What in GODs name did I spend 9 years in Florida for you ask? Well…let’s begin…at the beginning. To read more about my time in Florida head over here.
“We can teach from experience, but we cannot teach experience.”
— Sasha Azevedo
I moved to Florida in 2011 for school. I attended the University of Tampa…in Tampa. The UT of Florida. Keeping in mind its completely different than UT (Austin) and UT (Tennessee). Its small, private, no football team to speak of and (when I attended) full to the brim with people from the northeast. This is when I met Kourtney. We were in our first biology class together freshman year. We picked up kickboxing together and we had a mutual interest in the outdoors.
I got Mako while I was in Texas on break from school. I remember that my parents didn’t want a dog in the house. So I said, that’s okay, I’ll just go back to school early. Well, nine years later he’s still here. We both went back to Tampa together. He went with me on my first trip on the AT and many many camping and hiking trips.
Mako is named after my favorite shark, the Mako Shark. It’s a quick, smaller species of shark, that usually maxes out at 4 meters long. There are two varieties of Mako shark, long fin and short fin. Much like Australian Cattle Dogs– the ACD (the breed that many people know of) and the Australian Stumpy Tailed Cattle Dog.
Then I got Zorra. And things changed. Moving from one dog to two dogs was a learning curve. But it was good. I had to learn much more technical maneuvers for our agility training because to be honest compared to Zorra, Mako is slow IN AGILITY. He’s quick when he wants to be and when he is playing or gets zoomies. But in agility he has always preferred to lope around a course never run.
After school was over, though I love the outdoors and exploring new places, I found that I did not want to pursue that as a career. That being marine science. Now I have kept fish for as long as I can remember, so I often say that I got a degree in one of my favorite hobbies. An expensive hobby in both meanings. I moved into the banking world–well I started working at a small credit union in Florida.
While I