Finding Security: Who Helps you in the Crisis?

My roommate wrote a deeply moving post about what happened today. I encourage you to read it here. Losing Alice continues to be a very painful thing for us, but the sympathy of others helps a lot. In this matter, I am above all else grateful for the vet and his staff.  They were very supportive and helpful to us during this. And yes, I know they were doing their job, but they were doing it WELL. In times of crisis, that is great blessing to have.

In fact, I think one of the most important things you can do to secure yourself in an area is to find trustworthy and competent people to help you when things go wrong. I trust my vet. He is trusted to handle the safety and well being of my animals. One of the emotionally hardest things I ever had to do was to hand the girls over to him to be fixed. It required them staying overnight and if I had not trusted this man, that would have never happened.

We're also very fortunate to have a good mechanic. Nothing freaks me out more than when something goes wrong with one of the automobiles. Our mechanic is is honest with us, knows what he is doing, keeps a good staff, and makes sure the lines of communication stay open during the times when we have to deal with him. We've never felt like he screwed us over. Because he is trustworthy, his business has really thrived in our town.

For me, the best relationship I have with a business is the one I have with my medical supply place. They know me by name and are always very nice to me. They call back when I have questions. When they say they'll have someone available 24/7, they mean it. When my grandmother needed a device to help her walk, they worked with her until she found something that really suited her needs. They are patient and kind.

Now the problem is, there are some business relationships I would like to establish but just haven't been able to yet. I would love to find someone I can trust to do house repairs. I would also love to find a local plumber. So far, neither of these have proved to work out. I keep trying though. Hopefully I can find someone to handle one or both of these, because that would help out my sense of security a lot.

Things are going to go wrong. That's life. Cars break down, pets get ill, machines break. No one is so special that these things never happen to them. The best thing we can do is have plans in place for when things DO go wrong. The biggest part of having this kind of plan is knowing who to call who is capable of really fixing the problem and treats you well in the process. When you find those people, you make sure you keep them around.