Pages

Friday 28 June 2019

Marketing and the loss of a dog

Ok, so it's been a hellish three weeks. My beautiful dog that you can see on my blog, Thor, God of Thunder, has been epileptic for years but we only needed to put him on medication for it last November after his worst seizure yet. He went six months without a single tremor and we thought the medicine was working miracles. Then three weeks ago he goes five days having so many seizures that we lose count. At the end of those five days, we finally get him into the after hours clinic and they up his dosage and we take him home, disoriented and wobbly. The next day, he couldn't walk; his back legs were tucked under him permanently. 
Our regular vet was booked out for two weeks so we rang every morning for a week hoping to get an emergency appointment. A week later we finally did. By then, my beloved little chinese crested idiot puppy couldn't walk, hadn't shat for four days, couldn't get to food or drink by himself and was desperate to sit in our laps and just sleep. 
We had no choice, we had to put him down. The vet did all the neurological tests and the verdict of no recovery was handed down. 
Now, by this time in my life, i've put down four dogs and two cats, balling my eyes out and devastated every time. 
But this time was almost the worst. Especially for my daughter who grew up with Thor. It's been a week since I put him down and i've only just stopped crying. We have one dog left, Obi Wan Kanobi the golden long haired chihuahua, but we all still feel alone without Thor. 
And in all of this, my book isn't selling because it's buried underneath 80,000 other Scifi novels. So I see an add on one of the facebook pages I belong to for a guy who promotes and markets your books. So I'm trying him out. 
I'll keep you posted as to whether he follows through or steals my money and does nothing. 
I've also got another webcast/youtube interview coming up where it's one author chatting to another. I'll put up the link once I've done it. 
What else has been going on other than wishing there was a heaven for dogs to eat baked chicken in? Why people are so dramatic. That's what i've been thinking about. I belong to a lot of facebook pages and groups (mostly about book promotion and writing atm) and I read a lot of blogs. People seem to be making mountains out of a lot mole hills these days, turning everything into a drama. 
I'm not an overly dramatic person myself. I can become passionate about certain topics, arguing them quite strongly at times. But I've brought up my children (and taught myself) not to succumb to emotion all the time, that we can control what we feel, we can choose to feel or not. 
Self-control.
I'm not so naive as to think we can always, at every moment, control ourselves and what we feel. When it concerns someone we love, it's very hard not to feel what your feeling deeply and strongly. But at other times, especially when it comes to strangers or things that have nothing to do with us (as in it doesn't directly affect us; the news), it's quite easy to maintain self-control and rule over your emotions.
Why don't other people get this? Why don't they understand that they're not slaves to their emotions, that they can control how they feel because it's them feeling it? It's their brains releasing chemicals that's causing the emotional reaction. 
I just find drama boring. 

No comments: