For the Love of Dog! What have I done?

First I got the dog.  Then I read the background.  Just the opposite of how it should have been done.

Lizzie is a seven-month-old German Shepherd who adopted me because her former owner fell and hurt herself severely enough to preclude being able to care for her rambunctious pet in the near future. I got the call from friends who were responding to the call for a home and who knew I'd been contemplating getting another dog to replace the shepherd I had to put down last summer.

This is the fifth German Shepherd I've owned in my adulthood.  I am no stranger to the breed.  I've gone through obedience school, invisible fence containment, cage confinement -- the whole routine that protects strangers from the dog and vice versa.

This one, however, is the first one I've owned that's not an American-bred dog. Lizzie comes from Austrian stock. Her markings are darker, her hair longer, her body sturdier and stronger -- much stronger -- than the Americans.

And according to the information I've just been reading, the European shepherds are much more instinctively protective than the American ones. Great.

She's been here a month.  Count that in four pairs of shoes -- all mine, she prefers things that are mine; one scatter rug; countless real, nylon and rawhide bones, a sadly disfigured chair leg, and innumerable teeth marks because that's how she pulls my hand to her so that I'll rub her belly. And two other casualties: the collie and collie-mix who already live here and who are the targets of Lizzie's torment.


Forgive me, Dog. I forgot. I forgot about GSD pups, and what big teeth they have, and what big ears they have, and what big feet with strong claws, and how they love to play ... I'm contemplating getting a couple of those padded sleeves the trainers wear when they train protection dogs. At the very least, they'll cover the bruises on my arms.  And for sure we're signing up for obedience classes.

Oh, yes, one more thing. I adore her.

A Writer must Write, as a Chicken must Lay Eggs...

Thanks, fellow writer Carol Ann Kauffman, for reminding me that I do, too, have time to blog. If you have time to blog while writing a series of lovely romances; if Tom Wills has time to blog while creating art work and presiding over art shows while holding down a fulltime job as well; if Diane Laney Fitzpatrick has time to blog and finish a book while moving from Florida to San Francisco, surely I can find a few moments...?

The trouble with being a writer is, you gotta write if you want to keep the title. And I write all the time: ad copy, newsletter copy, even an honest-to-God Egyptian studbook for Arabian horses. But writing -- well, that's something else. That takes concentration and reflection. And quiet. All of which are hard to find among the din of my three dogs, two cats, and barnful of horses.

But (she said proudly) I have finished one novel, a story I began several years ago. I have another one half-done, and a genuine professional agent waiting to see the rest of it -- but I've set it aside to try to complete yet a third book, this one a fictionalized version of a real murder case.

Life, however, intrudes. There's work-for-pay intrusion, and let's-go-to-Italy intrusion, and better-pay-some-attention-to-this-200-year-old-house intrusion. Sometimes there's let's-do-a-play-and-throw-our-schedule-into-chaos-for-two-months intrusion. So the job jar suffers.

 But I promise to try to keep up from now on. For you, Carol.

For the record, here's a link to my currently published novel on Amazon, available for download to Kindle and in paperback: If you like it, let me know. If not -- well, another one's coming, with any luck!