08/03/2026
This will not be an organized statement of my thoughts. I have so many things going on in my head.
Firstly, I wish everything had happened differently. From the notes we had attached to Ollie’s profile to where I spent the weekend driving and biking around town. His family knows me and they how I feel.
The worst should be over but the human aspect continues to pierce. I am hated, vilified by a lot of people. To those people, I hear you and you have made a difference. I will not try to change minds with a paragraph. Mistakes have been made. Decisions that led to me being too trusting led to errors that changed lives. My life and others lives have been impacted.
I work with living beings. They have moods and their own decision making skills. I can’t control that variable. I can adjust. A dog can have a bad day, make a bad choice and it can lead to a life changing situation. People are less predictable than animals. They are influenced by opinions as easy as their own experience. Recently someone asked on social media if anyone had dealings with Happy Tails. They had personally been to HT 41 times without issue. I don’t know how to address that. I learned a long time ago in a marketing class that an unhappy person will tell 10 people while a satisfied person statistically tells less than 1. This was a time before social media. Now the negativity is amplified, shared, expanded with a few clicks. It affects people to self harm, professional ruin, friendships lost, emotional collapse. If the negativity was meant to hurt, it has.
To the people that know me, what I will do for your pets, what I invest in our community: I am not going anywhere, you are helping me more than you realize. I appreciate you and I am showing up for work tomorrow and the next day.
I am sorry. I wish the real world and the variables stopped at my front door. I wish it was butterflies and puppy dog kisses all day everyday. I could balance the scales by sharing great stories over the last 21 years and more than 20,000 reservations per year. I have an amazing bunch of clients that know me and my family. I am focusing on that for my well being. I will make changes and I won’t disregard the important things I have learned the hard way.