for him or some treats.
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It's just little things and your audience will probably understand this, because it's not some big showy thing with pets.
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They're just here and they just want to be with you.
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They want to be where the people are, but mostly they want to be where you're at Right.
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And that's the thing.
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No matter how social or friendly your pets are with other people, ultimately you spend a lot of your time with them and they want to be where you are.
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They want to be a part of what you're doing, and my cats are like that with me, but also with dogs, especially when you've got terrier mixes and labs and shepherds they have a lot of energy and they just want a job.
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They want to be involved and sometimes they wait all day for that moment where you come home and you get to spend time with them and sometimes we forget that they're living their lives for us in a way, and we just want to keep them involved and make them a part of things.
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Yeah, yesterday we had a situation.
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Our neighbor we have great neighbors and our neighbor had a knee replaced and so I agreed to let their dog out and our side yard we're on the second house in there on the corner, and so our side yard is their backyard.
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And so yesterday, when I went to let their dog out, ed had let Scarlett out in our backyard and she got the most confused.
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Look, she was very concerned.
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Wait a minute, mom.
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No, mom, no, you're in the wrong.
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We have play dates with their dog.
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Their dog's name is Pippin.
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We have play dates with their dog sometime, but it just wasn't working out to do that yesterday.
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But it was the funniest thing.
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She just get this look on her face.
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You're my person, what are you doing?
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No, get over here.
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It just was very confounding to her.
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So you said that you guys did.
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You started the from couch to 5k.
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So did you actually get to the 5k?
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Yes, yes, we did so the first 5k, I didn't realize that people brought their dogs and they and not all races allow you to have dogs, because it it depends on things, it's a safety thing, and so the first race I did, I never intended to do anything other than jog in the neighborhood, but one of the things that had happened that had really just been a hard thing was, a couple of years before I started running, a number of people that I loved died, including my 24-year-old niece and my mother.
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Wow, and so my sister, her mother, my niece's mother, my niece died of cancer and that was her only child.
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So it was really rough and she was probably the.
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I love all my nieces and nephews, but she lived the same town I do and we had we just had an opportunity to spend more time together, so I was closest to her, and after I got brave enough to tell anyone that I was running with my dog, I told my sister, and so there was a 5K for the type of cancer that for research, to fight the type of cancer that Jamie had died from, and so my sister emails me hey there's this race, and I went.
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I said I'm a private runner, I don't run in public, but it took me a little while to get over myself and realize this was a good cause and it would be okay my sister would be there and it was great.
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I absolutely fell in love.
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Then, later on, I found that there were races where you could bring your dog, and often they were dog themed.
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But there's a number of runs that have a pet themed.
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There's a great one here in town called the Cat Caper here I'm in Columbus Ohio, pet themed.
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There's a great one here in town called the Cat Caper.
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Here I'm in Columbus Ohio.
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There's one of the shelters that has rescue.
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It's really a rescue for cats.
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It's called Cat Welfare.
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They have a lovely 5k called Cat Caper, but the Pet Promise Rescue Run especially, people bring all their dogs, and so Morgan and I did that a number of years and he just really loved it.
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The biggest thing with racing with a dog, though, when you're as slow as I am, because I was an older runner I was in my fifties when I started.
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I was like 49, I think when I started and is that you're slow.
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So he the very first race that he did really every race.
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He was just really pissed at me because the gun would go off or the horn or whatever.
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And he'd want to go.
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Yeah, he's like mom, they're getting away, Mom.
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Come on and I'm going as fast as I can Come on so that was the only thing.
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But he usually, within the first I don't know quarter of a mile, he would calm down and then, and he was.
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He always ran by my side.
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He was just so good at just running right beside me and again, we didn't train him at all, he just he knew how to heal, he knew how to sit, stay, all the things.
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When we were in the neighborhood here he easily would just stay right on my heel and walk beside me, run beside me, but in a race he was dragging me down the street for about half a mile.
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I could just imagine that would always be my fear of running with a dog.
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I'm not a runner, I've never been one but if I were to walk or jog I'd definitely be the slow one, and I could just imagine the dog come on, let's go.
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It was a little too slow for me way, mom, what's the point here?
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And then some of the races would have treats for the pets.
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As you go around, they'd have little treats.
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At one time he got a whole thing of dog food and a bunch of toys and they had all these presents.
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We called it swag for the animals and it was great.
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Oh, you talked about how he helped you get up and moving, and it sounds like not only had you dealt with depression in your life, but you were also grieving some pretty big losses.
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So what made you decide to take your experience and take that loss and turn it into a book?
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I have been a writer for many years.
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I was an attorney, for that was that's my training as well.
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I was training as a journalist and as an attorney, but I mostly wrote.
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That's what I did.
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In the work that I did.
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I did a lot of briefs and memos and a lot, and pretty much they figured out I could write and so everybody would give me all the stuff to write, because not everybody can write, not everybody enjoys it.
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I did so.
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I have always been doing that, and then I ended up quitting the practice of law.
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I had a really major depressive episode and I started writing magazine articles and things like that.
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But I always have wanted to have a book published.
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I just always wanted that dream and I think it was just eventually the right book.
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So it's funny, this question comes up a lot.
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There wasn't a moment that made you say this is what I'm doing and why no, it was an evolution.
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I'm always writing.
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It was more oh, there's a story here, oh wait, and what I thought the story was?
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And that's always happened.
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I'm looking across my room and there's a list of at least 12, maybe 14.
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I lost our different books that I have first drafts of that I'm just always writing.
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So I thought, hey, middle-aged woman takes up running, dog helps the mental health, the dog, the exercise, the middle age all of that is a good topic.
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And so that's what I thought the story was about.
