Month: June 2016

- michelle 6 Comments

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder

This post contains affiliate links to help keep FurryFinches running. For more information, please review my disclosures page.

Borderline Personality Disorder (abbreviated BPD) has a very bad name, mostly because it is difficult to understand. I talked about Personality Disorder Myths last week and briefly mentioned a few common misunderstandings about BPD.
For example, there are very few named portrayals of characters with Borderline Personality Disorder. The primary example is Girl, Interrupted, where Winona Ryder plays a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder (which is a terrible portrayal of Borderline). Read more

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My Top 5 Money Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them)

This post contains affiliate links to help keep FurryFinches running. For more information, please review my disclosures page.

Part of being human is making and learning from mistakes. Today I’m sharing a more personal post, looking at my 5 worst money mistakes. I’ve touched on how little I learned about money from my parents and I’m going to share the hard truths I’ve had to learn for myself.
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- michelle 8 Comments

Personality Disorder Myths

A client with a personality disorder once described their experience to me. They described it like this: Imagine living your life, watching your actions like a TV screen. Like you couldn’t control what you’re doing and no one understands what you’re going through. No one believes you when you tell them you feel like you’re not in control and you don’t know how to explain it.
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- michelle 4 Comments

10 Ignored Behaviors That Cost You Money

This post contains affiliate links to help keep FurryFinches running. For more information, please review my disclosures page.

Every day we make hundreds of decisions: what to wear, what to eat, where we go, what we do, what we buy, and more. Our learned behaviors play a large role in how we make these decisions: some we learned from family members, some we learned the hard way, and some are just how we learned to do it on our own. Some of these behaviors are alright and some are not great. Today I’m going to look into some of the behaviors I’ve seen or done and how they cost you money.
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- michelle 4 Comments

Becoming A Better Therapist: Getting More Experience

I’ve mentioned several times about my experience towards becoming a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT). I’m not going to go into the full process about how that happens today, but I want to talk about why I decided to take a second job in the mental health field. I spent a lot of time thinking about my decision and here’s the list of things that I took into consideration when making my decision:
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Pooch Perks Review: What's In Your Box?

This post contains affiliate links to help keep FurryFinches running. For more information, please review my disclosures page.

Thursday, I received my Pooch Perks box! I’m very excited to share our experience with you! Before I start my review, I want to give you a little information on Pooch Perks.
Pooch Perks in a Miami-based company that provides subscription boxes for pets. The have several different options for box sizes and contents. They also have options for either treat-only or toy-only boxes.
I tried my best to summarize their mission and goals, but if you’d like more information about them, please go to their about page.
Here are the things I find most compelling about Pooch Perks as a company:
– They donate a portion of the proceeds, from every box, to neglected and abuse animal charities. They list their organizations on their website.
– “We believe in helping those that cannot help themselves and are committed to rescuing dogs in need. A portion of your monthly Pooch Perks subscription is donated to organizations that rescue abused and neglected pooches.”
– Each month, items are selected by the company owners and tested on their own dogs before they determine what will go into the box.
– All products are made in the United States.
– The put an emphasis on high-quality ingredients for treats, mostly selecting Natural, Organic, Non-GMO, and Gluten Free.
– “Are tested by our human bakers and their favorite pooches (Yes! We eat the treats.)”
– They give preference to small batch, socially aware treat companies!
 
Before I go into my experience with these toys, I’d like to share that Scout is a destructive dog. He’s the only dog I’ve ever known in real life to be able to destroy Kong Xtreme toys. Because of his nature, the bulk of my reviews will be related to Atticus’s experience with the toys.
I’ve also included this video of their joint play (and this isn’t even him trying):

Pooch Perks Box

After my order was processed, the box was sent via 2-day shipping. Check out this adorable name tag:
Pooch Perks Review Outer Box
It’s addressed to my pups! I love that so much!
When you open the box, you see this beautifully wrapped package.
Pooch Perks Review Inner Wrapping
Look at that sticker! How precious! Not only that, it is easy to open with no tearing or other nonsense. Simple, clean, and to the point.

This month’s theme is Finding Dory.

Turtle

This turtle is so cute! This was the second favorite of my pups. He squeaks and it very squishy. Addie loves to carry him around all over the house. This is the only toy we have that doesn’t have apparent marks from Scout. He’s still cute, green, and filled with stuffing.

Nemo

I personally thought this was the coolest toy. It floats! That’s awesome to me, even though we don’t have a pool or anything. This guy took a beating! He ended up with only minimal stuffing after about 2 days with Scout. This is not to say that he isn’t a high-quality toy. I believe he was. Unfortunately, not much stands up to Scout the Destroyer!
On a positive note, the more damage a toy takes, the more the dogs appear to like it. Nemo continues to be the favorite (if they pull him out of hiding). They only made a small hole in him so I refilled his stuffing several times before they made the hole too large. I was also able to repair Nemo with only minimal effort.

