#13. My Fictional Dogs
At heart, I am a magpie. There lurks within me the tendency to go too far, to want too many and too much. Of everything. If some is good, why is more not even better (take Doritos, for instance)? Yet over 35 years, we’ve had only five canine companions, Lady, Casey, Bear, Nikki, and Zaza, the first three sent by an inscrutable universe, care of my sister and two neighbors, then Nikki via the local shelter, and presently Zaza, our service dog dropout. The first three overlapped (we called the second dogs our back-ups), the last two were singletons. One reason I was so admirably able to control my hoarder instincts was not medication. Not alcohol or cannabis. Not (my laughably non-existent) will power (again, see Doritos). What worked for me were fictive dogs. Every story I’ve ever written has had at least one dog (usually more, sometimes many more). I figure maybe thirty stories, roughly forty, fifty mutts, very good girls and boys, every one (you make things up, you get to choose your heart’s desire). If the sheriff raids our home, he will find a peaceable kingdom ruled by one golden retriever. Were he to carry out the same raid on my fiction, we might make the evening news. You wll find a poem about another hoarder (my alter ego?) on the home page. The painting is of Lady. our first dog, and the Osage orange she liked to toss down the hill, then chasing and retrieving it.
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We tend to write about what we know. I am a writer, thus this blog: Why write? What, when, where to write? Stay tuned. Archives
April 2024
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