Life, Interrupted

 In 2015 my husband suffered a horrible incident where he was robbed at gunpoint during a late night pizza delivery, one of the last for the night. He had a bit too much cash and change on him. It was late, and he didn't want to waste time depositing it into the work safe. He walked up to the apartment complex and saw a very suspicious person walking around near his car. He passed the guy and got a SUPER weird vibe, but he did not act on that spidey sense. No one answered at the apartment he was delivering to. He got really freaked out and tried to rush back to his car. The sketchy guy confronted him as he was about to open the car door. He pulled out a gun and told him to give him the money. Jake handed over tons of cash and the guy got SUPER greedy, telling Jake to hand over his phone and keys. He took his keys but Jake refused to give up the phone. The guy freaked out and stole Jake’s car (with the Dominos car sign light still attached and on and everything.) My husband called the cops and instantly 2 patrol cars showed up in less than 2 min. Jacob urged them to go after the guy as he had just driven off and he could see the exact way the thief turned at the exit of the complex onto a long road with no exit for a long while. But they refused. They just took his statement and looked around the apartment area. About 10 minutes later one drove off and found the Dominos sign abandoned on the side of the road Jacob said they had fled down. So the thief literally stopped at some point to take it off very soon after leaving the scene. PLENTY of time for the cops to catch up and recover Jacobs car and catch the thief. This car was Jake’s absolute favorite. He spent years and years driving it delivering pizza countless nights. It was his first car he ever owned. It never had any issues, and it drove smoothly with not too shabby gas mileage too. He had been robbed once before but they had not flashed their weapon, leading Jake to believe there wasn’t one, and refused the previous thieves demands for keys and phone at that time, only handing over some petty cash.

After that incident in 2015, Jacob was traumatized and no longer wished to be placing himself in that level of danger going forward. His dad also just lost his long time high paying career job due to staff consolidation and downsizing the corporation. After working in the restaurant industry his whole life, Jake’s Dad decided he wanted to be his own boss and open his own place. This provided a great opportunity for us to start over fresh with a long distance move to the Tampa Bay area in Florida to help Jake’s parents open up this Italian restaurant idea.

I was still working at the time and did have to part with the rewarding job of working at the animal shelter. I truly loved all the medical details, surgery times, intaking evals and caring for the newest arrivals during their quarantine period before adoption. Spending all day with puppies and kitties was also a lovely plus. I would like to say I am an EXPERT at giving pets. I’ve used scritches and scratches alone to win over some of the most scared dogs and kittens. Being the first person to show scared and abused animals some love for the first time in their life.. and then rehab them and help place them into loving forever homes is a time I will never forget. It also led to extreme caregiver fatigue due to the extreme illnesses and constant death that comes with the animal rescue field. I completely dissociated away from any sadness while at the shelter. I got mad, I got frustrated. I cussed like a damn sailor constantly!! But I never ONCE cried. I saw and comforted every single other coworker there at some point as I tend to be the resident “counselor” wherever I go. There are also a lot of mentally struggling, high anxiety/depressed people who find it much easier to work with animals all day then interact with people. Including me. Little 15 min smoke breaks every 2 hours were the social times to let it all out. But never me. I could tell them about how many puppies I just lost to Parvovirus and still just comfort THEM through the emotional loss (a litter they had never even met…) It wasn’t cold-hearted, it was more just separating the emotional loss with the emotional joy of how many lives were saved. I knew the risks of the job and that it is physically impossible to save every stray, lost, or abandoned animal. It was something I did not notice was so extremely affecting me until I finally quit for our move to Florida. I may have lost some sort of work based support system and friend group. It was one forged in a time of trauma out of necessity to stay strong together. The loss of our actual best friends to such a major distance was the hurt that damaged me the most.

The luckiest thing that came out of my time at the shelter was meeting and adopting our most amazing forever-pup, Eevee. Her adorable black lab mom came to our shelter with her babies when they were only 11 days old. They went to foster pretty quickly after I met them that first week, but they came to visit for weigh-ins and shots as they grew up. At 8 weeks the pups came in for their spay/neuters and their momma went up for adoption. After recovery, I had my son and husband join me up there to look at some possible puppies. There was also a 16 week old shy male pup named Avalon who was also someone we considered. It was just hard to judge his personality due to the extreme shyness. When I brought out Eevee, she instantly gravitated towards Rayne and was licking him obsessively and just curled up next to him very sweetly. We were sold! They went home and after my shift I brought our perfect pup home. Her and our cat, Jack, who we’ve had since before my son was born, traveled along and made this LOOOOOOOONG 22 hour straight drive to Florida with us during the big move.