Fun

Tag Line: Making Dogs and Their Humans Happy

NOTE: As Oliver continues his class assignments in Antioch’s BUS504, this is his response to Assignment #2: Interest Area.

Me and my human on a hike at Lizard’s Mouth

I believe that canine and human happiness is an essential element to a quality life. From my personal experience, I am happiest when I am with people and I notice that my people seem to be happy when they are with me. Also, I enjoy being with other dogs as I have noticed my people enjoy being with other people too.

My interest area is finding ways to bring dogs and people together more often so they can increase the joy and happiness in their lives. I hope to do this by building an online community of dogs and their people that focuses on generating offline interactions. Examples might include walks or hikes together, dog play dates, or dog sitting exchanges.

Geographically, I will start in the local Santa Barbara area, where it is easiest for me to meet and connect with other dogs and people in order to establish a sufficiently large core community. The model can certainly expand and be applicable anywhere in the world. I would focus on dogs that already have people (and vice versa) which could include individuals, couples, families, and elders. If things go well in this project, I might even let some cats participate (Despite the stereotype, I really do not have anything against cats.).

Oliver’s Personal Assessment Test

Here are the results of my personal assessment test, taken through the Adizes Institute online tool. As you can see, I have a strong “Integrator” personality, which is consistent with my love of people and desire to always be around them and make them happy. The secondary “Administrator” trait properly reflects my desire to have predictability, clear direction, and order in my world. “Entrepreneur” was the lowest trait, which corresponds to that fact that I really do not like change.

I found the test results to be consistent with my world view, with the surprise that the “Is, Should, and Want” lined up more than I expected. I guess my world reflects what I want it to be more than I thought. Taking the test was a bit of a challenge. Some of the questions did not seem to apply well to me and the keyboard keys were spaced too closely together for my paws. On a positive note, the mouse tasted really good.

Oliver Takes Business 504

My name is Oliver and I have been invited, with the permission of the instructor, to audit Antioch’s BUS504, Entrepreneurship & Leading Change:

At its heart, Entrepreneurship is the development, aggregation and successful deployment of resources: financial, human, and intellectual. Innovation and creativity exists in every field of endeavor and within any organizational structure. Although the entrepreneurial spirit might be behind change in an organization, it also drives the successful implementation of carefully realized plans-and the knowledge of available resources. This course will provide students an opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial ability and, through self-reflection, explore who they want to be as a leader, social business and non-profit champion, entrepreneur, and agent of change.

I am very excited about this course, since I have a project that I would really love to make happen, and I think this course may help me move it forward. I plan to blog about my experience in the class and I hope that can help my fellow students (helping others is really important to me, as you will find out). I just love Antioch’s social mindset and paws-on approach.

“Money! Money in Oz!” cried the Tin Woodman “What a queer idea! Did you suppose we are so vulgar as to use money here? … If we used money to buy things with, instead of love and kindness and the desire to please one another, then we should be no better than the rest of the world.” -L. Frank Baum