I eventually gave up and went inside and just let her stay out there until she finally went (the stubborn thing took like 30 minutes!). Sorry pup, we live in Oregon. Get used to the rain. IT NEVER STOPS. Speaking of Bella…<\/p>\n I was grocery shopping recently and was in the baby food isle picking up some sweet potato and the chicken puree. A little old lady in the isle asked me how old babies are when they start eating the jar food. I replied, “I wouldn’t know. I don’t have a baby, I have a dog.” She laughed SO hard. She asked me why I buy baby food for my dog. I explained that I buy the sweet potato or the chicken baby food and put it in Bella’s Kong toy. Then I freeze it and she gets it when she’s in the crate while we are at work. She thought that was ingenious.<\/p>\n She went on to tell me about how she had a scotty dog that passed away a few years ago and she sometimes wished she had another dog. We chatted for a few minutes and I shared some of the experiences I had volunteering at animal shelters. I suggested that she consider adopting a senior dog. The benefits are so great! It’s older, more relaxed (no crazy puppy energy), already trained and it’s also saving a life. The older dogs are often the ones that euthanized because people don’t adopt them. She seemed genuinely interested and I hope she does adopt a senior dog!<\/p>\n 4 years ago I started this blog on a whim because the blogger Monica from Run, Eat Repeat<\/a> asked me to write a guest post about my weight loss<\/a>. I thought,\u00a0well dang….maybe *I* can have a blog too!<\/em>\u00a0I sort of half-assed it and didn’t really know what I was doing and didn’t really know HOW to write a blog. My blog posts were very, very short<\/a>, not really focused and I slowly shared my weight loss story as thought came to me. Then somehow I got readers. I was shocked! The more readers I got, the more comments I got, the more I paid attention to my writing.<\/p>\n It had been a long time since I’d written anything. After writing a few novels and failing to get them published, I felt discouraged and gave up. The blog was an outlet for me to dust off the ol’ writing skills and polish them up a bit.<\/p>\n Then I started getting more attention. My little blog that was kind of clunky and terribly formatted in Blogger, was getting so much attention that I was asked to do interviews. (You can check out some of those here<\/a>.) I moved the blog over to WordPress, made it look a little bit nicer (with Michael’s help), took some photography classes, Michael built me a lightbox…then ta-da! I was on the cover of a magazine! WOW.<\/p>\n Well funny story, this little blog that was started on a whim to share a story I didn’t think anyone was interested in reading has recently surpassed the million page view mark! Perhaps it’s not as crazy a number as many popular blogs and I sure don’t make money off my blog like full-time bloggers, but dang! I’m pretty happy with that 1 million readers!<\/p>\n![\"BELLA\"](\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/BELLA.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFunny story…<\/h4>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nFunny story…<\/h4>\n