"Well I Might Be Moving To Montana Soon. Just To Raise Me Up A Crop Of, Dental Floss."- Frank Zappa

O.K. Here's where I try to tie all of this together. Thank you all for your patience.

So let's recap the story so far.

I'm sitting right squarely in the middle of middle age.

I'm facing a lot typical middle age health problems. Most of which stem from stress and diet.

I have a go nowhere dead end job that's never going to get better. In fact, in all likelihood I've already had my best day there. I hate my job, but I'm grateful to be employed.

Somehow I became the patriarch of a 7 person 4 generational family. My role models of my life have instilled a moral compass in me that dictates that I have to do everything in my power to take care of and provide for them.

My Mom, my Wife, and I just returned from a family reunion / vacation in small town KS. It was 4 of the best days in recent memory.

Is there anything else??? Oh yeah, I like dogs. In fact some of my most influential friends have been dogs.

I think this pretty much catches us up.

One thing I haven't really touched on is the place I live. That being Sarasota FL. My family arrived here on Thanksgiving day in 1972. It's been a beautiful place to live. The weather is always warm and tropical. Granted you pay a premium to live here. Florida has one of the highest cost living of all the states. Sarasota has the 2nd highest property tax rates in the state. Only behind Ft. Lauderdale.

There has always been lots of jobs and I have rarely been unemployed.  I was once fired from job around noon, and had two job offers before  I made it home.

That is before the housing bubble broke. Sarasota's economy has revolved around construction and tourism for the last 50 years. After the bubble burst in 2008 things around here rapidly declined. There were no jobs in construction and the industry even suffered mass lay offs. It didn't stop there. The " mom and pop" restaurants that served the construction workers soon began to suffer. Along with building supply companies, the local gas stations, pretty much everyone felt the ripples of the bust.

Then came the B.P. oil spill in the gulf. While no oil ever washed up here, our tourism took a big hit anyways. People just didn't want to take a chance of having tar balls ruin their vacation. Our service industries took another hit.

Add all this together with banks going under and a nationwide recession, and you get one of the highest unemployment rates in the country (over 13% a couple mths. ago. Rivaling  Detroit at the time. We are back down to around 11 % now.)

While we were in Hutchinson recently, I looked at the local classified section of the paper and WOW! There were 10 times the number of help wanted ads in their paper compared to ours.  When you factor in the relative sizes of the two towns, that is really amazing. Hutch is about 2/3's the size of Sarasota.

When we got back home and I did some checking. This time in the real estate market. Comparable houses there are renting for 30 to 50 % of what I'm paying down here. Plus some of the houses I was looking at were farm houses that sat on several acres of land.
I think the difference between these two places  is down in FL. real estate speculators have been "flipping" houses for years driving property values through the roof. When they suck every penny of equity out these houses they either sell it off at above market value to another house flipper who in turn does the same thing continuing the vicious cycle. Or they rent it out at an exorbitant rate. Even homes that  haven't been flipped repeatedly are affected by the rising property values of surrounding houses. So in turn they raise the rental price on their house.

In KS. I don't think house flipping has been such a big thing and many of the homes have been in the family for generations. Chances are, the  mortgage has been paid off for years.  I think they're more concerned about having renters in there that take care of their home than building equity for the next flip.

Let me move on, somehow this is turning into an economics lesson.

I guess the seed of this idea was planted on Lisa and I's trip to Osawatomie. Lisa said " If we ever had to move, we would have to move here." That was the catalyst. On the trip back to Florida, my Mom asked " Have you ever thought about moving back to Kansas?" (The truth was over the past 39 years I had often about thought about it, and always came back to the same answer. No I do not want move back. ) I told Mom that's funny because Lisa and I were considering it. Mom told me she would really to go back home. She had been talking about it for a couple of years already.

Not long after we got home I told the rest of the family about what we were thinking about. Everyone was willing to think about it themselves. That is everyone except Anthony. Chris is thinking that it might be a good way to make a new start. Danielle was intrigued at the thought of Kaylynn going to a school where there aren't 50 kids in a class. Anthony on the other hand flatly rejected the idea. His opinions are of value to me, so I asked him why. His reply was that Florida is his home. I can understand this, Florida has been my home for a very long time. At his age I didn't want to leave either. So far this has only been polling. Fishing for opinions.



Usually it goes something like  " I don't wanna go to work, I wanna stay here with you." On this particular night my protest was " I don't wanna go to work, I wanna move to Kansas and start raising dogs. "
Lisa asked "What kind of dogs?". "German Shepards and Chihuahuas."  I said.  She just looked at me like I was crazy. I kissed my wife goodnight and headed off to another night of loathing my job.

Day by day, hour by hour, the idea continued to evolve. We could find a farm house with a stable and a barn. I could convert the stables into kennels, and set up my print shop in the barn.  Lisa could go back to school and get certified in child care and run a day care from our home.

The way I'm crazy about dogs, MeMe is crazy about kids. She used to provide day care for several of our friends' kids. She would quiz them with flashcards, teach them to sing songs, and color with sidewalk chalk. Quest (our nephew who first called Lisa " MeMe" and coined the praise "MeMe's World" for her day care.) was reading at a college level in the 4th grade.

Soon I had started this blog. Not only as a public confession to somehow make me committed to the plan. But also to document the evolution of the idea and the kennels.

Last week I registered the domain of  www.livingindogyears.com as place to give the kennels a presence on the Internet.  After researching other breeders online, I realized I needed something other than puppies to drive traffic to the site. I could make custom collars and leashes. My Dad and I used to supplement our income selling handmade leather goods when I stayed in KS. back in '82/'83. Plus ever since Goober's unfortunate demise I've had an idea for a safer tie down system for outdoor dogs. The plan is still evolving everyday.

So... ( ready for this? Big announcement time.) We are going to be moving back home to south central KS. It's no longer a question of if, it's just question of when.

When is a totally different question. I have 38 years of loose ends to wrap up here. Everything from a house in foreclosure to my half failed print shop. Not to mention my father's "estate" ( read: pile of crap my Dad left me.)and four decades of personal relationships.

I have never been one to do things impulsively. Truth is I may be a bit too deliberate. All the things I need to do may take me a year to do.

I intend to use this blog to keep you apprised of my progress and share a dog story here or there.

So until next time, I'm living in dog years.