About the Author of the Award-Winning You Did What With Your Wiener? Blog

Hi. My Name is Jessica and I started this humble little blog back in November 2010.

Like most bloggers back then, it started out as a hobby that, if I was lucky, only my friends and family were going to read.

A lot has happened since I published our first article.

This blog:

• Has won several industry awards
• Inspired me to go back to school to earn my Master’s Degree in Digital Communications
• Inspired me to turn what I love into my career
• Has inspired thousands of people to live more active, healthier lives with their small dogs (especially Dachshunds).
• Inspired me to start a Dachshund club in Seattle

My official bio – at least one version anyway – now reads something like this:

“Jessica lives and breathes everything Dachshund, hiking and camping with dogs, and blogging. She’s the Chief editor of the award-winning blog You Did What With Your Wiener?, has been hiking with her dogs for over 15 years, and runs an 800-member Dachshund Club in Seattle. She also helps other pet bloggers leverage their blog into a business at Pet Blog Biz and helps pet-related businesses develop a strategy to drive traffic to their blogs at PetTalk Media.”

That’s the public info about me though. It doesn’t paint the whole picture of who I really am.

Therefore, I thought it would be fun to list 7 random things about myself most people don’t know:

1. 1. If I have an empty space on my calendar, I will fill it. There are hundreds of things of my bucket list and I am also easily distracted by fun opportunities that come up…or anything shiny 🙂 I love being busy and doing all of these fun things but sometimes I overbook myself and it becomes overwhelming.
   2.  I married “late in life”. I didn’t grow up dreaming of my perfect wedding to prince charming and just figured it would happen if it happened. At 36, I finally met the love of my life and tied the knot.

1. I am an aspiring semi-professional photographer (like, aspiring to even be what I would consider semi professional. Ha, ha). Nature photography is my first love but I discovered I really enjoy capturing the best moments of our pets. Although I probably won’t every become a “professional photographer” in the traditional sense, my photographs are a big part of why people like this blog.
2. I was once a wildland firefighter. I loved the hard work, the spontaneity and the danger. I didn’t love destroying my knees and back though. I ultimately decided to give it up, albeit very reluctantly at first, to pursue a career that I went to college for (although I left that after 10 years in the environmental science field).
3. I grew up on an urban farm but also grew up in tract housing…they were one in the same. I just drove by my childhood home the other day and was amazed at how small the lot was. It seemed so huge when I was a kid. I don’t know how my mom managed to fit all the raised-bed gardens, a chicken coop, a dog pen, several bunny hutches, three compost bins and a duck pond on about a 1/8 acre (including the house) piece of land. I always remember that place as a paradise as a kid.
4. I would love to travel the whole world and experience every culture. I have dreamt about it since I was 20. I am getting older, and my relatives I want to care for in old age are getting older, so I am starting to resign myself to the fact that it may never happen. However, I’ve also become content with seeing as much of the United States as I can.
5. I don’t think I am very good at showing emotion, and most people who know me would probably agree, but I am a very caring sensitive person. Maybe that is why I put on such a tough act – to protect myself because if I let myself me as emotionally affected by stuff around me as I could be, I probably couldn’t function. I admit that this has led me to a place where I sometimes lament that my relationships with family and friends aren’t as close as I wish they were though.