My CV

I don’t have one. Nor do I have a resume anymore. When I got my last job working for Rob Engelking at King’s Kennels in Riverwoods, Illinois, I knew that would be my last job. In fact, it was my dream job, for so many reasons. Logistically, I could get the 20 miles to the kennel in half the time it took me to get downtown, where the job I had before that (at K9 University) was. At King’s, I could park in the parking lot and not have to drive around looking for a place to park.

Then, the grooming room—in fact the whole kennel—was wonderful: safe, clean, and had every piece of equipment a dog groomer could want. More, the Engelkings had a reputation among people showing dogs. Certainly, we groomed a lot of pet dogs, but we had a high percentage of dogs being shown or retired from the ring, and of course, they were all well behaved. Also, Rob was the best boss ever. He knew dogs. He knew what we could do and what we couldn’t. He had a great sense of humor, and he respected me.

If you were to look at my resume, you’d laugh. This is the blurb I send out when I submit short stories to journals and they want a bio:

Robyn is a retired dog groomer who has titled dogs  in performance and conformation. She also has placed in grooming contests. She didn’t go to college until she was 30, and  took CLEP exams to avoid prerequisites. She has degreesin anthropology with concentrations in African & Indian studies, and a master’s in urban planning. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi. Most of her published writing has been nonfiction in pet industry magazines, though she has published fiction stories. Most recently her essay, “On the Water,” was included in the SCARS anthology for 2022.  She has Asperger’s and sees the world from the perspective of a visitor from another planet.

I went to the New York School of Dog Grooming in Chicago in 1970, where I learned basic Poodle grooming five days a week. I then got several short term jobs until I graduated high school, the last one at Becker Animal Hospital in Northfield, assisting poodle groomer Mimi Colman. Then I moved to Milwaukee, took a short term job also grooming for a mom & pop until a friend saw an ad for a groomer way across town for Jo-Kor’s Klippette. Joan Fredericksen, the owner, was a member of the Waukesha Kennel Club, and through her, I met some amazing people, including Charlie Prager, the breeder of the Center Ridge Bedlingtons & inventor of the first portable dog grooming table and stand dryer. I learned to groom terriers so they didn’t look like Cocker Spaniels.

When Joan sold the business about two years later, I moved back to Chicago, in winter.I ultimately got a job assisting Jan Condurso at The Collar & Leash. Her parents raised Bedlingtons, Poodles, and Boxers. She learned to groom Bedlingtons from Jack Funk. I was there about two years making good money when we had the first oil embargo, and business slowed to almost nonexistant.

Then I got a job working for Jocelyn Slatin, who had Jamboree Airedales. I loved that job, but she also planned to move. About that time, I knew of fellow dog fanciers who had a business out in Schaumburg, Illinois, who wanted to sell their business. My parents lent me the money and I bought Reigning Cats & Dogs. I thought my husband and I would move out there, but that never worked out. He got into law school and we got divorced. I was very demoralized, and sold the business, and went to Arizona and worked for Jocelyn, who had moved to Prescott, Arizona. When I got back, I took a part time job grooming, but got hired as a Project Manager for Literacy Volunteers of Chicago, setting up ESL training sites. We were very successful, but I was a ‘VISTA VOLUNTEER’. I got insurance, but the pay was terrible, so I had to keep grooming dogs part time.

I spent several years as an independent contractor, going to a bunch of different shops, piecing jobs together. So many microbusinesses that the owners either sold or shut down. I shlepped out to Naperville (40 miles from home) several days a week for two years. worked as a dog trainer, training people to train their dogs, going from Zion up north to Flossmoor south, and west to Elgin. Lots of driving. Then, in 1985, at the age of 30, I went on an African safari, and it change my life.I quit the dog training job, went to college while I groomed dogs part-time, at Shear Comfort in Skokie, and for a while (until i couldn’t take the lax management & noise) Critter Cleaners out on Harlem. I also learned I had Asberger’s. Suddently, between anthropology & this diagnosis, my life made sense.

I was a research assistant for the two years I was in grad school, and then there were no jobs again. I took a job at the Velvet Bow in Hinsdale, but quickly got a Peace Corps assignment in Malawi, as a Town Planner. I returned, still no jobs. I took a job for Women’s Self-Employment Project when Connie Evans (a woman who had never owned a business) was the Executive Director. That was 1 of my worst jobs. Our program was based on the Grameen Bank model, which works in Bangladesh, where women are illiterate and not mobile. Not so much in Chicago, where you can borrow money, move a block away, and disappear. Connie really had no idea how we got women into our programs. I got Plantars Fascitis from ‘pounding the pavement’ looking for women who had business ideas. From the very start, I was lied to about how much I would be paid, and ultimately they wanted me to train my next boss. What an insult!I got a job with Grooming by Gerri which was great, but I was offered an opportunity for a job with….BENEFITS!!!

The Chicago Christian Industrial League had a resale store that grossed about $300 a day in quarters! The CFO wanted to know why we weren’t making more. He hired me to be a manager, even though the two people managing, Calvin Franklin & Sally Ross, knew what the problem was. Within a week, I could tell as well. Not to go into petty details—the organization’s land was worth more than their program, but from there, I worked for the Ark—a Jewish based social service agency where I was cheated out of health insurance due to lies and bad management. There was so much potential, but management was inept. I finally decided to return to grooming dogs.

I loved grooming dogs, but it’s so physically demanding. In 2000, I bought a business with the hope of ultimately buying a boarding kennel, but first, we had 9/11, and a big scandal with Arthur Andersen (which some of my clients worked for), and the Enron mess, and slowly, slowly, during the Dubya years, the economy got pretty bad and I could see the writing on the wall. I would have possibly stuck it out, but my core business was dogs that got groomed every week and every two weeks, and as those clients dogs’ died of old age, and the clients either lost jobs or their own clients. I just felt I had bought a job for myself. I tried finding a smaller space with less rent to move the business to, and I could not find a properly zoned building within five miles of my shop. I closed up and continued to work for other people.

I went back to work for Shear Comfort, now in Evanston. I took 2 weeks off to be a UN Volunteer in Bosnia & CY (the owner) practically had a fit. I worked for a PetCo, where I was really taken advantage of, and later for a Pet Supplies Plus. I also spent a very bad year on and off working for Jennifer Stavrianos at Pet Care Plus. That was almost surreal. Another business with so much potential owned by a woman who had never trained a dog and wouldn’t even bathe her own dogs.

I worked for a couple of animal hospitals that either had no practice manager, so nobody was in charge, or had a practice manager that didn’t care and I was put in either dangerous or no-win situations constantly (my ‘favorite’ was the year dog flu/kennel cough was rampant, and the veterinarians had no isolation kennels and put sick dogs in the grooming room).

I took a job with a business owned by a veterinary technician who promised to make the grooming area better and safer, and never did, and who trusted another groomer & didn’t realize that she didn’t have enough grooming clients for a viable business.

I was hoping things would work out at K9 University, as I really like Ruby Madrigal, but she also didn’t manage her own business and her staff didn’t know enough about dogs. The whole place was dangerous for so many reasons. They actually lost 3 dogs the year I was there—either during transport, or dogs that climbed out of kennels and ran away. They kept putting nonsocial dogs right outside the grooming area, stressing me and the grooming dogs with the barking.There was so much potential, but I just couldn’t do it anymore.

So, when a client told me that Rob was looking for a groomer, I called him. Then COVID, Also, we knew it would happen: he got an offer on the land, and the land was worth more than the kennel business…. due to life.

So now I’m retired. I’m not bored. I read, I write, and I irritate the scammers and unethical people selling baby animals on Craigslist. I collect books to send to schools in Africa, I travel, I train dogs. Even though I could hardly say I had a ‘career’, I planned well.

Religion: the ‘Yes, but….’

I was not raised in a religious household. We were more culturally Jewish, but I realized, as I got older, my parents didn’t inculcate us with the same beliefs that my Christian friends had been raised with. We kids might have been bad, but we were not going to Hell. Heaven wasn’t brought up, either.

What I learned, mostly from Sunday School is that God is all around us and sees everything. That’s pretty much what Sikh believe.

Then, my mother told me, “Jews don’t proselytize.”

What that means is, we don’t tell people what they believe is wrong, and that the only way they can get to Heaven is by believing (in Jesus) and asking Jesus to forgive our sins.

I inferred that sins were not following the 10 commandments. Sikhi believe that pride, anger, lust, greed, and attachment are ‘sins’. The virtues are: truth, compassion & patience, contentment, humility & self-control, love, wisdom, & courage are virtues. Nothing about not eating this or that, not anything, really, about wearing your hair a certain way (although Punjabi Sikhi believe God made us perfect & we should not cut our hair), nothing about telling others what they must do, nothing about what kinds of sex is allows…nothing about when life begins or ends. people really don’t know when life begins or ends.& since men and womena re equal—all people are equal….slavery is definitely not allowed.

But now we have a segment of Christians who believe they should enforce their rules. They are sure they are doing God’s work by keeping the rest of us in line. They are absolutely positive—even though they are not taking care of strangers’ children, that women who become pregnant accidentally or suffer a sad diagnosis should bear children, because those cells already have souls.

We know it isn’t about respecting life, but about control. & even though the United States of America is a secular country, there seems to be serious debate over this.

I am really baffled. It seems that most people—& since most people claim to be Christians, are opposed to what the conservative fundamentalists, who have no knowledge of science and certainly aren’t philosophers, and man who don’t even attend a church…that these people in control are not ‘really’ Christians. They aren’t tolerant of others beliefs.

So—how is it that they manage to be in control?

Seder Lite

First of all, if you weren’t raised in a Jewish family, this won’t make any sense to you. sorry. It’s a cultural thing. not so much about religion as tradition.

I got together with cousins for Passover. My family is scattered, not very emotionally close, either, but my sister and I get along well with these particular cousins. We generally don’t do 1st or 2nd night, partly because we really are geographically far apart and work during the day, so we get togethe on the 2st Saturday night.

We all remember our great (and in a few cases, great great) grandparents, Orthodox jews, who did everything ‘by the book’: they waited until Sundown, served Manischevitz wine (never grape juice in the 1960s), and reciteed all the prayers. We all used the Maxwell House Hagaddahs. ‘Dinner’ didn’t start until the 3rd cup of wine, Then, with a small salad, matzoh ball soup, and gefilte fish. By then, we had had so much matzoh, nobody cared what the main meal was (usually chicken with boiled vegetables.

K offered to host. She has two kids, and I have to say, as an aside, so any of this will make sense, her husband’s black, and her mother married for the 2nd time to a Christian. Her stepbrother, his wife and their two kids didn’t join us this year due to illness, but children are integral to the Seder service. The youngest is supposed to recite the 4 questions. I won’t get into minutae, You can look up the 4 Seder questions on Google. The reason we have a Seder is to inculcate our children into our religion.

In any case, K got new Hagaddahs: “30 minute Seder”. It’s the gist: abridged prayers, we were slaves in Egypt, h yadda yadda. We get to the part, after the plagues God visited upon the Egyptians (& you have to wonder why God would stretch out the Jews’ maltreatment), but there is a phrase that says we should thank God for his outstreteched hand and permitting us to bring wealth….

Wealth? What wealth? We were slaves!!!I was sure the hagaddah was written by goyim—this was the first time any of us heard about wealth! So K Googled it, and there were several cites:

http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/M06Passover_Spoils.html:

If God had merely killed their firstborn, but not given us their wealth, it would have been enough for us. These words appear in the Dayyenu segment of the Passover Seder, and are usually sung with gusto by the participants.

As with several of the other stanzas in that passage, we should be exceedingly careful about accepting this statement at face value. A broad survey of the relevant biblical texts would indicate how crucial it was for the divine historical plan that the Israelites make their departure from Egypt with great wealth.

This detail was foretold to Abraham, and repeated to Moses at the outset of his career. On the eve of the exodus, the Hebrew slaves were given explicit instructions to ask their Egyptian neighbours for goods. The construction of the lavish sanctuary in the wilderness would have been incomprehensible without some explanation of how a ragtag band of freed slaves had come into possession of such immense amounts of gold, silver, textiles and precious stones.

The precise details of how the Israelites acquired the Egyptian wealth have proven problematic to Jewish interpreters and apologists. God instructs Moses Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels of gold (Exodus 11:2). As translated here (according to the King James Bible), our ancestors were being told to participate in a divinely authorized scam. Although they knew that they would soon be fleeing from Egypt, and had no expectation of returning the valuables, they disingenuously approached their neighbours on the pretext that this was merely a temporary borrowing.

The moral difficulties inherent in this narrative were acutely evident to Jews throughout history, and hostile gentiles were quick to cite it as evidence for the Torah’s questionable ethical standards………

“I thought we only took matszoh!” My sister remarked.

Of course, discussion ensued (it always does…) and apparently God told the Jews to ask their neighbors for their wealth…no other explanation in the cites.

It got me wondering. Enough of the bible makes no sense. You hear fundamentalists citing that a man should not lie with a man—to make homosexuality a big sin—but in that same section of the Bible (Leviticus? Not sure, as it is a bit redundant), we should not eat shellfish, cloven hooved animals (pork, goat), men should wear payos (the side curls—really no explanation there), and men can sell their daughters to fellow countrymen. yes—sell their daughters.

I’ve read several Bibles, all probably written in English by Christians, and never is the weatlth thing mentioned in Exopdus. never.

Is it in the Talmud? The Talmud is a scroll, not abridged, but whatever, there are enough cites on the internet that I still wonder—were the Jews to trick or threaten their neighbors of the wealth they asked for? & then they weer supposed to give this wealth to God.

One relative surmised that the Jews were more indentured than slaves like we think of—like what the Christians did to black people. There is still slavery, but rarely are the slaves in chains unless they are part of a prison crew. Whatever—-it’s not explained. Another part of the Bible to question…and realize, the Bible is not about being good or fair.

Delilah Got Lost

Several years ago,Ii took in a Whippet (she came from Whippet Rescue & Placement: WRAP) to foster. I really didn’t want to keep her as I already had 2 dogs & she was extremely large. I believe she’s about 25″ at the withers, but…she bonded to me quickly and was housebroken. We tried placing her once, and she panicked, so I agreed to pay her adoption fee and kept her.

The story I got was that she came from a hoarding situation. The ‘rescue’ took in 19 dogs including 2 litters of puppies, and we in Chicago got most of them. Funny thing…they were all housebroken and leash trained. I had taken a male, but he started bullying my other dogs, so I returned y him and agree to take Delilah.

Delilah didn’t seem to have any bad habits, but I noticed she was very dog aggrressive on the street (sometime being tethered to a human via the leash will do that, no matter what the breed). She was also definitely looking for someone. She had been bonded to someone, and I don’t think she was given up willingly…so I am now skeptical about rescue from hoarders unless the person conveying the dogs was actually involved in ‘rescue’.

People on s the street always ask about Greyhounds, “Is she a rescue?” Since my other dogs are definitely Whippets, and did not go through rescue, I tell people the truth—& and people need to know this: Ethical breeders who love their dogs take them back. My male was returned to his breeder for chasing the cat, and my tiny bitch was returned at age 7 because he owner suffered a medical crisis. Delilah, the ‘Grippet (she’s so tall, I think she might be a Greyhound/Whippet mix) was ‘rescued.

I’ve been taking her to dog training for a couple of years, and it’s obvious, someone had worked with her. She knows how to do everything. She can do an ‘about turn’ and a ‘finish’—which can be complicated to teach.The problem is that she’s unreliable. She’s a totally different dog in class than she is in the neighborhood.

Sometimes dogs take a dislike to other dogs and you don’t know why. I had 1 whippet who hated arctic breeds/dog with manes, Some dogs don’t like black dogs. Whatever: Delilah is fixed on small dogs.

Many Greyhound rescues will not give a dog to a family that has smaller dogs or small animals because they will chase & kill. When you take a rescue, that’s the chance you take—but at least Greyhound rescues are honest.

I went on an overseas trip a few weeks ago,and my roommate agreed to take care of the dogs. My tiny old bitch adores him,. You should see how she looks at him. Delilah? Will take food from him and even sleep on him or come up to him to have her chin scratched, but she often goes into the yard and won’t return if he’s standing at the door.

So it came to pass after I had been gone almost a week that Delilah escaped from the yard. We now know how: she had watched up flip the latch on the gate and kept trying herself until she got it open. She was not running AWAY. She was looking for ME.

My roommate messaged me on FB messenger, and I told him whom to contact (Lost Dog Illinois, Pawboots Alert, 311/Chicago Animal Care & Control, and to post on FB). Of course, I was sick at heart. I’ve only lost a dog once before, about 20 years ago when we were in the park and he got hit by a bicycle and took off. He was found several hours later, scared and in the bushes, but I thought I’d go out of my mind. Here I was across the ocean, and I just had to stay calm. A few hours later, I got a message from another friend asking me if I knew Delilah was loose! Someone had seen her a mile away from where we live,took a photo of her, posted on Chicago Northside Greyhounds on Facebook, and my friend, just scrolling through saw her, recognized her, & walked over to my house to get my roommate after contacting the group and the person who had her. In less than 3 hours she was back at home.

I am forever grateful to the care and concern of my fellow sighthound lovers who got her and took her in. Social media is not a waste of time. We are getting dogs returned to their owners.