My October Intrigue, Private S.W.A.T. Takeover, was an
exceptionally fun book for me to write. For one thing, it's mainly a
thriller with lots of action. Of course, it features one of my Kincaid
brothers--the youngest, S.W.A.T. sharpshooter Holden Kincaid. This
young warrior makes for one heck of a bodyguard! And the
heroine--amnesia aside--has a lot of me in her. Maybe not the freckles,
but certainly her love for animals. And that's what really made this
book so enjoyable for me--three of the main supporting characters are
dogs that the heroine (a veterinary medicine grad student) has rescued.
She works in an Animal Precinct situation, if you've ever seen that
show on Animal Planet. (We call it the Pet-the-Puppy show at our house
because our hearts are always so torn by what we see that we want to
grab hold of our rescue dog and hug her tight)
And that brings me to my topic for today's blog.
Favorite pets. Bruiser, Cruiser and Yukon--the heroine's pets in my
Intrigue--are all based on real dogs I've owned or that I've met
through friends. All are wonderful cases of rescue animals who were
abandoned or neglected or mistreated, but who wound up in wonderful
homes to guard the place and lead spoiled-rotten lives. Bruiser, in
fact, is based on my own fabulous writing companion, Maxie, who's
pictured above.
Maxie was found, starving on the streets, and was
rescued by the Humane Society. When our previous pet, Shasta, became
ill and died, our family (my 6 year old son at the time, especially)
was devastated. So, for Christmas, my hubby went to the Humane Society,
looking for a new dog for my son for Christmas. My one stipulation was
that s/he not be a big dog, as we were living in a tiny duplex at the
time. Now, my hubby is a softie when it comes to pets, and from what I
understand, Maxie chose him. Okay, so it doesn't hurt that she looks
like a miniature German Shepherd (dh grew up with German Shepherds),
but I think jumping up on the desk at the Humane Society to lick his
face had a great deal to do with Maxie coming home to us. The name
Maxie, btw, was chosen by our son, whose favorite book at the time was
The Adventures of Taxi Dog, with a hero dog named, you guessed it,
Maxie.
So the picture above, friends, if you've read my bio on
my books or website is the one and only 'smiling guard dog'. She's 12
years old now and turning white around the muzzle, but she's not
showing her age in other ways. She still chases squirrels, loves to
wrestle with her boy when he's home from college, and will go
absolutely anywhere in the car or on a leash. Just as long as she's
part of our pack. She truly is family. And a wonderful inspiration for
Bruiser, who plays a key role, in my October book.
I've been an animal lover for as long as I can
remember. I've had Reitzie, the Siamese cat--who had to go live with
cousins in the country when I was diagnosed with asthma, and cat dander
was discovered to be a major trigger as to why I couldn't breathe. That
was a sad day, driving out to the farm with my brothers and Reitzie.
Then there was Frosty--the valiant miniature poodle who took on a
Rottweiler that bit my little brother. Guess who won? And there was my
sweetheart, Duke, a smaller miniature poodle who listened to all of my
teenage angst in high school, then adopted my grandmother when she
moved in with my parents--they were both arthritic and moved slowly by
that time, but they loved to take their walks down to the corner and
back. I take great comfort in knowing they're both together in heaven,
still going for those walks. Then there was Cocky, the cat who acted
like a dog and was the best mom in the world. Calico--the 'goldfish'
turned giant koi who has taken over my husband's fish tank. My son's
dragonfish, which look like eels or snakes and freak me out, but the
kid loves 'em. And many, many more.
Who are some pets or other animals who have touched your life?
Julie Miller
PRIVATE S.W.A.T. TAKEOVER (Holden's story)--Intrigue--Oct. 08
KANSAS CITY CHRISTMAS (Edward's story)--Intrigue--Nov. 08
OUT OF CONTROL--Blaze--April 2009 www.juliemiller.org
The Intrigue authors 2nd annual Holiday Blog Blitz starts Dec. 1...
The best companions
Aren't pets the best companions? They require so little of you, yet they give you so much. As I sit typing this, I'm looking at two of our current menagerie: Triskit (the Cairn terrier mix) and Dusty Chin (the chinchilla). Oddly absent is Meijer, so named because we acquired him in the grocery of the same name and who follows me from room to room through the day, and Carter, also a cat, is in his hidden mode.
