Experience[]
By Jeff Smigelski from Dayton, OH
I moved to Ohio to get my PhD in Environmental Sciences. Just starting out, I bought a house to fix up and also got to work on my PhD studying endless hours alone for all of the classes which were required to earn the degree. Once I settled into a lab to work in at my university, I set up a space to work and study while at school. In my lab, I found a book on hurricanes which had a full page story in it that showed a picture of a female yorkie terrier that had cared for a nest of baby squirrels orphaned by Hurricane Fran. I missed having a dog around since I lived with a yorkie at my parents and the picture reminded me of him. So, I made several copies of the page from this book...I mailed one to my mom and another I posted on the side of my refrigerator...and yet another I had placed near my desk in my office on a shelf. That was about two years ago...and I often saw the picture when I went to get something out of the fridge...or printed something in my office...but I never really paid too much attention to it, or so it seemed, since I had read the caption when I first saw the picture...but not really since. Still, I saw the picture almost daily.
About five months ago, I finally was finished with classes and now would just be doing research to earn my PhD. My house was fixed up...and I wanted to fill in that empty space in my house and life by getting a dog. I was thinking about something big, a Newfoundland, but at the same time, I had asked if I could bring a dog to work and my lab to sit next to me while I write my dissertation and was told by my university that if I had a small dog, that would be fine. So, my parents had come to visit in Ohio and while they were here in November, my mom said she would go visit some shelters to help me find the right dog for me. Back in October, about three weeks before they came to visit, she had emailed me a profile of a dog named Chloe who was at a shelter that she found online. This was a very cute dog and a yorkie mix but I happened to have a lot of research I was working on at the time and never got to the shelter to take a look at her before she was adopted out. So, when my parents came to visit weeks later, we just went blindly to shelters looking but not knowing what we'd find.
After two days of visiting various shelters...I decided to go back to one that had just closed as we pulled up the day before. We looked for about a half an hour but none of the dogs seemed to call out to me to take them home. Then, as I was walking out, I glanced through a window into a room with small cages in them and saw a small ear appear and disappear near the door of one of the cages. I remarked to my mom that there was a small dog in there and decided to just walk in to take a look. This room was a holding tank room for dogs that were just brought in and needed to be evaluated. However, when I walked up to the dog in the cage, I immediately recognized her as the dog in the profile that my mom had sent me weeks earlier, it was Chloe. What was she doing here? She was not supposed to be here. So I found someone that worked there and asked. The staff worker told me that Chloe was just returned about an hour earlier by someone who had adopted her but also had other dogs at their house which did not get along with her. I asked if I could see her and they let me take her for a walk. She was perfect...I could not see why she would be returned unless maybe it was the other dogs. So I asked if I could adopt her and they said they would check. A few minutes later, they came back and told me that it she could be adopted out since she had just been evaluated before she was adopted out the last time. They also told me that I was lucky to find her and happened to be there at the right time because the last time she was adopted, there was a waiting list of about 30 people...so I might have not got her before even if I tried. I happened to be the first one that saw her now since she got back, since she had not even been placed in the main kennels yet. To sum up, I adopted this little dog and since she already responded to Chloe, I decided to let her keep her name not knowing where it came from.
Once we left the shelter, we went back to my house. This was the real test since my parents, when visiting, had brought their three dogs with them. When we walked in the door and the other dogs saw her, they begin to play and to this day get along great. This left me wondering why she did not get along with the dogs of the previous owner that had just adopted her and returned her for me. I had always thought I was just in the right place at the right time and just lucked out in getting a dog that gets along so well in my house and that people love to have around at work in my lab. At least that's what I had thought, just luck...just coincidence...it was just meant to be...then I watched The Secret.
Fast forward to today...last night I watch The Secret and was inspired by the message. Then I started to think about my life to see if anything from my past might have been the result of "thoughts becoming things". As I was thinking about this, I decided to clean up my office and while moving stuff around, I found the picture of the dog that saved the squirrels after the hurricane that I had printed a few years earlier. I was kind of surprised...because my new dog Chloe looked almost exactly like the dog in the picture...and even though I had this picture posted for years on my refridgerator downstairs, I had never really made the connection. So, I decided to again read the caption...and then I was floored. The caption read that the dog in the picture was named Chloe and a yorkshire terrier. The visualization board idea presented in The Secret really works...could it be? This is what gets me...I don't have the exact same dog in the picture...and I can't say that I started out looking for one like that. However, I did post a picture on my refrigerator that made me smile and the end result is that I did find a dog that looks exactly the same and on top of that, somehow my dog Chloe has the same name. So...not only did putting a picture up of a dog that made me smile attract that type of dog to me, it also attracted the a dog named the same name...and it was only after I watched The Secret and stumbled across the picture again that I made this connection.
With that, I will continue to evaluate my life and see where positive thoughts and believing that I can achieve something has made a difference...and will continue to develop my outlook on life to attract the abundance and happiness that this universe has to offer.
About Jeff Smigelski from Dayton, OH:
Jeff is currently an Environmental Sciences PhD student at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He loves camping, being out under the stars, drifting in a boat on the ocean, or better yet, being in the ocean underwater 80 feet below the surface at night then turning off all lights and watching the bioluminescence glow like stars around you......things that make one feel connected to this planet.
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