My name is Tania... my Hive Intro

Hey there, I'm Tania. I decided to join and be part of Hive because I have a lot in my mind, ideas, photos and experiences to share with you about life and what I do. I will tell you a little bit about where I am standing today and a few things that encourage me to grow personally.

At this very moment I'm lying in bed waiting for chicken wings and pizza because three weeks ago I got a knee surgery and my doctor ordered me to not walk or even stand on my right leg for six weeks. He fixed several microfractures, structure the knee patella, restore the four joints and leave and blood cloth between my bones because I no longer have cartilage in my right knee.

OF course, when I woke up from the surgery and received the news that I will be no longer able to do many things I used to on a daily basis and which I enjoyed very much, such as dancing Flamenco, open air running and doing high impact excercise, I was pretty down and blue. But oh well, there are many other alternatives and my world isn't falling down.

I started to dance Flamenco when I was one year shy of graduating college and I loved it so much that I decided to join an academy and continue dancing and improving. In the university I graduated from, after finalizing the semester, every dancing group made a presentation in front of family and friends, I will post about that later.

Both show I was part of were amazing, but I used to get incredibly nervous and I forgot the coreography in more than one ocasion, even thought we rehearsed for months.

Right now I'm studying my masters in psychoanalysis and it has become my passion. I am now part of the Psychoanalysis clan, because both my parents and my sister are Psychoanalysts. To be honest when I began college I wasn't sure if I wanted to study business administration, nutrition or psychology but my mom convinced me to join psychology. Don't think it was my mom's discourse and will what made me make this choice, she was persuasive or insistent, she even helped me do a skill and competence test to help me out on this choice, and I believe I made the right decision.

I enjoy having patient appointments, I work with children, adolescents and adults. It is amazingly pleasing to see my patients grow and get better using their own mental resources, taking charge of what happens to them and watch their gradual but steady changes little by little. I mention little by little because it is never easy to change those things we do that make us anxious, stressed and hurt; many times we ask ourselves why do we keep doing those things that hurt us, but we keep doing them.

I stopped seeing patients when I got my surgery but it was only for a week; I didn't want to stop because one of the most important things of this job is consistency, especially with kids, so nowadays someone is driving me to my consulting office where I see my patients while siting down in a sofa. One curious thing was using my crotches and watching my young patients react and behave towards my situation, some where surprised, some others were worried and a few even assumed a caretaker or a doctor's position.

The best company during these hard days where I can't leave my house except for going to my office, were my dogs. I have two pugs called Noia and Pancho, a Chihuahua called Kiri and Begoña, a boxer.

The origin of each of my dogs is funny and curious, because ten years ago I was dying to get a pug. One day I attended a track race and I met a girl who had a pug of about 3 months old, I asked her how she got it and she replied "Oh, a friend of mine's dog had puppies and she is selling them". My parents have a rule: No male dogs in the house because they pee everywhere, so I asked if they had any females. They only had one left so next day I ran to get her and I finally had my first Pug: Noia.

A couple of years later, some of my parents' friends were giving away a Chihuaha with scabies, I decided to take her in, take care and cure her. I spent a lot of money treating her, I remember I even had to get her many shots until she was scabies free, then I took her to another Vet and he gave her some chamber something but the scabies always returned. In the end, my mom said we should try and cure her with old school techniques: We bought a very smelly liquid which you poured in water (and then the water turned white), then showered her once a week and finally the scabies were out once and for all, which allowed Kiri to grow hair.

Pancho was given to me by a close friend, her dog had puppies and he was the last one, he was delicate and weak and since my friend knows I love animals and take good care of them, she begged me to keep him, it took us twenty minutes to convince my mom but she finally said yes.

After one year of being born, Pancho needed both Femur surgery, so I took him to the vet, he got them but the day after, the veterinarian left to the United States to have her baby, leaving Pancho with in infected injury and a clueless owner of what to do. It took a lot of money and attention and care to get him out of danger, it was like having a baby: every night I had to tuck him in next to me, I had to wake up at every sign of pain or danger, cuddle every night to make him feel safe, give him serum so he wouldn't dehydrate and then wait for him to fall asleep again.

Last but not least, Begoña, who is the one that's been with me the least time but she's the one who has my heart. I found Begoña when I was with a friend walking around my neighborhood, we found her scared, dehydrated, full of injuries in her whole body and flee infested. My friend Georgina, who is like a sister to me, caught her and carried her to our car which was parked close. When I started to pet her inside the car, I knew she I was definitely going to adopt her, I knew she was mine.

That's the story of my four dogs, but in reality there are seven in my house, and when my sister was still living with us, there were ten of them.

Some other things that I enjoy doing is biking, walking, excercising in my garden, swim competitively, playing backgammon, watching movies about WWII, nazism and franquism, writing short stories and novels which in time I'll start posting here, reading, traveling and last but not least, despite it appearing futile and banal, I love going to eat at restaurants and spend several hours talking to my family and enjoying our time together.

I'm very interested in seeing what Hive is about and meeting the community, I hope that you liked my introduction.