Magikarp (not its real name)

I’ll be honest, I was pleasantly surprised to see a Kong toy in the mix. I was definitely pleased because Kong toys have been very well made in my experience and stand up to some beastly play. This particular toy has a squeaker and a crinkly tail. We’ve never had a toy that crinkled so I didn’t know what to expect. It turns out our dogs love the crinkle!
My dogs love the Kong Magikarp the best. Unfortunately, they love him too much. Scout ripped his top fin within minutes! Despite that, they continue to climb onto the table over and over again to get him back. He has since been relocated to a safe place until we can watch them play.
I was so excited to get the opportunity to try a new type of toy and to learn more about what my dogs love!

But Wait! There’s More!

It also contains high-quality treats!

These treats are a cracker-like consistency. Scout and Addie both loved them. While they weren’t the favorite of the bunch, they were happy to do a number of tricks to be rewarded with these.
These were the clear favorite. They are larger treats that can easily be broken up into smaller chunks. They have a squishy-without-being-sticky consistency and a strong aroma. I’m not going to lie to you; they smell delicious. My husband actually tried a bite of one and was pleased.
Scout and Addie were basically willing to do the impossible to get one of these. Now that’s the mark of a good treat.
I was surprised and pleased most by these single ingredient treats. It’s hard to find a single ingredient dog treat in many of our local stores. They are freeze-dried and have a bit of a crumbly feel to them which makes me worry less about our smaller dog.
They have a strong fish odor to them because their only ingredient is pollock. Regardless, our dogs tried to climb my husband to get to them.

All three treat types were overwhelming winners at our house!

Finally, we have the grooming product for the month: Aromadog Derma Pooch Spa Therapy Bar.
This stuff smells amazing! It’s lavender scented, which is my favorite. I let my husband smell it and, no joke, he said, “I’m using this.”
I haven’t used this yet because we don’t wash our dogs that often for health reasons so unfortunately I cannot give a review of this bar yet. I’ll let you guys know after our next bath time!

Highlights

– The box has AMAZING contents! I can’t even find half of what’s in the box at our local Petco.
– The treats are made of quality ingredients. My dogs LOVE them.
– The packaging is adorable and shipping is super fast!

What to Consider

Because I have a destructive dog, I know what it is like to have to buy toy after toy and toy, trying to find something that will survive the week. For those of you with dogs like this, this box is for you. This way, you don’t have to go to the store several times a month. You can just get your toys in the mail each month, plus treats!
If you have a dog that loves to play and chew without destroying, this box is for you.
However your dog likes to play, you’ll find something great in each Pooch Perks Box.

Overall

These boxes are picked and packaged with love. If you’re looking for a convenient way to spoil your pets, I would highly recommend this box. Plus, for a limited time, you can save 30% with the discount code SWIM30.
 
 

What are you waiting for?

Get Yours Today!
- michelle Leave a comment

What is Schizophrenia + Schizoaffective Disorder?

Schizophrenia is another frequently misunderstood disorder, though is portrayed more accurately in the media. Schizophrenia is commonly misused to describe someone with multiple personalities. The name schizophrenia is made up of two parts: “Schizo-,” meaning split, and “-phrenia,” meaning mind. Unlike the term “split mind” might indicate, schizophrenia is the mind splitting from reality, rather than splitting into pieces. Read more

- michelle 7 Comments

A Peek Into My Budget: Living on 53% of My Take-Home Pay

I’ve mentioned several times before that I’m incredibly focused on paying off my debt as soon as possible. Today I want to go more into detail on what that looks like on a monthly and yearly basis. My goal in sharing this with you is to show you how I prioritize my spending.
First of all, all the numbers and percentages are based on my take home pay from my full-time job in mental health. My husband and I have separate finances and so my example will likely look differently than your situation.
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- michelle 2 Comments

What I've Learned from Commuting 100 Miles A Day

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If you didn’t already think I’m a super weird person, I’m about to solidify that idea for you. My husband and I both commute 100 miles per day, to and from work. Here’s a little background on my situation and our commutes:
My husband and I live in Southwestern Virginia, and we work in vastly different fields (geology & mental health). I still work at the same company that hired me right out of grad school and he works at one of the 9 district offices for the Department of Transportation. His office is 110 miles from my office, and we live in the middle. Read more

- michelle 4 Comments

What is Bipolar Disorder?

Let’s talk about Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder, previously called manic-depressive disorder, is a mood disorder. Bipolar Disorder is one of the most commonly misrepresented disorders in the media and the general public. Bipolar Disorder a mood disorder characterized by two opposing types of mood symptoms; hence the name “bi-“ meaning ‘two,’ and “polar,” meaning ‘opposites.’

Bipolar Disorder is not changing your mind quickly, being indecisive, or going from happy to sad in a matter of minutes.

There are actually two types of Bipolar Disorder: Bipolar I Disorder, and Bipolar II Disorder (abbreviated BPD1 & BPD2). Because of the differing mood symptoms, I’ve listed the criteria for specific episodes before going into detail about both types.
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