Warning: this is going to be a long post.
I’ve been sort of dreading and avoiding writing this post. If you’re a regular follower you’ve maybe noticed a lot of radio silence on my end after I posted about doing a drawing course and promising weekly updates about that.
I still have my course to finish. I ran out of room in my sketch book and got distracted by other things, but I would really like to get back into it seeing as I did pay for it and I do believe this drawing course could do nothing but help improve my artwork. That being said, I’m stepping back from being a “content creator” and actively selling my art.
I am still an artist. This is the part I’ve been struggling with. I saw a post yesterday by an artist on Instagram that actually made me feel so much better. I think it was a re-post, but I’m not sure who shared it originally so I’m not giving them credit. I saw the post by @bserway and it is the following:
I am still an artist, but I’ll be stepping back a bit as “Artist” as my career choice. In the end, this was a very difficult decision that I know was also the right decision. My family and I can’t live off the “income” I make off my art. I am proud to say this is the first time I haven’t made money at it in almost 10 years. I used to at least break even or make enough to support myself to continue to create art. But more and more I am not buying new supplies because I can’t afford it. I sunk too much money (not an extraordinary amount but more than I feel comfortable with) into stock and trying my hand at selling in a brick-n-mortar. Not only was I not able to support myself but I lost money. I hold no fault to the store owner at all, Nikita has done so much for all of the Artisans, and I know she’s done a lot to try to get my bookmarks to move. It’s a very niche thing to sell and I of all people know how difficult they can be! They are still at So Divine Artisan Boutique until the end of July if you’d like to snag one! You can check them out in person if you’re local or head over to So Divine Online and Nikita will ship it to you! You can also get them as a freebie in the super fun Blind Date With a Book that she’s doing.
I think I will still sell my art from time-to-time. I will likely still do the Craft Fair in the fall, and if you’re interested in a commission send me a message and I will let you know if I’m available to do it or not. I will ALWAYS be available to make the Classic Horror Crew bookmark. I will not be putting a lot of effort into advertising on Facebook or Instagram. Whether I keep my bookmarks in my Square shop or not, I haven’t yet decided. I’m kind of thinking I probably will because I’ll need that set up to do the Craft Fair anyway, but we’ll see. It depends on how much effort it is to maintain. At the moment it is more effort with the stock being shared in Nikita’s shop but after that I think it should be pretty easy to manage. You may get an occasional update on Instagram/Facebook from me, but I won’t be putting in the effort to make sure I post every week. When I do get back to my course I may share my progress on my Instagram stories, but it won’t be weekly updates or posts about it.
I’m sorry for the inconvenience and/or disappointment that this may cause anyone. I did not come to this decision lightly, but I know in my heart this was the right decision for myself and my family.
So what will I be doing instead? I’m so glad you asked. I’ll be focusing my efforts back onto the career I dreamed of since I was 5 years old; dog training. I became a certified Master Dog Trainer when I was 20 but I didn’t do it for very long. I loved dogs and dreamed of being a dog trainer since I was a little kid and first trained our cat to sit (and concluded dogs are less frustrating to train). In high school my career counselor told me to go to Emily Carr Art Institute and I thought that sounded so ridiculous because I knew my dream was to train dogs. Even when I was a teenager too cool for anything I was still a geek for dogs. I still ditched my friends to hang out with my dog. After I went to school and came back to Fort St. James I set up my dog training business and was so excited. The disappointment hit hard when I realized I wasn’t training dogs; I was training people. I was never a people person, especially back then. Half of the reason I wanted to train dogs was because I didn’t want to work with people. Realizing that in order to train dogs I had to train people was really hard for me. I know it seems like something so obvious, but I honestly had never even considered it. I got frustrated dealing with people who wouldn’t listen to me, who’d argue with me, who’d cancel and reschedule over and over again, who wouldn’t pay me in full, and the dogs were always way easier to train than their people. I gave up training and started focusing on selling my art. Giving up dog training broke my heart, but like being an artist just because I wasn’t professionally training didn’t mean I stopped being a dog trainer. It was still so deeply a part of who I am, no matter how hard I tried to shove it down.
I trained my own dogs, I gave advice to friends and family, but otherwise I tried really hard to push down that part of myself because it was too painful to think about how I “failed”. Then I met Winston. I didn’t mean to start dog walking. I just sort of happened upon a post by someone looking for a dog walker. I did dabble in dog walking a bit when I was early in my pregnancy with my first daughter and I really enjoyed doing it but stopped when my pregnancy made it too difficult. It happened that at the time my husband was home a lot because he’d just quit his job to start a new career. I started walking Winston in the fall and did it throughout most of the winter and spring. Being able to work with the dog on my own without the owner was absolutely so much fun. Having the excuse to get out 5 days a week for an hour long walk got me in pretty decent physical shape. Getting paid for it was nice too! Winston is a big dog spending long hours waiting for his owner to come home so I knew he needed a REALLY good walk during our hour. I started exploring the area and fell in love with my home all over again too. I started hiking in the winter and we had a blast on the trails behind the graveyard before they were cut down this year.
