Posted by Elena del Valle on October 6, 2020
By Linville M. Meadows, M.D., author, A Spiritual Pathway To Recovery
Linville M. Meadows, M.D., author, A Spiritual Pathway To Recovery
Photo: Linville M. Meadows
Addiction is a truly universal illness. It spares no demographic, cutting across all social boundaries: income, gender, ethnic background, age, and occupation. It can afflict an upper level executive, a physician or lawyer, a ditch-digger or a sales clerk. Substance abuse is found in every part of the world, with a prevalence of about ten percent. If you’re sitting at a meeting of sixty people, it’s likely that six are afflicted by addiction in one form or another.
When sober, addicts are wonderful people: kind, generous, and thoughtful. They are intelligent, hard-working, and creative. But when drunk or stoned, they become unreliable, dishonest, even mean. You will remember Dr. Jekyll, who injected himself with cocaine, unleashing the perfectly terrible and homicidal Mr. Hyde. Click to read the entire Guest Article: Understanding Addiction in the Workplace
Posted by Elena del Valle on September 24, 2020
By Joy Gendusa
Owner, PostcardMania
Joy Gendusa, owner, PostcardMania
Photo: PostcardMania
In this new pandemic age, many businesses felt the impact of COVID-19 in a major way, including my own, PostcardMania. The first wave of mandated closures wreaked havoc on our bottom line, dealing a massive 41 percent hit to weekly revenue earnings. Instead of sitting around waiting for our luck to change, however, we took several pivotal actions that allowed us to rebound to pre-crash numbers and have the best summer in our 22-year history.
The first thing we did was look around at all the coronavirus information overflow and say, “Holy smokes, we need to help our clients filter this and find relevant information.” (Small businesses are our primary clientele.) Small businesses were hugely impacted by the pandemic panic and mandatory shutdowns, and we wanted to help them find information that would help them stay afloat and maybe even thrive during period in history. Click to read the entire Guest Article: Covid-19 Marketing Idea: $117,514.21 Generated from Email Marketing
Posted by Elena del Valle on December 4, 2019
Guest Article by Sean Brown, veteran
Sean Brown, handler of service dog Pella
Almost every day, legitimate guide and service dog users are asked to leave hotels, restaurants, taxis, movie theaters, airplanes, malls, apartment houses and other public places because people don’t understand our dogs’ access rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Fair Housing Act and the Air Carrier Access Act, all of which protect people with disabilities. But even more often, people buy fake credentials and jackets for their pets and bring them on planes…especially at the holidays. This abuse of the system makes the situation even worse for people like me. It shouldn’t be so easy to pass off a pet with false credentials, but it is. In Florida, it’s a second-degree misdemeanor, punishable by a fine and community service time. So please don’t do it.
Dogs like my life-saver, Pella, are trained to perform more than 20 tasks that mitigate invisible AND physical disabilities. These dogs spend two years learning obedience and commands at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, and are provided to veterans like me free of charge. Trained service dogs can calm someone with severe anxiety, retrieve dropped items, provide stability for mental and physical in-balance, remind a handler to take his/her medication, turn on lights, and much, much more.
Pella makes it possible for me to live life without hiding behind a mask. Together we encounter crowds, shop in busy supermarkets, go to the gym and eat in restaurants without anxiety. Far from being a pet, she provides me steady empathy, physical support, and prompt reactions to the flashbacks, nightmares and stressors that used to be crippling. By contrast, non-housebroken, aggressive or otherwise untrained pets being passed off as service dogs often create trouble for merchants, the airlines and restaurateurs.
People can currently fly with an emotional support animal as long as they have a doctor’s letter, and many professionals say they now get pressured to write such letters for their patients. A quick Google search reveals that there are multiple companies that, for a quick dollar, will provide any animal with an ESA certification and “registration”. Often these non-certified and ill-trained animals bite humans, attack real service and guide dogs, relieve themselves in public and otherwise give legit service dogs a bad name.
This holiday season, please stop and think. When a working service dog is attacked by a pet that is being misrepresented, that service dog might be forced to retire. This puts the individual with REAL disabilities into an incredibly difficult situation that could have heartbreaking consequences.
It is not only against the law to pretend your pet is working to mitigate a real disability when you know it isn’t, but it is also just wrong. On behalf of the guide and service dog handlers out there with true need, please don’t do it.
After returning home to Savannah, Georgia, from serving seven years in the United States Army, Sean Brown tried to juggle five part-time jobs. As a disk jockey, radio personality, musician, broadcast voice of The Savannah Bananas, father of two kids, and the public address voice of the Savannah State Tigers Athletics, he was always on the move. But severe post-traumatic stress had Sean taking 16 pills a day. He was obese, angry, depressed and suicidal; plagued by anxiety and hyper vigilance. Then Sean was paired with a mellow black lab named Pella from Southeastern Guide Dogs and life took a complete 180. In 2019 he joined the organization as a fundraiser and spokesman. When he travels, Sean is constantly confronted by fake service dogs that make it hard for legitimate, highly disciplined and trained dogs like Pella. And that’s just plain wrong. This article was submitted via Southeastern Guide Dogs, where he is associate, Philanthropy.
