[Stoneface]

I am new here, but need some help or guidance. This post may get a little long because I am very descriptive and want to put this in context for anyone interested in reading or replying. Before I start I want to say that, for those that know about the Myers-Briggs types, I’m borderline INTJ/INTP, so emotion is not really my thing, but I worship objective truth and a sense of emotion is necessary to be objective about this. I don’t live by my personality type(s), but I recently took the assessment and the descriptions fit me so closely it’s spooky and thought it may give a prelude to what I’m like.

I’m going to be 28 on the twelfth. I graduated from a small, poor-quality university in Joplin, Missouri last December with a degree in management. I am about 6’3” or 6’4” and weigh 350 pounds now after losing about 100 pounds since October 18, 2018 when I had mini-gastric bypass. Starting from the beginning, when I was younger I was very happy, very healthy and felt very loved. Like a lot of little boys I took on my dad’s point of views and beliefs as my own. I idolized my dad because he was such a strong personality, made me feel safe and I loved him very much. He has been a stone alcoholic for my entire life, but I didn’t realize it when I was younger. When I did realize it, I tried to justify that he was a drinker, but not a drunk. As time has gone on we have grown farther apart, to the point of hating each other. He never does anything for anyone selflessly and when he does do something that seems that way, he’s always sure to talk about it, give himself a pat on the back or seems to do it to make himself feel good. Almost like a martyr. He absolutely loves himself and feels he is thinks he’s better than other people. He has no problem telling you so. He’s aggressive, dominant and belligerent. He doesn’t see it. He sees himself a some kind of upholder of vigilante justice. He hates being the same as everyone else and will take a stand that opposes common sense or the common good just for the novelty of being different, he loves being controversial and LOVES to be the center of attention. On the anniversary of my mom’s death he had me take him to night clubs so he could go out in her honor (they used to party a lot) and it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. He was like a peacock strutting his feathers. He bought five whiskeys and sat by the dance floor while he glared – not looked, not stared, but GLARED – at the guys on the dance floor. Then, he targeted on of them and told me he had to take this guy down. The guy was a little drunk guy that really thought he was tearing up the dance floor. He was trying to be cool, but he was just having fun. I asked him why he wanted to do that. My dad said because he was the best and had to destroy the show off to prove it and let everyone know. It broke my heart to hear him say that. That’s how he is, though. Very dominant. That’s how most of my family is, but not to that extent. He’s 6’7” and weighs about 300 pounds. To look at him, he looks like Grizzly Adams. He’s been athletic, capable and actually very intelligent. He’s also very ignorant, stubborn and hurtful. We often fight and in the middle of it he asks if I could be wrong. I say, “of course I can be wrong. Can you be wrong?” He always says it is impossible for him to be wrong. He literally thinks he is always right. He is more opinionated than ANYONE I have ever met in my life and when he makes up his mind what we should do, if we do anything else, our only option is to grit our teeth, bear down and get ready verbal beating. He wales on us, my brother and I. He burns us down until we just give up. We put no stock in human relationships and it is like we are emotionally handicapped. I swear Stryker is sociopathic and can burn down a “good” friend without even batting an eye. I cannot have a relationship with a female because I am so self-conscious about myself. I am always worried people don’t like me and affection makes me sick. A woman who sits next to me at work will pat me on the back when she walks by on her way home for the day and I want to run to the bathroom and throw up.

My mom was molested as a little girl by her father, uncles, friends and neighbors. She had a rough start and it really messed her up. I just recently found out she was by-sexual. When I was a little boy I remember she was a great mom, or at least seemed to be. We would talk and she would hug me and care for me. She made me feel loved. But early on, way before my dad and I split, she and I split. It became obvious that she was emotionally still an adolescent. She would cry often and lived in her partying days. She was a slug at best and had no will or discipline. She had just been too emotionally compromised. She was a drug addict, loved alcohol and thrived on drama. She equated sex to love. When I was a baby she and my dad ran a prostitution ring in Phoenix and were even brought up on charges for black mailing a congressman. It was very hush-hush and involved a closed court and all. My dad used to be heavy into drug trafficking, auto theft and burglary. They were professional criminals and never, not once got caught. Judy (my mom) loved to give us hints about their shady past to try and stir up some drama when things got bored. My dad acted like he hated it and said we didn’t need to know about that. Judy died March 1, 2011 from overdosing on methadone, which I understand is like prescription heroine. Stryker and I didn’t shed a tear. I don’t know if that means anything, but we just didn’t really like her. She died ten feet from where I’m typing this and Stryker sleeps in the same spot where she died. Doesn’t bother us at all.

