November 2010

Turkey

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Last November I was riding my bike down a busy street in my town when I saw a turkey walking down the street.

Yes, a turkey.

He was on the sidewalk and so was I. I got off my bike so I could pass without scaring him.

As I passed, he began clucking at me. (Yes, turkeys cluck. I know that now.)

Then he began running toward me.

He came up close and looked up at me. Looked me deep in the eyes.

No joke.

He clucked.

He looked.

He clucked some more.

He was about a foot away and his head came to my knee.

It was like he knew me. (I’d never seen him before.)

To my untrained eyes he appeared to be a teenager turkey.

I said hello and then I began walking my bike away.

He clucked excitedly and ran after me.

He walked beside me. He became obviously distressed if I got too far ahead of him. The clucking would increase and he would pick up the pace so that we were walking side by side.

People in cars stopped and stared.

People across the street stopped and stared. Camera phones came out and I’m sure I appeared on many local Facebook pages last November.

I noticed the turkey would stare intently at me with his little black eye on the side of his head.

He was truly LOOKING at me. He was present in a humans rarely are.

He wouldn’t let me out of his sight.

There was something oddly comforting about him.

Each time I would stop, he would stop. When I began walking, he would walk. It was the avian version of Simon Says.

I walked to a park to get him away from the speeding cars. He found a worm or something in the grass and promptly forgot about me.

I noticed that I felt more than a bit disappointed that food could get in the way of our connection.

I got on my bike slowly. I hoped he’d see me leaving and come running toward me as he had all the way down the street.

But no.

He was busy looking for food.

I felt oddly alone as I rode my bike home.

🙁

I told a few friends about the experience and I thought about the turkey from time to time, wondering how he was doing.

I wondered if he’d gotten hit by a car. That thought made me very sad.

So I tried not to think about it.

Last Tuesday I was riding my bike on the same street and low and behold, there was a turkey on the sidewalk.

I got off my bike and sure enough: he came running up to me, making a slightly deeper clucking sound than I remembered from last year.

It was him!

Same turkey. I’m sure of it. Unless all turkeys like me this much.

He was a tall adult now and last year’s drab brown feathers shown iridescent.

I’ve never thought of turkeys as beautiful before but he was so beautiful.

He clucked excitedly and followed me as I walked my bike down the street.

People stopped and stared.

“I’ve never seen anything like that! A wild turkey following a person,” one guy said. “He really likes you.”

“Yes, I met him last year,” I replied, as though I was talking about an old friend. “Perhaps I’m the turkey whisperer,” I mused.

“Perhaps you are,” the guy said in wonder.

He took a picture of us. I smiled. Turkey looked up at me with adoring eyes.

Other people lined up on the opposite sidewalk to stare at me and Turkey walking down the sidewalk. Cars stopped and iphones came out.

We are probably on Facebook again this November. Me and Turkey.

We walked beside a retirement home and a woman who worked there came out. “That turkey peers in the window at the residents sometimes. They love him. They become animated and alive when they see him.”

“Oh, that’s sweet.” I stared at Turkey and he stared back at me, clucking.

“There are a few wild turkeys around here,” the woman continued. “One got hit by a car last year and we had a funeral for him. A lot of people came to the turkey funeral. Everyone who came was quite upset.”

“I’m so glad it wasn’t this guy,” I smiled.

“Yes, he seems to really like you.”

We walked away, me and Turkey. We stopped at the red light and then when it turned green we walked through the crosswalk.

People stared and pointed, pointed and stared. I felt a little embarrassed. Like we were famous or something. Turkey looked intently at me as we crossed the street.

We reached a patch of grass and he began rooting around for worms or bugs or whatever it is that turkeys eat.

I kept going.

I looked over my shoulder at one point, hoping he’d run after me.

But he didn’t. He was deeply focused on whatever was in the grass.

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Pet Sitting Business Book!

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Horray!

The business book for pet sitters is now available for preorder.

Two years ago I began writing this book.

Then I decided to go on my trip to India and Bali so I put the writing of the book on hold.

