Dogs in Stories and Life, by Kathleen Delaney
It’s been a year since Maggie came to live with me. She is an Italian
Greyhound and when she came, weighed less than 10 pounds. IG’s are shown in the
toy group and are small, but 10 pounds is grossly underweight even for them.
She was turned into a rapid kill shelter by the people who had her because, the
lady said, she snapped at her five year old child.
I sympathize with the woman. The
dog was wrong for their family and placing her somewhere more appropriate was
called for. Setting her up for almost certain death, wasn’t.
Maggie the mop also lives with me. She is a small black bundle of hair
with endless energy who was suffering from heart worm and chronic hunger when
she arrived . The heart worm is gone and she is no longer underweight. She was,
however, when she was thrown out of a car behind Tractor Supply in a small
South Carolina town. Luckily for her, someone saw what happened and called
rescue. Not a kill shelter. A close friend, who rescues dogs, sent me an email
with a picture telling me about her, as she did with Maggie. The rest is
history. Both of them are playing on the office floor as I type this, watched
closely by Lefty the three legged wonder dog, who was never claimed after an
almost fatal confrontation with a car. He, however, claimed us along with my
sofa. It is supposed to be forbidden territory because of his size, a rule rarely
observed. The only one not joining in the fun is the cat, who sits on my lap
watching it all with great disdain.
These dogs came because I had suddenly found myself dogless, a condition
I don’t seem to be able to tolerate. My beloved shepherd, Shea, passed away a
couple of years ago, and that left just Laney, also an IG, and me. And the cat.
I told myself that suited me just fine. I didn’t need to have a house full of
animals any more. Or kids. Or books. I had too many of all those things. At my
age, I needed peace, quiet, no responsibilities.
So I left South Carolina and moved to Georgia to be nearer to two of my
grandchildren, who are here almost every day. I also moved I don’t know how many
books. They filled the bookcases in the living room and in my small office.
Boxes of them remained unpacked in a closet, and more boxes, mostly ones I have
written, were stacked on the floor. But I was down to two animals.
Then Laney died. I knew she was in a bad way and I think she was glad to
go. We did everything we could, but in the end, old age was more powerful than
any drugs available. She is at peace. However, I’m not. My house once more
overflows with grandchildren, books, and dogs. How did this happen, I wonder,
and why do I do it?
I’m not alone. Especially about the dogs. I recently heard a report on
what Americans spend each year on pet supplies and was amazed. I’ll bet they
spend that much, and maybe more, in England and France and possibly other
European countries. Dogs are everywhere you look in Europe, even on buses and
trains and in restaurants. No, I’m not alone.
Dogs populate books as well. Especially cozies. I don’t think Sam Spade
had a dog, and come to think of it, neither did Miss Marple. They are, however,
in plenty of other books, often with starring roles, as are cats. I’m sure you
can think of many, some who solve crimes, some who help solve crimes, some who
narrate the story. We do love our animals.
I am among those who include animals in their books. Mine don’t narrate nor do they solve the
murder, but they help out in various ways. In Murder by Syllabub, the IG, Petal, one of the dogs that reside in the
eighteenth century plantation house, digs up a vital clue. Jake, a yellow tom
cat, saves Ellen’s life in the first of the Ellen McKenzie real estate
mysteries, Dying for a Change. Jake
actually didn’t mean to save her life and wasn’t one bit happy about how it
happened, but I’m quite sure he was glad she didn’t die. She’s the one who
supplies the cat food.
The second book in the series, Give
First Place to Murder, deals a lot with horses but if you have horses you
also have dogs and cats. They go together. Not sure why, but they do.
And Murder for Dessert
features a standard poodle and Jake reappears in Murder Half-Baked.
Then I decided to write a new series. I wanted to use an older woman as
a protagonist, one who still had all her wits about her, who, like so many
women before her, used her experience, her intelligence, and her knowledge of
her community to help solve a crime. I had no intention of adding my
grandchildren nor did I intend to include a dog. Or so many dogs. But Ronaldo
finds a puppy beside the dead man in the manger (I have no idea how that
happened) and Mary McGill adopts Millie, a black cocker spaniel, who is
orphaned when her owner is a murder victim, and Purebred Dead came into being. I guess it came out all right
because Library Journal, Publishers Weeky and Book List have all praised it. In
any case, Mary has kept Millie, who helped solve the murders in Purebred Dead, and she plays an
important role in their next adventure, Curtains
for Miss Plym. Mary can no longer remember life before Millie and has no
intention of doing without her.
We’ve set things up over the years so that the animals we’ve made pets
or have domesticated in some way can no longer live without us. I’m not sure if
that’s a good or bad thing, but it’s a true one. However, they’ve turned the
tables on us. We’d be hard pressed to live without them either. At least,
evidently I would.
How about you?
Blurb:
“Where is he?”
Dalia pointed to a rough-built lean-to, open
to the street. Inside, where the manger was set up and the animals were housed
w as in shadow. Spotlights were ready, sitting at both the inside and outside
corners, for the arrival of the Virgin Mary. The place would radiate light, the
North Star would shine from the oak tree and angels would appear. But for now,
everything was in shadow. Mary could just make out the outline of what looked
like a goat. It bleated as she came up. A couple of other animals hung their
heads over small pens, staring at the figure overflowing from the manger in the
middle of the display, waiting for Mary and Joseph to appear.
“Cliff Mathews, you promised.” Mary let go of Dalia’s hand and marched
up to the manger. “Get up right this minute. How you could…”
She stopped abruptly. Cliff wasn’t going to get up, now or ever again.
He lay in the middle of the manger, eyes staring up at nothing, the shadows
failing to hide the front of his gray hoodie, stained bright red.
Bio: Kathleen Delaney is a retired real
estate broker. She lived and worked on California’s central coast, where she
wrote her first three novels and, during her day job, specialized in horse
ranches, estate properties, wineries and vineyards. The mother of five grown
children, grandmother of nine, she also bred and showed national winning
Arabian and Half Arabian horses. She left California for South Carolina, where
she completed the final two books in the Ellen McKenzie real estate mysteries,
then moved to Georgia, where she continues to write and visit with two of her
grandchildren.
Purebred Dead is the first in her new Mary McGill and Millie canine
mystery series and, as you might have guessed, is centered around dogs, both
pure bred and mixed breed. It is published by Severn House, has been released
in the UK to excellent reviews, has been praised by Publishers Weekly and is
scheduled for release in the US August 1.
The second book in the series, Curtains
for Miss Plym, will be released in the UK in December and in the US in April of
2016.
Comments
Marja McGraw