Triskit was a rescue from the pound. About five months after the death of Pepper, a Schnoodle, who was about 16-18 and who had lived with us for 11 years, my daughter nagged me constantly to go to the shelters and find another dog. My problem was that I still couldn't walk into the places without bursting into tears, but I eventually agreed, under the strict conditions that we would take our time and find the right animal for us. No way were we rushing into anything.
Well, we walked into the pound, I saw Triskit, and that was all she wrote. She was about 10 weeks old, 3 1/2 pounds, and had on a tiny red bandanna. She came to the fence, put her front paws on it, and wagged her tiny tail. We were both smitten, so I called my DH and asked him if he wanted to come see her first. He wisely said, "What's the point? If you already love her, then am I going to say no and be the bad guy?" She is so smart and so sweet. (She's the animal in my picture above.)
Carter we adopted from the Shamrock Foudation, for which my daughter volunteers every Saturday at cat adoption days. Meijer came to us in an interesting way. We were at the grocery of the same name. My husband was going out to pull the car up and saw a woman sitting in the front with a bawling kitten in her lap, so he called our daughter up to the front.
As it happens, the woman had fostered some cats for Shamrock but had no idea what to do with a tiny abandoned kitten (about 10 days old). She recognized my daughter, and we agreed to take the kitten for one night until a foster with a nursing female cat could be found to take him. As if. That was 4 years ago, and he's still here. I talk a good game, but I'm a major pushover when it comes to things like this.
He had to be bottle fed every four hours, and we even had to rub his bottom with warm, damp towels to get him to eliminate because his mom would have still been licking him. He was found in someone's fenced back yard with no mother cat and no other kittens in site. He had a couple of weird round puncture wounds to his flanks, though, which led us to believe perhaps a small hawk had started to carry him off and had dropped him.
So, having been hand-raised from the time he barely had his eyes open, he thinks he's human and my daughter is his mother. She can drape him over her arm and hold him upside down, and he purrs his guts out. She can do no wrong for him. He's sassy, too. If you tell him "No!", he meows right back at you. He's the only cat I've ever known to like grapes and bananas.
Dusty was acquired from a work friend of my husband's. Her husband had died recently, and she and her son had to pare down their extensive menagerie. She was mildly allergic to Dusty, so we took him. He's beautiful and really, really sweet, but expensive. We has a malocclusion, and we have to have his teeth filed down every few months so he doesn't stop eating.
Over the years that we've been married, in addition to Pepper and our current pets, we've had two Keeshonds, a cat we inherited from my husband's father, a stray cat with feline leukemia, a teddybear hamster, a golden hamster, 3 Siberian dwarf hamsters, three hermit crabs, and 3 lizards that my husband got suckered into taking by a colleague at work and that required me to go out and purchase crickets to bring live into my house--thank you very much!.
We have mourned all of them when they have gone on to a better place. They have been so much a part of our lives. (Well, not the lizards and hermit crabs quite as much as the mammals for me, but because it broke my daughter's heart when they died, it broke mine, too.)
Adopt a shelter pet. www.shamrockpets.com
View my DD's very public video acting debut at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E-v05kMucw.
My goodness, JV--what a
My goodness, JV--what a wonderful menagerie you have and have had. Pets know when they've found a good place to live.
They've got good instincts that way.
We had a keeshond, too, named Sherlock. Beautiful dog. We had to have him put down, and I had to take him because my dh just couldn't handle it (the big softie!). I was fine right up until he left the room with the vet tech--then I bawled for hours.
We had an abandoned kitten that my dog discovered under our shed in the back yard. I'm guessing the mother had met some misfortune because we kept trying to get the kitten to go back to the nest, but she insisted on coming out even though her eyes were barely open. Finally, we brought her in and fed her a bit of cream and called the Humane Society. Maxie normally doesn't appreciate other animals in her yard, but she was so funny and sweet with the kitten (even though she's spayed, I think her mothering instincts came out). She sniffed it, licked it. Came to see it whenever it started mewing. I think we would have had another pet if I wasn't so allergic.
Julie Miller
PRIVATE S.W.A.T. TAKEOVER (Holden's story)--Intrigue--Oct. 08
KANSAS CITY CHRISTMAS (Edward's story)--Intrigue--Nov. 08
OUT OF CONTROL--Blaze--April 2009 www.juliemiller.org
The Intrigue authors 2nd annual Holiday Blog Blitz starts Dec. 1...