I came back from my trip clear that I wanted to finish the book before I left on my next sabbatical (my next trip will be for four months and I’ll be leaving in February 2011–more to come about that trip in a future blog post!)

My business book for pet sitters was about 85% complete but I was having a hard time completing the final 15% of my book.

Have you ever climbed a really steep mountain and experienced that last little bit of hiking to be the hardest part?

That was what I was going through with the book.

Anyway, I told my business coaching (yes, I have a business coach!) about my fits and starts around completing the book. She gave me a firm talking to about my book that was (metaphorically speaking) sitting in the corner and not getting enough regular attention from me.

She asked me what it would take to finish it. I told her I needed weekly and perhaps daily support around completing it.

She suggested I get a writing coach and so I did. Within 3 weeks of hiring my writing coach the book was nearly complete!

Amazing what happens when we business owners (and writers) get support, eh?

We are now doing final editing of the book and will be laying the book out in a beautiful and easy-to-read ebook format. The ebook will be ready in December.

I’m so excited to share my secrets for pet sitting business success with all of you pet sitters. This book is a culmination of the knowledge I have gained in my 15+ years of owning and running my large pet sitting company as well as the many years I have coached pet sitters to business success.

Many of you have already preordered the book–if you have ordered your ebook you can be assured that you will receive your copy hot off the press in December!

If you haven’t yet ordered the book and you’d like to: you can preorder the book now and save $5 by going to this page: Six-Figure Pet Sitting Book.

(Please note the $5 off special is only good through November 2010.)

Wishing you much pet sitting business success!
-Kristin

Pet Sitting Business Book! Read More »

How to Protect Your Precious Web Copy from Theft

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It’s funny.

I wanted to write this blog post because I recently had a coaching client ask me about how to deal with her competitor that had copied her website text word for word.

I told her what to do (as I will instruct you below).

What I haven’t done in a while though was check my OWN pet sitting website against plagiarism. So just now I did what I’m going to instruct you to do and you know what?

I found 3 pet sitting websites in various parts of the country that had taken a lot of my pet sitting website home page text and used it word-for-word on their home pages.

Uggh.

It’s not a good feeling to see the words you worked hard to come up with on another pet sitter’s website.

And not only that–here’s a little-known fact: web copy that is duplicated word for word on two or more sites results in lower search engine optimization for all of the sites that have the duplicate copy. This is the search engine’s way of making sure the playing field is wide open for all of us and not just inundated with multiple, duplicate sites. (Nice of them, isn’t it?)

So when someone copies your website text not only have they stolen your words but they’ve lowered your search engine optimization ranking (and their own).

Here’s how to check your website to see if your text is being copied and what to do about it if it is:

1) Go to Copyscape and put a banner at the bottom of all the web pages that you want to protect against web copy theft. Even though I have this banner at the bottom of my site, I still get pet sitters copying my text. However, fewer pet sitters copy my text now versus when I didn’t have the banner on there so get this on your site as soon as possible.

2) Enter your website address into Copyscape’s search bar to see if anyone has copied your website text.

3) If someone copied your text, send them this email:

Dear ________
I noticed that you have copied the text from my pet sitting website on
your home page (or whatever page was copied).
Please change your text immediately. Having the same copy on your
site makes us BOTH come down lower on the search engines and it’s
stealing. Please email me to confirm that you’ve made the changes by
____________ (a week from the date of the email). Failure to do so will result in legal action.

Thank you,
Your Name
Your Business Name
Your Business Website

4) If you need to take legal action you can search for “Prepaid Legal Services” online. Prepaid legal services are available in most states and offer inexpensive legal service for $30-40/month.

Prepaid legal services will draw up a ‘cease and desist letter’ and mail it to the party that has copied your site. If that doesn’t resolve the matter you can retain legal counsel at a discounted rate for attorney fees. You can cancel the monthly membership after the issue is resolved and start it up again when/if you need additional legal services. Using a prepaid legal service is a very cost-effective solution for pet sitters needing to resolve this and other legal matters.

5) Check Copyscape every couple of months to make sure your text is not being copied. Again, this will protect your search engine optimization ranking as well as your text.

How to Protect Your Precious Web Copy from Theft Read More »

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