One day I was on Facebook and I just got so sick of seeing posts on the community page EVERY DAY about dog problems in this town. Dogs at large, dogs biting people, dogs attacking other dogs, chasing cars, eating garbage, barking, you name it it’s a problem here. I also needed a way to get Winston more exposure to other dogs in a controlled environment so that I could work on his dog reactivity and have more peaceful walks (to clarify; dog reactivity does NOT equal aggression). So I made a post on the community group and asked if anyone would like to come train together (but at a distance and with dogs on leash) in the park with me and Winston. The response was overwhelming, I had mostly super positive feedback and interest and one guy who thought it was a recipe for disaster.
I’ve heard so many comments from people who’ve said they won’t walk their dogs a certain way or won’t walk their dogs at all because of dogs at large (which is the biggest problem here). I realized that while we can’t control what other people do with their dogs and how they keep them, we can teach our dogs to handle any situation where a dog at large may approach them. Keeping our dogs locked away was the opposite of a solution. They need to learn basic obedience around that big of a distraction. I knew in my gut that this would be just one piece (but a vital piece) to the puzzle of finding solutions. People were a bit unsure at first, I didn’t get a lot of people showing up to train in the park but it was enough to keep me trying. Most of the people were those who are already out there training their dogs, but slowly I started getting other people asking about it and showing interest, but it’s taken some time to teach enough people what it is about, I think.
I didn’t want to clog up the community group with my dog training posts so I made my own group called Fort St. James Dog Owners and I wrote a bunch of articles about everything I could think of and filled the group with it. I then started to spread the word about it and invite people to the group. In just a few days I went from 0 to over 100 members. I expected to be just one person talking to myself in an empty group and today it has people who post regularly, comment often and ask questions. I see people planning their own get-togethers in a safe way and I’m so proud of that.
About a month ago I injured my foot while hiking with my husband and my dog Zelda. It was our first hike together in YEARS and we had so much fun. I tripped over all kinds of rocks on that trail and at one point I felt a tweak and thought “ouch that might hurt tomorrow”. I forgot about it and kept training in the park and kept walking Winston around the loop for a whole week before it started to swell up. It progressively got worse. I went to the clinic and had it looked at by a Nurse Practitioner who sent me for x-rays. The x-rays showed nothing abnormal and I was told to rest and ice it.
It was about this time I realized I needed to get back into dog training. Not only did I rekindle my love for it but I also realized I could be making way more money at training dogs than I make at selling my art. Way more. At the end of the day it’s not about the money; I got back into this because I love it and I want to help people. I am tired of people getting mad about the dogs and I want to teach people we can train our dogs to be calm, happy, healthy minded individuals that we can take out in public in a way that is respectful to our neighbors and fellow community members. The money certainly helps during uncertain times though. My mindset is different this time and I’ve had more experience in life and with people that at this point in my life the idea of teaching people doesn’t sound so awful. I also have found that people are different now than they were 16 years ago. People are more open to training their dogs. People want help with their dogs. My career choice doesn’t sound so cooky that the career counselor would try to get me to choose art school instead (which just seems so laughable to me in hindsight). I can also charge a lot more now than I could back then and it still feels weird. My prices are extremely reasonable compared to other dog trainers in the surrounding areas and yet I feel like I’m charging too much because it’s way more than I charged when I was 20 years old. I’ve also designed my schedule, contract and how I structure my training sessions in a way that supports me better than I did back then.
Last week I went back to the clinic and had a doctor examine my foot, as it hadn’t gotten any better. She ordered the x-rays again, an MRI and an ultrasound. I’m waiting for those appointments now. One of my training clients generously gave me a support boot for my foot. It’s exhausting and like dragging around dead weight but has definitely made a difference on my foot healing. It’s way less swollen by the end of the day.
I’ve had a few training sessions with people now and it just makes my whole day. When I walk away from doing a craft fair or market my attitude is usually “yeah it was fun, but I’m exhausted”. I am pumped after doing a training session. It’s so exciting to see a dog learning and to see how happy it makes the owner, and I especially love seeing that owner and dog connecting and working together. It’s something so magical and the owners feel that too because I get endless thank yous and you can see the joy on their faces when their dog finally does what they are asking from them.
It’s also been a really tough fire season for BC, record breaking bad. We’ve had fires surrounding us and we have been locked inside because of all the smoke. We’ve had a few clear days but as I sit outside and write this I can see and smell the smoke growing thicker and today is worse again. Still clear enough we can continue to enjoy outside for a bit. We’re fortunate that the fires around us have been managed by firefighting teams and are now getting under control. A lot of people have not been so lucky. It has been stressful to watch the BC Wildfire Service app show 4 fires “near me” pop up to 9 in just a day and then 14 by two days later. I’ve had to consider what we need to have ready in a go-bag just in case, and how we’ll manage to fit everyone and everything we need into our car. The car we have now is smaller than we had in 2018 during the last fire season we evacuated from (and we had less family members then too). It’s been stressful. There’s a lot of things that have been stressful this year (and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that…). Getting back into dog training has felt really right to do.
Just like I have always been a dog trainer since I was 5 years old and trained the cat to sit; I will always be an artist too.
sLs Artistry 