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And so I continued writing and then eventually you get other people to read it and you have an editor.
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It's really a teen sport.
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Actually writing is, and more than one person said to me I don't think that the middle-aged running is the story.
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I think it's the mental health piece, and so the timeline is the running.
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So that's the kind of story or the situation.
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But the thread of how that helped me emotionally and how being able to finish things that I hadn't been able to finish, that really became more of the story.
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But as the book concluded after the big race was over, what happens then?
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It's a Wednesday, it's a normal day in my neighborhood.
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I leash up the dog and we go for a run.
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That's where it all started and that was what really it was built on.
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Was these weekday runs, day after day, of just being with Morgan built on?
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Was these weekday runs, day after day of just being with Morgan?
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Leash up Morgan and off we go, and then he helps me make an important decision at the end of the book too.
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That is fun.
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So, yeah, I think your question was why write the book and the answer?
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is.
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There is many reasons.
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There is definitely a reason why that story was something that you wanted to tell and use it as your, because I think there's big, two big pieces.
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One is you found that group.
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That was really your community, which is I talk about all the time in podcasting.
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You've got to find your community, because community is what keeps you going, is that support to do whatever you're trying to do.
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So you really needed that in a way for the race part of it.
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But Morgan was the one who got you out the first time and kept you going.
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Yeah, I'm not sure.
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If I hadn't had that kind of oh I'm going to walk, I'm just going to walk my dog thing, I'm not sure I would have started Right.
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I don't know.
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And that's why, even if it's not an official thing, our pets really are our emotional support animals and a lot of times, like you said, it was your shield, you had him with you instead of going to do it alone.
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And that's so much of what our pets give us.
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They give us that support, that motivation, that whether we're having a hard day and we're sitting down and they're laying with us, or we're trying to do something we don't want to do and they help us get on the airplane and go on a trip somewhere, they really are that support that so many of us need.
00:18:53.884 --> 00:19:01.568
Honestly, I couldn't imagine not having a pet and my life would be a lot harder if I didn't have them to pet and cuddle and talk to.
00:19:01.588 --> 00:19:06.902
Oh yeah, I'm constantly talking to Scarlett and I did Morgan to all my dogs.
00:19:06.902 --> 00:19:09.147
I've always had these ongoing conversations.
00:19:09.147 --> 00:19:25.707
The other thing with him if I would accidentally I have it on right now, but I have a sport watch that I wear and if I would accidentally hit that it makes a sound and he would just come running and it was go, mom go, let's go, okay, we're going, and yeah.
00:19:25.707 --> 00:19:32.045
Or if you got, if you get close to the closet where all the stuff is the leash and the treats and things that's.
00:19:32.306 --> 00:19:33.808
Yeah, that's the thing Pets know.
00:19:33.808 --> 00:19:41.481
My cats, unfortunately, have been trained to the sound of the ice machine, because they know they hear the ice machines.
00:19:41.481 --> 00:19:47.784
Mom's getting her ice water and that means she's in the kitchen, that means we're going to get treats and literally I'll turn around and they're all sitting at their bowls.
00:19:53.914 --> 00:19:54.657
It's like how did you guys do that?
00:19:54.657 --> 00:19:58.009
Right now Scarlett has gotten up and she's over by the door to my office, because I'm pretty sure I'm betting that Ed is in the kitchen.
00:19:58.009 --> 00:19:59.935
They're hearing dogs especially.
00:19:59.935 --> 00:20:01.239
I think cats too they're.
00:20:01.239 --> 00:20:03.483
Hearing is their most powerful sense.
00:20:03.483 --> 00:20:05.387
Yes, so she can hear.
00:20:05.387 --> 00:20:06.597
Oh, it's amazing.
00:20:07.038 --> 00:20:10.425
Pets are incredible and dogs are amazing.
00:20:10.425 --> 00:20:27.208
I follow someone who has a child with type 1 diabetes and she has a dog who alerts them, before the technology alerts them, that she's low or high or whatever it is, and it's just really amazing how in tune animals can be with us.
00:20:27.208 --> 00:20:35.001
They pick up on all those signs and even when we don't feel well and they don't know it, they know what we need they do.
00:20:35.001 --> 00:20:45.236
So it sounds like for you and your mental health journey that your pets have played a really big role in supporting you through, especially your toughest times.
00:20:45.696 --> 00:20:47.580
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true.
00:20:47.580 --> 00:20:52.500
I have been so fortunate to just have them, be able to spend time with them.
00:20:52.996 --> 00:20:53.759
We love our pets.
00:20:53.759 --> 00:21:00.189
As I said in the intro, you have many other books now about journaling and meditation.
00:21:00.189 --> 00:21:04.644
Have those been important practices for you in your mental health journey?
00:21:05.487 --> 00:21:15.227
Yes, the three things that I so, in addition to therapy and medication, which both of those things for me are musts.
00:21:15.227 --> 00:21:18.431
They're not for everybody, but they have been very important for me.
00:21:18.431 --> 00:21:23.728
But the more non-professional, if you will, things is movement.
00:21:23.728 --> 00:21:27.164
So the running for me, but any kind of movement for other people.
00:21:27.164 --> 00:21:32.065
And then I've been meditating for over 30 years now and.
00:21:32.184 --> 00:21:43.587
I decided to make it official I'm now a certified meditation teacher, and then writing and writing for me can be writing for publication or it can be a way to process thoughts and emotions.
00:21:43.587 --> 00:21:46.583
I also like to record my life.
00:21:46.583 --> 00:21:47.244
I don't know why.
00:21:47.244 --> 00:21:58.262
I don't think that it's not like I'm going to have some library someplace or something to me, but I just have a thing, because I like to look back and say, oh, what day did that happen and when was that and what was that really like.
