Hello and welcome to the first official Kate's Paws blog post. Congratulations on stumbling upon my inner most thoughts, mostly about dogs, sometimes about food and always dreaming about sunshine! In these blogs I'll be sharing my own experiences about day to day life living and working with animals, as well as my go to tips for all things pooch related. Whilst I'm not an expert, I've worked with animals for 20 years and have picked up a tried and tested thing or two along the way. So stick with me, and although you may not learn anything new, I'll ensure some giggles at no extra cost. PS I do some swears, please stop reading if its not for you.
As is customary, ill start by introducing myself. My name is Kate or Katie for all those Sunday namers, but unless you're my dad or you're telling me off I prefer Kate, hence the business name. I'm 28 years old (sometimes feel 58), I have 2 hairless boys and 1 extra furry one, Hugo. Hugo is a 1 year old show type cocker spaniel. He's my dopey shadow companion who comes to work with me all day, every day and does it with a smile (yes, dogs can smile) and a happy attitude and whilst I sometimes call him a knob head for eating undesirables, he really is a dog owners dream boat. And he's all mine!
I've had dogs since I was old enough to convince my mum that I was worthy of graduating from bunny rabbits and guinea pigs at the age of 12. For the people that know the real story here, yes I did use a little bargaining in order to win her round and said I wouldn't move with her for her super important government job saving peoples lives if I couldn't have a dog, but who hasn't...?! (Sorry, not sorry). I've also ridden horses since the age of 7, and whilst its not something I do regularly anymore, I've spent many many hours lusting over long treks along the beach front with my pack of loyal German shepherds, and Hugo obvs, Lloyds bank advert style. But that's a dream for another post, unless you have a horse and pack dogs I can borrow, hit me up!
For as long as I can remember I've been obsessed with dogs. And obsessed absolutely is the right word for it. Me and my mum would go to the library on a Saturday afternoon (days before the internet were dark) and I'd read through breed encyclopaedias soaking up every ounce of information for my future as a dog owner and make shortlists of dogs I absolutely had to have. Some little girls dream of sparkles and dresses, I dreamt in fur and 4 paws and any opportunity to be around animals I jumped at. Of course I eventually convinced poor mother dearest that 1 dog just wasn't enough and that we just had to rescue poor street pup Molly and show her all the finer things in life. And so we did and I've rarely been without a dog since.
As we all know, boring adult life gets in the way of little girls dreams, and my crusade to rescue every dog on the planet and bring them home with me got parked for a while. I focussed on a career in retail and worked hard within that for 8 years, but all the while feeling like something was missing. You read about it on the internet, "do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life". And I thought surely no one really loves their job, right? But lightbulb, ephiphany, motivational moment of cringe coming up, people actually do! And that's when I realised I needed to do something more important than filling big corporation's back pockets and took a huge leap into something completely different. So here I am, and if you're still reading then a little thanks from me for helping me on this journey. I promise some more relevant dog type ramblings in the future.
Kate xxx
