100 Happy Days Again! Day One: Pet Sitting

I had such a good experience doing my Happiness Project at the beginning of this year, and I've been wanting to do it again. For some reason, it's not the easiest thing for me to start. It's not the looking for - and finding things that make me happy that I find difficult. It's the actual blogging about it - which is a very important part of the process for me. It's what keeps me on track.
So here I am.
December 1st seems the perfect time to start. I tend to get a bit gloomy around the holidays (although so far so good this year), and I figure if I start looking for things that make me happy now, perhaps I can skate through Christmas and New Years feeling better than usual.

Perk of pet-sitting: seeing the sun rise.

Day One: Pet Sitting
I've been pet/house sitting for the last several years. Not only am I paid to stay at people's lovely houses and take care of their wonderful pets, but it also allows me the opportunity to shake things up in my life.
Being self employed and a natural life-long night owl, I tend to run about four hours behind everyone else. While a lot of people get up at 5:00 or 6:00, I get up at 9:00 or 10:00. And I really like it that way! However, I think it's good to change things up every once in awhile.

When I pet sit, I'm pretty much on the animal's schedule. If the dog is up, I'm up. Right now I'm sitting a dog whose mom is an early bird, so the dog gets up with the sun. This means I'm up before the sun (if you can believe that), to get myself up and ready for the wild puppy energy.

The best thing about getting up so early? Yes, getting a jump on the day is nice but I'm loving those sunrises! Gorgeous. So, there I am at 6:30am, bundled up, throwing a ball to a dog, and letting that sunrise make me happy. Oh yeah, and this guy... this guy makes me happy too...

Yup... and this sweet girl....