About Kathi, BT Lover

What You Need to Know About Boston Terrier Pictures' Webmaster

If you want to know more about Kathi, owner of Boston Terrier Pictures, then this is the page for you!

Giz & Me on our trip west

I know that when I visit a website I like, one of the first pages I visit is the "About" page, so I can find out more about the humans behind the site. Are you like that too? If so, I'm here to help you out...

I've Always Loved Dogs

So, the most important thing I can tell you about myself is that I LOVE dogs. All kinds of dogs, but especially Boston Terriers. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I've had dogs all my life. It started when I was about 7 with a "pound" dog called Jeff. I don't even know what kind of dog Jeff was, some kind of big pointer-like mutt, closely related to Tramp of Lady & the Tramp (remember that old Disney cartoon movie?) I loved Tramp and he loved me, but he was a wanderer. Every chance he got, he'd break loose and run wild for a day or two... or three. And he always came back all beat up... apparently he was a bit of a carouser too. One day we got a call from our vet... seems Jeff had come knocking at his door, needing to be patched up!

In a pattern that was to repeat itself several times over the years, my parents got rid of Jeff, as he was just too much trouble. I don't mean to make my parents look bad... they were doing the best they could with very little money and 3 kids, but they definitely had an easier time parting from their dogs than I did (and do).

Anyway, over the next few years, I had a cat (Snuffy), who ran away, and two different cocker spaniels, Brandy and Candy. For one reason of another, both of those dogs also were "gotten rid of". It was very sad... I wondered if I would ever have a lasting doggy companion. Then, when I was a freshman in high school, my parents offered me the choice of a new puppy or a bike. I chose the puppy! My new friend was a miniature beagle, more black and white than brown and I named her Susy (her papers name was "Susanah Rose Mike of the Ridge".)

Susy was a high-spirited, smart as a whip pup who provided many laughs and stories over the years. She loved to run free and broke out of the house, her pen or the chain every chance she got. She lived for many years, and for a while after I got married, she came to live with us in our apartment. It wasn't a good place for her, though, and eventually she retired home to live out her life with my parents and brother. Her love of running was also her undoing, as she tragically died during a snowstorm in a field near our home after breaking loose one last time. We didn't find her body until spring.

My first dog as an adult was a mixed breed who had a poodle dad and a wire-haired terrier mom. His name was Bandit and besides being cute, his most memorable feature was his vertical leap of about 4 feet. Bandit lived to the ripe old age of 14, feisty till the day he died suddenly of abdominal cancer. He was also my daughters' first dog.

Figuring Out What Kind of Dog I Didn't Want...

My love affair with BTs started about 8 to 10 years ago. At the time, I had a little black poodle, named Maddie, that I adored. We adopted Maddie when she was 4 years old, from one of my co-workers. She'd been verbally abused as a youngster and was terrified of men when we first got her. But with our love and kindness, she blossomed into the sweetest, most loving dog I'd ever had. And she got over her fear of men too.

But Maddie was getting older by the end of the 90s, and I knew she would not be with me for too much longer. Because of that, I started to think about what my next dog would be like... because I knew I would always want a dog companion in my life.

Let me back up once again, though... I'd also had a boxer, named Lucy. She was actually my youngest daughter's dog, but we all loved her. She was pure love... Unfortunately, Lucy died an untimely, but not atypical, totally unexpected, early death from a brain tumor, at only age 6. That was probably the hardest doggie death I've ever had to deal with. It's a sad fact that we almost always outlive our dogs. When they're old and have had a full life, that's a bit easier to take, but when they're still just a youngster, like Lucy, it's hard.

So, anyway, when I was thinking about replacing my Maddie, I knew that as much as I loved the boxer dog breed, I didn't want another dog who might die so early. Also, I loved Maddie, but she was an unusually un-yippy poodle. I was afraid if I got another poodle, I'd be sorry. What do do? What to do?

How I Ended Up With a BT

Gizmo at 3 months

In the early 2000s, I'd started noticing these cute little black & white dogs called Boston Bull Terriers that were almost like mini-boxers, with the "smushy" faces. I thought they were adorable, but didn't know much about the breed. So, I started doing research into Boston Terriers, and the more I found out, the more I wanted one. I talked with my life partner, Jim, about it and he was in favor of it too.

Eventually, our dear little Maddie girl developed kidney failure and died in late 2003. She had a long life, though, and it was a good death, if such a thing can be said. Since I'd had her so long, though, her death was still traumatic and wrenching. At first, I didn't think I'd be ready for another dog for a long time.

However, within 6 weeks, I was hankering once again for a doggie companion to keep me company while I worked at home (and other times too, of course). I found I was lonely. So, the search began to find the perfect Boston Terrier to join our family.

At the time, BT pups were hard to find in my area of New Jersey (where I lived at the time). We went around to most of the pet stores in the area, looked at online breeders that were recommended to us, etc. We found a few contenders, but none that were quite right. A few weeks went by with no luck in finding a BT that I was ready to commit to (I had some pretty rigid ideas of what I wanted mine to look like).

Finally, I called a pet store way out in the boondocks in NJ to see if they had any Bostons and found out they had 2 puppies coming in the following Wednesday. We showed up right after work that afternoon, and the little girl was already being evaluated by another family. So, we took the boy into the play area to see what we thought. I knew right away that I liked his coloring, though I thought that the black dot in the middle of his white blaze on top of his head was a bit strange.

He seemed pretty shy, but after a half hour or so, he started to warm up to us. He was so tiny!

Baby Gizmo

In the end, we decided to take him home... and Gizmo became part of our family. You can read Gizmo's story here...

So, that's how my Boston Terrier came into my life. But how did this site about Boston Terriers come to be, I hear you asking? Well, it's like this...

My Personal Journey...

In case you couldn't work it out for yourself so far, I'm in my 50s. My kids are grown and I'm in my middle, golden years. My partner (the love of my life) and I call our 3 dogs "our second litter." Though we both spent our childhoods and first two decades as adults in the East, now we live in the land of our dreams, the Rocky Mountain West, currently in Boise, Idaho.

Life is good overall, though we're certainly not living the life we thought we'd be living right now. Still, it's in our future, we just know it. But there I go, getting ahead of myself again...

All my life, I wanted to be a nurse. It was really the only career I ever thought of. And not because it seemed like one of the only career options for a young woman growing up in the 60s and early 70s, at the very dawn of the women's lib movement. No, I just always liked the idea of caring for people, in a medical way. So, that's what I did! I went to college and got my nursing degree and worked in the field for more than 20 years. I loved it... but I got tired of it.

I'm a person who loves change (weird, right?), and I am always in search of new challenges. For a long time, my career in home health administration offered that to me. And then it didn't any longer. So, I went in search of a new career, and I found it... as a telecommuting software trainer and technical writer. You see, I had been loving computers for a few years now and I'd helped implement a clinical software program at my home health agency. So, it was a pretty natural progression.

I found out I didn't really enjoy it, though, and at that point in time, working from home left me feeling lonely. So, after a couple of years, I went back to a corporate job as a consumer health education writer. That, I liked a lot, but alas, the company I worked for made some bad decisions and ended up downsizing. That's when I decided to use what I'd learned about writing and start my own home-based consulting business.

Enter a New Career... as Entrepreneur

I enjoyed that, but when you're a consultant, you're still dependent on others. I was fortunate to luck into a number of freelance writing opportunities. I say lucky, because I'm not much of a networker. Still, though the jobs kept me afloat (more or less) for a few years, I always longed for something more. I loved the idea of being completely in charge of my own destiny, and not beholden to the whims of either an employer or a contracting agency.

Over the years, I'd dabbled in a few home business ventures, never with any luck at all. I didn't have what it took for most of the things I dabbled in, but I did learn something about myself with each failure. Finally, in the early 2000s, I began to learn about starting an online business by building websites.

I started reading books by some early pioneers on the Web, including Corey Rudl and a former emergency room doctor named Ken Evoy. I like Dr. Ken's style so much, I read all 5 of his books as they came out. Each one had a slightly different angle, but all of them were about doing business on the Web. Then, Dr. Ken launched a brand new set of software/business education tools called Site Build It, or SBI for short.

SBI is what finally made it possible for me to have a thriving home-based business that was all my own. It didn't happen right away for me, though. I did take some missteps along the way. But, as is my nature, I never gave up. I kept plugging away at it, and finally joined a mentoring program in 2004. That program coached me in building my first successful SBI site.

That gave me some financial breathing room and has also been a continuous learning experience. It's been a blessing too, to have my website making me money, because in August of 2005, my domestic partner, Jim, and I pulled up stakes and headed west for Missoula, with no home arranged, no job for him and not even knowing if we'd like it there. But through our journey, I knew my website would keep making me money and that my business was completely portable, no matter where I ended up, as long as I had an internet connection.

Our journey didn't end in Missoula, unfortunately. While Jim tried to find a good fit in a new teaching career, we moved first to north central Idaho and then on to Boise, where we're still living at present. Our home and Jim's jobs may have changed, but my websites gave us stability by chugging along making money throughout that time.

We faced another crisis when we got to Boise... my 74 year old mother's health declined markedly, landing her in the hospital 5 times in 10 months! Needless to say, my working life was almost nonexistent in that time. And then, she came to live with us and I assumed caregiving duties... which suffice it to say is an extremely time-consuming and emotionally-draining job. But — I'm starting to sound like a broken record here — through it all, my sites kept earning money. So I could care for my mom without worrying constantly how I'd pay for our next meal.

I had so much fun building SBI websites, I built a few more and this Boston terrier website is my latest creation (as of January 2009). We'll see where it goes, but one thing is for sure... there are tons of BT lovers like me in this world!

I have to say, it's been a wild ride the past few years, but one I wouldn't trade. I love what I do, and I have embraced my role as an entrepreneur. It's wonderful to be my own boss and I appreciate the freedom to set my own schedule and to be in complete control of my destiny.

Our Second Litter

Our Happy Family of 5

I'm happy to say that we now have 3 dogs in our life! Only Gizmo is a BT. We also have a rescue black lab (we think) named Cheyenne. She's kind of petite for a black lab. We found her one sub-zero January day in Kamiah, where we were living at the time. She had icicles hanging from her chin and had been roaming around loose for a few days when we found her in our back alley. She was scared of us at first, but eventually we coaxed her inside to warm up and have a good meal.

Our original intention was to find her owners and return her to them, but no one ever claimed her. After a couple of weeks, we decided to keep her as part of our family. She's sweet and loving and has the usual happy-go-lucky lab temperament. And Gizmo loves playing with her! You can read more about that on Gizzy's page.

Around the same time Cheyenne came to live with us, my mom adopted a new puppy, something she probably shouldn't have done, but there was no stopping her. Unfortunately, he health problems kicked in around the same time, and her little Molly proved to be too much for her. She was going to get rid of her, but I talked her into letting us take Molly temporarily (at that time, we still lived up north). I hoped at that point that Mom was going to get better in a couple of months. She didn't of course, but a few months later, she came to live with us permanently.

Mom and Molly had a truly joyous reunion when that happened. Even after all those months, Molly remembered her "Mama" and to this day, there bond is unbreakable. But Molly loves her new "Mommy" and "Daddy" too. So, now we're all one big happy family.

Did I ever in a million years think I would end up with 3 dogs? Absolutely not! But, we love them all to pieces. However, there is no doubt that Gizmo is my favorite. How could he not be, cutie that he is?

My Online Home Business

Just in case you're interested in seeing how building websites got me to the point of financial independence that I'm at today, I thought I'd put up a list. The thing I love about building my business with SBI is that anyone can do it. You don't have to be a techie or a great writer or anything. You just have to have a topic you're interested in and knowledgeable about (or willing to learn about) and SBI will teach you the rest.

So, here are my sites and if you're interested in getting some more ideas from what other SBIers are doing, check out this website directory. I think you'll see, you can build a website on just about anything!

Discover-Acadia.com. This is the website I've built with my two grown daughters about Acadia National Park. It's been a labor of love.

Powerful-Sample-Resume-Format.com. My resume site was my first real content site and is now almost 5 years old, getting thousands of visitors per month and generating the bulk of my income these days. I have a history in healthcare recruitment, which is how this site was born.

Your-Healthcare-Career.com. This is an extension of the site above, but specializes in helping people looking for a healthcare career.

Motor-Scooters-Guide.com. I fell in love with motor scooters a year or two ago, and with the energy crisis and recession, it just made sense to get one of my own. It was hard, though, to find information on them ahead of time, so I wrote this site to help others like me learn more about scooters.

Thrown-Together-Meals.com. This is my newest site before this one, to share my love of cooking spontaneous, quick, healthy meals. Feel free to contribute if you have any great recipes of your own!

HomeSweetBiz.com. This site is for those who want to learn how to make a living on the Web. There are many avenues to success, and I've tried an awful lot of them.

If you want to learn more about my SBI journey and how you might try it yourself, this page gives all the details and will answer your questions. Thanks for sticking with me through this long story!

Warmly,