When I was eleven my dad brought a dog home that had issues. Found the dog at work. I trained him from a book I found in the school library. The way I am, my personality, is very obsessive. I have been diagnosed or suggested to have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Bi Polar Disorder, Tourrettes and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Just titles to me and I don’t take medicine or anything. With my personality being what it is, I need something to latch onto, something to wrap myself and submerse myself in. I guess dogs just came along at the right time. For whatever reason I latched onto it and totally threw myself into studying dogs. Before long I decided I wanted to spend my life involved with dogs, as a profession. That was about sixteen years ago. I have been obsessed with dogs ever since and given my resources I have done great things with them. I have one events and titles with just a couple of dogs, beating out big names. I am a very good dog trainer and, more than that, I want to be a breeder. I know where I want to be. I want to have a small boarding kennel to make money to live on and fund my involvement with dogs and all that that entails. I am not any kind of materialistic person. A big house, nice car, expensive clothes, etc. mean little to me. I’m a more introverted, intrinsic person. I derive enjoyment from frugality and simple things, like a dog on point or puppies. I just can’t put a price on that and am not much or social titles or classification. I don’t need much to get by.

I don’t want to pass the buck, but I think I am the way I am because of how I was raised. In any event, I have never been able to hold a job. Until my last job, which I held for nine-and-half months, I have never held a job more than five months and that was just a part-time gig. I thought I was a lost cause and would never be worth anything, but I have come to the realization that it isn’t that I’m lazy or undriven, it is that the jobs have been wrong. Until recently I have been 450 pounds. Try to stand at a work station and do muldane tasks for eight hours while you’re carrying a quarter ton. It isn’t easy. More than that, I need to be mentally stimulated. My last job I was ace, I was a phone salesman. I could sit instead of stand and was given freedom to be creative in how I did my job, often needing to come up with a way to get around a problem. I was great and one of the top three salesman out of hundreds for my entire time there. I left to take advantage of an opportunity in Texas, training birddogs (which is what I want to do with my life), but couldn’t find work in Dallas. I graduate a year ago and after quitting Aegis I came back home from Texas with my tail between my legs and went back to Aegis, but in a different division that was very muldane and basically just sat and dialed phones all day. Never talked to anyone, just dialed. I lasted five days. I finally, just a month ago got back on at another call center doing technical support. I don’t love it, but I can handle it and am very good at my job so far. I am making just a little more than minimum wage, which isn’t enough to make end’s meet given my loan for the surgery and my student loans, but it is a step in the right direction. A baby step maybe, but a step just the same.

There’s the context, here’s the issue.

I am going to be 28, live at home with my dad where I sleep on a mattress on the floor in the living room. We use the oven to heat the house. I fight with my dad constantly, I hate his new wife with every ounce of my being, my dogs are a burden – a real monkey on my back – but I can take it in stride and believe I can keep them and carry them with me to success. It isn’t going to be tomorrow and isn’t going to be a smooth ride, but I can get there. But, I have no support and if I gave them up I could get there a lot faster then get more dogs. I love my dogs, though. They aren’t just pets, they are my friends. They aren’t just my friends, they are what I want to build my life around. I have two dogs, both birddogs. My dog hounds me about them CONSTANTLY. He blind sides me with emotional attacks about how I could do so much more and put myself in such a better position if I just gave them away, then I could get more dogs once I’m in a good position. He will say I can give them up then go to grad school, law school or take on a second job, save and get to where I need to be, with a good career, nice car, big house then get more dogs. I try to tell him I don’t care about that stuff, but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t mind me being here, he minds thinking that I’m here and limited by my dogs. The thing is, I don’t see how the dogs are what my dad says they are. I’ve been looking for a job for a year and haven’t been able to find one. Where I am at now is not a great job, but you have to have a degree to move up in the company and it is very easy to move into management. The company also has centers located all over the country. Right now my plan is to stay with this company and save as much as I can. I would like to build up about $15,000 in savings, transfer to a center located in a place where boarding business would be good and I would enjoy to live. I could secure a mortgage with enough work history and build a small kennel to start taking on dogs and transition from work to operating the kennel full time.

This is what I want to do. I don’t know if I can, I don’t know if I will. I know my dad won’t quit and I know my dogs fill a certain void in me, emotionally and personally and even intellectually, that I have never found another way to fill. My dad is wearing me down, though, and I know if I give up my dogs he will find another thing to rail me about and will harp on me until I change it. I am naturally extremely athletic, I think I’m a pretty smart guy, I’m real good looking (especially for my size) and God gave me gifts that a lot of people will never be fortunate to have. I feel lucky in that respect, but I am trying to do damage control. Earned a degree, losing weight, working on my personality constantly, trying to hold my jobs longer, etc. But, my dad doesn’t see it. He will level me, emotionally, with a smirk on his face and poison on my words, and not even consider what he’s saying could be hurtful. He is incredibly harsh and heartless. I thought by now I would have a house, a little land, a small kennel, a career as a dog trainer or doing something I enjoyed, a wife and kids. I don’t know how the hell this happened or why the hell I can’t seem to climb out of this mud hole I’m in. I bought the dogs half way through my degree thinking I would have a decent-paying job by now and could be supporting myself. I am lost and don’t know what to do. My dad’s words lay on me way after we quit fighting, but we always end up fighting not long after the last one ends. I’m just tired. I feel like conceding and just going through the motions. Go ahead and just accept that it isn’t going to happen, find homes for the girls, work myself into a company or maybe go to grad school and work myself into so much debt that I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to pay it off. Things never seem to get better or break. People try to encourage, but they usually don’t live with their parents and aren’t so poor they can’t pay attention.

