Tegan Chapter 4: Occupation

Tegan was the first dog I ever had where I didn’t know her backstory. All my previous dogs had come from breederst. But with Tegan, there was only mystery. She had been found on a rural road, bloodied from an attack by other dogs, and no one knew where she’d come from or how she’d survived. I found myself wondering about her constantly. Was she the smallest of a litter, tossed aside and unwanted? Had she wandered too far from home and been left behind? Or was she just one of those dogs built to run, born restless, destined to travel until someone finally took her in?

One thing I did know right away: she was incredibly intelligent. There was something in her eyes, something thoughtful, measured, almost human in the way she observed the world. It made me think she might not just need a home, but a job. An outlet. A purpose.

To try and piece together her origins, I reached out to a breeder of Farm Collies, specifically ones with black and tan coats that looked remarkably like hers. Everyone who met Tegan seemed to want to assign her a breed as if a label would explain her. They would say things like, “She must be part Rottweiler,” or “Definitely some Bernese Mountain Dog,” or even, bizarrely, “Maybe a Dachshund?” It honestly annoyed me. People were desperate to define her in terms they could understand, as if that would make her more real to them. But to me, she was already fully herself, clearly none of those things.

When we visited the breeder, the resemblance was uncanny. His dogs were much larger, about thirty kilograms, nearly twice her size, but the bone structure was identical. He gave her a physical assessment and noted the similarities without hesitation. Tegan had the frame, the posture, the presence. She was just a smaller version of his dogs. I wasn’t sure why I needed that confirmation. Maybe it was about grounding her in something, giving her a history, or at least a connection to something I could name. But I think, looking back, it was more than that. I think I was already trying to defend her right to be who she was, undefinable, complicated, a little wild, without letting the world reduce her to something easier to explain. However, my life was less than stable during this time, and we were unable to return for

more sessions. Although, my father suggested she could be hired out to chase the geese off the golf green in the gated community where I lived. I supposed I was trying to figure out my. own usefulness at the same time.

I was trying to find a direction for my own career during this time. The product sales position at the membership warehouse was low pressure. The friend from church who helped me get the job was very good at selling any product, which motivated me. While there, I met someone in fitness sales, and felt motivated to translate my experience and sucess to that field based on my background as an athlete. I must say, however, fitness sales is one of the most toxic cultures I've ever worked in. While I knew having "sales training" could apply to any future career field, I reached a point where listening to a man with a big ego and liked to hear himself talk for 20 minutes about how sales was about less talking and more listening had been checking out PDQ. I'm most definitely a "show me my setting an example" rahter than mansplaining shit to me, kind of person.

The first time I interviewed, I was not offered the position. It took a second time even to get my foot in the door. My supervisor was an older black man who also had corporate experience, and I vibed with him a lot. It was everyone else at the organization that was toxic drama. "Hustlers" who would steal my sales out from underneath me. We - my supervisor and I - were transferred to a location out near my boathouse. In this location, I also met a long time friend who was from a Persian family, had been a backup dancer for Prince, and had repeated harassment about a porn video online she had done 10 year before.

It was around the same time inappopriate flyers appeared in the fitness center about her past in porn, that the (also Persion) sales manager, was stealing the high ticket sales I had lined up. My issue was that I had a 6 month probation period to prove that I could meet the sales requirements, and that month I had lined up that big ticket sale to make sure I passed. I escalated it to HR, which made me the squeaky wheel, that needed to go, and he fired me out of retailation. He "claimed" that he would have taken care of me??

However, my goal all along had been to pursue a career internationally, and that was probably not the track to reach my goals. After leaving that position, I connected with an older Engineer in my networking events who claimed he wanted to offer his mentorship out of the goodness of his heart. He met with me to try to beef up my resume that was suffering from these holes from the horrible retail position during the recession. He did help patch up the holes and build a more cohesive story. He also introduced me to the international organization where he was on the board. That was about where the benefits he offered me ended.

He did connect me with an internship in international business, and the manager was a woman from Moldova. The idea was for me to get experience, while attending all of the networking events to connect with people who could offer me a long term position. However, his role at these networking events was horrible! He would introduce me as looking for a position, and then proceed to tell them all of the reasons they shouldn't hire me! I thought good grief, I can sell myself way better than this, and this guy needs to get out of my way! He was becoming more of a liability to me than an asset. It was ot just me that saw his condescending behavior treating me like a child.

I had started to comment about it to my manager. One day he stopped by her office while I was working with her on upcoming marketing strategy. He talked down to me like I was a teenager, and thank goodness she heard it. She told him outright he could not talk that way to grown women.

I had been considering law school, again, as a consideration as a path to a career internationationally. There was an event with recruiters from law schools all over the country, so I attended. Afterward, I went to the local law school and scheduled a meeting with the head of the international law department. It was quite an informative and interesting discussion. He told me with my background, if I wanted to work in Europe, I needed to be brand consicous. His opinion was that if my masters degree was not from Yale or Harvard, I needed to attend graduate school in Europe. He was also very critical of the lack of diversity in his program. He admitted maybe he could speak freely because he would be retiring soon, but he told me that the lecture of 23 year olds who had all been educated in the same university systems had no diversity of thought, regardless of their ethnic bacground. I have to admit that this perspective informs my views of looking at publishing industry makeup today, where there is no real diversity of thought.

That was an era where I developed my professional outlook perhaps the most. A member of our international business oranization was a German woman at an M&A firm, and I was recruited to take over a position there while the organization was undergoing international growth. However the CEO there was an older white man who was not a particularly healthy or happy individual. The outgoing staff member training me warned me about his tantrums. He called me a "virgin, a nun, and a lesbian," in front of members of the firm. All of that came in handy when he tried to threaten to fire me or interview my replacements in front of me. Apparently the lawyer I called for a consult was a friend of his, so he got the memo really fast that he had zero leverage to criticize me or make my life hell.

My best friend from Romania, could hardly believe the stories I would tell her from this position. We referred jokingly to the Justin Bateman film "Horrible Bosses," except that if we had made a plot to try to kill him, he appeared to be indestructable. He had a few bypass surgeries, and hit a large stag (with a 12 point rack) which killed the buck, but my boss walked away unscathed. I joked that if we made any attempt to kill him, it would fail because he couldn't die.

However, during this time my mother also became terminally ill, and people like him were the last thing I had any kind of badnwitdth to manage.,

Tegan, on the other hand, was fearless and indestructable in the best way, and unlike me the men who needed to tear people down, she took care of everyone around her. That was most certainly one of the occupations she came to fulfil in her life. Her teperament which enabled me to take her everywhere, her calm demeanor. Whether it was a direct correlation or not, she certainly found a role taking care of us, those around her.