A few months ago I got an email from someone with a great question: Would it distress a dog to have his former owner come visit? I've been mulling on it ever since, and my answer, of course, is It Depends. But that leads to the question, "Depends on what?" Although I'm only speculating, I suspect it depends on how settled and stable the dog is in his or her new home. Here are a couple of examples, one from my own life: CASE ONE--SCOTT: Scott was the son of my first Border Collie, Drift. I loved him dearly, and then I gave him away to another owner. I did that because I was sure he wasn't happy here on the farm. Yes, he was loved and well cared for. Yes, he got to work sheep and take long walks in the country and enjoy belly rubs at night. But Scott was an anxious dog, and he hated Read More
Archives for 2017
Great Photo of “Hard Eye,” & What to Do When You See It
Meet Sam. He's a 41/2 year old Border Collie, adopted by Roberta K from a shelter in rural Virginia at the age of one. He'd spent his first year of life in a crate. It seems the elderly couple who purchased him, one wheelchair bound, found him "too much to handle." (A pause here for us all to take a breath and remind ourselves about the value of compassion, versus our shared and understandable desire to shriek and rip our hair out by the roots.) Sam was rejected by a number of potential owners after they came to meet the dog attached to the beautiful face they'd seen on Facebook. Something about him leaping repeatedly 10 feet into the air and lunging, teeth bared, at all visitors seemed to have put them off. Not Roberta, surely a true heroine, who knew that Sam desperately needed to Read More
Barn Swallows: Excerpt from The Education of Will
Oh my. I feel like I'm at the crest of a massive roller coaster, having chugged my way up and up and up, finally reaching the top of the curve, and looking down at a track so steep that I can't even see it beneath my feet. All I know is it's going to go down, very, very fast. That's what it feels like today, as if I'm at the beginning of an exhilarating and scary ride, the first day of the next and last phase of the making of The Education of Will. One might think that once you've "finished" a book you're done, but in actuality your work just changes. If you are lucky enough to have your book picked up by a major publisher, there are great expectations on you to polish and promote your book. I'm done with the polishing (several edits even after the "pre-pub" version came out, sent to Read More
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