Any help or words are appreciated. My dogs mean so much to me and I would be lost without them. Please, if you do reply, don’t take on a tone that I need to get rid of my pets and get serious about life. My dogs are my life and it is a conscious decision. Moxy, my Pointer, is the dog I want to build a line of dogs on. I’ve looked thirteen years for her and she is all I want in a foundation *****. A carpenter needs his tools, an artist needs his brushes and paint, I need my dogs. I feel utterly lost.

Please, ask any questions you like and don’t feel like you’ll offend me. This is anonymous, so I am not embarrassed to answer anything. I seriously need some help here.

[Miswimmy1]

It sounds like you've had a rough past. I think that if you are really serious about owning a kennel and breeding your dogs, you have to carefully plan out how you are going to achieve that goal. I understand that your dogs mean a lot to you, but I think you are too fixed on the outcome as opposed to the work its going to take to get there. 15000$ is not enough money to move out on and you're going to need to have a decently paying job to take out a mortgage. The focus during that transition period seems like it should be earning enough money to pay rent and get yourself in a stable position. Opening a business is going to come further on down the road. I think you have an idea that has potential, but I warn you to not get ahead of yourself. Focus on what steps you have to take and tackle those one by one. Don't get caught up in your ideal end product. If that makes sense...

[shezbut]

I am sorry that you've had such a difficult time with your parents, and have witnessed truly horrible practices by them both. ((hugs)) to you and your dogs.

In my experience, over the years, I have learned that a good sales man is always in demand ~ regardless of the company! The key is finding an aspect (of the companies that your interested in) that you can believe in. Use that to your advantage & sales will increase dramatically, which equals larger salaries. Use that money to pay for your passion ~ your dogs.

Pay off your debts, invest in property and slowly build your kennel business on the side. At first, it will take some extra work and devotion, yes. But, remind yourself that you're doing this so you can afford to build a successful business of your own...and that takes some time, devotion, and hard work. You CAN do it! However, your goals need a little bit of tweaking as there are lots of expenses that come along with starting a business (and getting it moving into making a profit). Trust me on that one.

Hope that this helps you ~ very best wishes to you and your dogs.

I think you have a good plan but your current living situation is going to make it very hard. I think that's why you are writing so I am not telling you anything new. Sleeping on the floor must make you very tired.

Is there a happy medium? I don't know much about owning dogs but I do about pets. What if there was somebody you could work for on a pt basis or volunteer and they had a kennel? Then you could work to get on your feet, get an apt, etc. I am not suggesting getting rid of the dogs. You would need to be able to visit them when you wanted. With any luck you could apprentice. Using your analogy... Most artists would love to have the proverbial cottage in the back where they could go do their art. Most are lucky if they can afford to rent a studio to work in.

[lizardlady]

know if I give up my dogs he will find another thing to rail me about and will harp on me until I change it.

This jumped out at me. I think you already realize this, but you are never going to satisfy your father. If you make one change to satisfy him, he will move on to something else to beat you over the head about.

Let's talk practical matters about your dogs. How many dogs do you have? Are you able to provide for their emotional, physical and vet needs? If you can't take care of their needs, then you need to make arrangements so they are taken care of even if that means finding new homes for them. If you are able to care for them, I believe it would be a mistake to get rid of them. They help fill an emotional need for you.

You have a long term goal of owning your own kennel. What short term goals can you work on to move in that direction? You said you earned some championshipsw with one of your dogs. What about breeding her and selling the pups for some extra income? You don't need a kennel for that. I used to work with a woman who paid for private school for her two kids by breeding and sell Shitzus. She did it from her home.

[avlady]

i agree with shezbut and the rest of the replies, you end to do what you want to do rather than your dads plan.

[gayleggg]

If you can take care of your dogs wellfare, do not give them away. You will never forgiver yourself and definitely grieve their absense. I had to give a dog away once that I loved but the difference was that I had to choose one of two. Due to fighting between them. I have never forgiven myself even though I made the only decision I could.

I like the idea of breeding her at home and selling the pups for profit. It's a start toward your dream.

Tune your dad out. I used to have to tune my dad out when he got on one of his tirades.
Good luck