It’s frowned upon to brag about yourself. But I feel like it’s good to hype yourself up, even if it is a little bit extreme or out of the ordinary! Post in this thread celebrating yourself and letting others know something you’re really good at! I’ll start…
I’m a really good coach. Strength and conditioning primarily but athletics overall. If an athlete comes to me and they have the mindset of improvement it’s a damn near guarantee that I will increase their athleticism and make them stronger, faster, more powerful, etc. I’ve trained young kids to become dominant high school athletes, high school athletes to get full ride scholarships to D1 universities, D1 athletes to get drafted to the NFL, MLB, and NBA, and I even trained a couple of professional athletes as well! All that said in a REALLY good strength and conditioning coach.
What can you brag about?!
I’m great at getting dogs to trust me. I work at an animal shelter and we have a ton of strays, neglect, and abuse cases that get brought into our shelter (only a few shelters in our podunk county). These animals are usually fearful and greatly distrusting of people, especially men. I get these dogs to trust me and not be so fearful fairly quickly, and in the short time I’ve been working here I’ve become the goto guy for dogs that are emotionally shutdown. It helps that the shelter I work at is run by great people who have put together a great team that really cares about all our residents. I get to take my time working with these dogs and am not pressured to get it done faster.
I find that very impressive and important!
I work at a wildlife rehab, and today I got bit by a Screech Owl, an opossum, and 2 squirrels. None of that is pleasant, nor is it the first or last time, but after being bit by a lot of animals, I think on the whole, domestics may be worse.
My wild ones pretty much just want to get away from me, but I’m starting to think domestic animals seem to know that they don’t get the chance to escape us, and I think that takes away a lot of the “flight” and we get more “fight” as a result. I’ve been hurt way more by cats and dogs than anything wild.
Also, you getting them calmed down is very important to their future. If my animals hate me, that’s honestly their best outcome. But yours need to unlearn the hard lives they’ve had so they can be in safe homes. I, unfortunately, seem to be built physically like a lot of people that must abuse animals, since a lot of rescue dogs hate me and have given me some scars! 😅 Even my own rescue dog, after 10+ years never liked me as much as she liked my ex or current wife or any female stranger. Shed go to anyone else before me. She’d go to anyone else before me, even though she didn’t quite dislike me, that trust never quite showed up again.
Being able to work with the troubled animals is such an important skill, either to get them care, or in your case to make them able to be rehomed. Good for you for finding out a way to crack the code on these pups! Thanks to you they will get to be someone’s good boy/girl like they deserve!
Thanks for the kind words. I bet working with non-domesticated wildlife is a trip, and sounds like it’s also very rewarding
You never know what you’re going to see! We get in animals I never even knew existed, or at least anywhere around here. We see a lot of bad injuries, some animal abuse, and a lot of death, but we also see a ton of miracles and the real spirit of survival.
Here is one of my polite patients from today (and a bit of its roommate’s rump! These two were very cooperative, but it’s been a year since I’ve done opossums, and I usually didn’t have to move them to clean them, so when I went to put these guys in the barrel while I cleaned their crate, they kept grabbing the lip of the barrel and I couldn’t get them all the way in! 😁 That tail is just as good as a fifth hand for a number of things.
The one I did after this was very jumpy and bitey (they can be somewhat shockingly fast in small bursts) and it tried to pee on me when I finally got it secured.
They’ve all got their own backstories they can’t share with us, so some have a tougher time coping with us. Feeling them calm down or drift off to sleep after we feed them is very satisfying.
It’s a bit tough in that they will never love me like a dog or cat, and they all eventually get let go to where I will never know if they have success in life or not, but I get to know I at least got them a second chance. They’re all beautiful and amazing creatures that I’d otherwise never get a peek into their lives the way I do by doing this.