It's a pile of dog books!

Here is a photo of my pile of unread books, 2014 calendars, and my journals where I wrote the yet-to-be-published "Hector's Story" and other stories.  The pile sits, ready to be brought on my two upcoming trips, in the hope that I'll get some reading AND writing done.  (Both trips are work assignments, so it's highly unlikely I'll get any of this done, but there are some long airplane rides so who knows?)

This morning, I had two emails from the wonderful W. Bruce Cameron.  I read his book, "A Dog's Purpose"  exactly one year before Hector's sudden death.  Bruce's amazing story helped me cope with the loss of Hector, and also helped me adopt two puppies not long after Hector's passing.  If you haven't read the book, it's about a dog who gets repeatedly reincarnated.  I always think I had to adopt Cooper seven months after getting his litter mate Charlie Brown because Hector's personality was so huge, so much larger than life, that his reincarnation required two dogs just to carry the love, and Cooper was accidentally adopted by the wrong family at first.  He had to find his way to us (or back to us, if you believe that reincarnation stuff!).  At least, I like to think so, hey, it makes me feel better, what can I say?

Back to today's emails:  one was a reminder that if you bought Cameron's new book, "The Dogs of Christmas" you could get a handy-dandy special gift if you post a photo of the book online no later than today ("works well under pressure", that is me).  So I figured what the heck, let's do it .  I went to pull the tome from my pile of unread books, and lo... there are TWO copies of "The Dogs of Christmas". How and why the heck did I do that?!  I have no idea.  So anyway, here is my photo and I'm going to submit it on Cameron's web site and see what little Christmas gift I can snag for myself.   Yeah, I'm a little bit Grinch-y, ok?

The remaining seven books in the pile can't really be seen in this picture (except for Cesar Millan's latest, which I still haven't read 5 months after getting it at his show).  They are ALL dog-related, except for two!  Oh dear, my obsession has been revealed, as if my readers didn't know already. Included are two autographed copies (what?!  Two?!) of Chuck Negron's memoir, "Three Dog Nightmare", which arguably isn't about dogs, but hey, close enough.   Those are NOT being taken on the trip.

Cesar Millan and me just 2 months
after Hector died.  Cesar autographed my journal
in which I wrote the Hector Story.

Cesar Millan, Junior, me, my friend
Lori (and her little one Nicolas lol!)

  

Me and Chuck Negron!
A teenage girl's dream come true!

P.S.  See that Tripawds 2014 calendar?  Cooper is one of the featured three-legged stars!!  He's the one in the chair... the other guy depicted on the same calendar page is a sort of look-alike tripawd named Clover.  Very clever of the folks over at Tripawds, eh?