A TIME TO REMEMBER

Our battle together to fight his disease ended Friday, and my beloved Zeus has now moved on to what I hope is a good place. I know at times readers probably just tune out when I do things like this and that is understandable. We are all strangers that just meet here to share our common interest of trading, and this is not part of that. I will be taking a few days off from trading and posting in here so you may want to check back in mid week, this is hitting me hard. We rescued him at the beginning of 2010 along with a female, who were both from a breeder who had lost his home to foreclosure and had to place all of his dogs.

When we first brought him home we could not even get him to come in the house, he was so afraid of strangers. He had so many extra layers of skin he could barely see, and he had significant joint problems. We had a couple of eye surgeries done and got him to the point where his eye sight was perfect, and all those layers of skin were gone. We also had some joint surgeries on him that got him to a point where he should have been good to go for a normal life span. This were looking great for him and I was so happy to see him living such a good life. Once he came to trust us he became the happiest dog I have ever been around. I can only assume his shyness was the result of a bad home. The breeder had sold him and he had been returned to him, we did not get all the details. I did not care, once I adopt these wonderful animals it is completely on me to make sure I do everything I can to make their lives the best they could ever imagine having.

Zeus never came to fully trust strangers, and that was fine with me, he loved us like no dog we have ever had. When we got the diagnosis that he had bone cancer I was just devastated. We have had dogs with this before, and it is a terrible disease that takes them away pretty quickly. We tried everything and it only bought him a little more time.

We have had a really large number of difficult things like this happen during the last year, and it has been incredibly taxing on me. It has effected my trading as well as other parts of my life. If it had not I would be ashamed of myself. My wife told our vet afterwards that she was still glad to have had him, and so was I. We all see news stories about things like this where people fight and just never really have a fair chance in life. I do think it is incumbent upon those of us who can help others to do so, even if it is simply volunteering time if you cannot afford to donate any money. There are so many scams, if you choose to do anything do it with some local group not a national one. A huge portion of donations to national charities actually go to fund pensions of their executives, and this is not the case on a local basis. I think with the Humane society less than a dollar out of every $20 you donate, actually goes to animals, which sickens me.

I am going to have to take a little bit of a break from what we do in this area, just to try and recover some. I will get back in the saddle again. I am not sure that time heals all wounds, what time does do is allow perspective to deal with them correctly.

Zeus never saw his fourth birthday and that is simply not fair. There is a kid at my country club that is 14. He has a great demeanor, is very polite, and just a model child. However, there is one thing about him that is very different, he is bald. The reason he is bald is due to all the treatments he is getting for Leukemia. He has been through an incredible amount of difficult procedures, and you would just never know it. He reminds me of Zeus, and I can only hope that on some level I am the quality of living soul that they are.

I owe it to him to give him this tribute in my small little forum here. 

ZEUS I LOVE YOU AND YOU WILL ALWAYS BE WITH ME

It does appear to me with the markets we are heading down now and the cyclical down pressure has taken hold. There are some exceptions, but for the most part we need to look at shorting opportunities now.

I apologize to readers for recent posts, they just have not been of the quality I would prefer due to the stress this fight for his life was putting on me. I pledge to return back to betters levels of discussions.

Good luck this week