Decided to finally post!

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Hi everyone!

I've been lurking around here for a few months and decided to finally post. I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome almost a year ago.

I love dogs more than anything. I'm very interested in canine behavior and positive reinforcement training. I don't really want to go into this because I get into arguments with people about dominance theory and... other stuff. It's a very controversial field because not everyone is up to date on the most recent science, which is pretty frustrating and results in questionable welfare practices/human-dog interactions.
I also love other animals- particularly rabbits and betta fish. I want to have a ton of pets in the future, the majority of them rescues. I think I might want to be a dog trainer, and also work in rescue and have a rescue and sanctuary for dogs, rabbits, and farm animals.

I love music almost as much as I love dogs. I play guitar in a band. I'm the only guitarist The singer used to play guitar, but now he doesn't want to, which sucks because I like writing for multiple guitars. I'm a girl and everyone always assumes I'm the singer. Once someone knew I wasn't the singer, so then he asked me if I was the bassist Also, once an old man asked if I was "what do they call those girls that follow the band around, groupies?" But being in a band is awesome and we're actually doing pretty well. Things are starting to happen. Just the very beginning of things, but it's exciting. We're coming out with a new EP sometime this winter. It's got a couple of awesome guest vocalists that I'm not allowed to disclose yet. I'm not a great guitarist, I was always more interested in music theory and song writing than actually playing guitar, so now I need to work on technique, which is hard without a teacher because I don't really know where to start.

I'm an animal science major at UVM. I'd love to do a music minor, but at this point I really don't have enough room for all of those credits so I might minor in psych instead, which requires less credits.

Something that might be of interest to some people: Temple Grandin is coming to my town in a couple of months and doing three lectures. The first two are free and one's on humane livestock farming, and the other is on autism. I'm definitely going to try to go to those two. The third one is a fundraiser for a local humane society and is about our connection with companion animals. I'd love to see that one too but the tickets are $100 (apparently you get to eat dinner or something with Dr. Grandin too). But that's something I'm looking forward to. She's one of my top three favorite people in the field of animal behavior (and training).

I guess I'm sorry that I wrote out my life story, or future, I guess is more accurate. But not really. It's like 3 am right now and I'm so tired but I can't sleep. So I'm just going to stop typing now.

tl;dr version: I'm new-ish and have Asperger's and I like dogs and music. Hi!

So I guess I might be around more, or you can message me if you want to talk, especially about music or animals! I don't like talking frequently so it might take a while for me to reply, but I also don't like ignoring people, so I will try to reply as soon as I can/log on/feel up to it.

Welcome to the wrong planet, I hope you feel happy here.

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

I love dogs too. Anyway, welcome to the community.

Welcome to WP Wow, it must be so exciting to be seeing Temple Grandin, I would love to see a lecture by her someday.

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Questions are my favourite form of communication