Taking My Writing to the Dogs by Nancy L. Eady

             Behind the love seat where I write, on top of a bookshelf, is a photograph frame with five pictures, each slot filled with a picture of a different dog. 

Clockwise, Starting with Big Picture on top:  Darwin, Shadow, Tyra, Mandy and Woof

            My husband and I got our first dog, Shadow, six months after we married. (Hint:  Never play chicken with your wife at a New Year’s Eve party that includes alcohol.)  January 1, 1988 opened with us hunting for an open K-Mart to get supplies for the alleged cocker spaniel we had just bought for $100. As you can see from the picture—Shadow is at the bottom right—she was not a pure-blooded cocker spaniel but a lab cocker mix. It was the best swindle ever.

            Shadow decided she was my husband’s dog early on. She tolerated me, but at times she would eye me and think, “You know, we really don’t need you around here.”  But by the time she was 7, she was slowing down and seemed lonely. With gentle nudging, my husband acquiesced to getting a second dog if we could find another lab/cocker mix. Thanks to my contacts at work, we found dog number 2, Woof. (The top left photograph.)  It took one day before Shadow became ecstatically aware that she had acquired a puppy. And I was no longer superfluous to Shadow’s world, since I could run interference on Woof when Shadow wanted to monopolize Mark.

            Neither Shadow nor Woof did a lot of writing with me between my working full time while going to law school and then beginning to practice law in 1998. By 2003, though, when Shadow died, the idea of writing took hold of me again. We had to help Woof first. She was very unhappy as an only dog.

            Enter Tyra, our first pound puppy. (Bottom left picture). Tyra shared a run with another dog at the pound. The sign on the run read, “My name is Tyra and I sit.”  She never sat on cue any other time in our lives together, but the one time it counted, she did.

            Now, I was ready to begin writing, until Fate intervened again with the arrival of our daughter, age three years and one month, on December 1, with only 30-days’ notice. The adoption of both Woof and Tyra into our family before Kayla reassured her. Our saying is “Once a member of the pack, always a member of the pack.”   

            Then Kayla turned six and decided she needed a dog of her own. As she explained it, Mark had a dog (Tyra) and I had a dog (Woof), so she needed one, too. In a moment of insanity, my husband sent me and Kayla off to the pound to see if there was either a lab or a golden retriever available. Instead, we returned with Mandy. (Center left). Mandy was a husky/basset-hound mix, with the body shape of a basset hound, the fur of a husky and the most amazing eyes—one brown and one blue, with a smidgen of blue in the brown eye.  With three dogs and one child, life became even crazier, but I finally started writing—in the form of a blog where I had the chance to share the crazy things that were happening in our house.

            It wasn’t until after Woof died that we adopted Darwin (Darwin James is a lab/Great Dane mix, shown in the top left photo). By this time, I had graduated from my blog to working on a full-fledged mystery novel. Tyra died a few years after we got Darwin, but Darwin and Mandy were best buddies until Mandy died in September 2019. I didn’t give him time to get lonely, though; Darwin has never liked being an only dog. He seems to think being by himself means he is going to be abandoned. So about a week after Mandy died, I adopted Daisy. At 8 months old, she is our first puppy since Woof, and Kayla’s first puppy ever. (I need to find a new photo frame with six spots in it.)  To be honest, I had forgotten how much work was involved with a puppy, but we hit that magical point where house training kicks in within a couple of months, and the rest has been smooth sailing. And she has adapted to the writing regime quite well; she likes to curl up beside me on the love seat while I write. Darwin naps on his bed by the fireplace.

Daisy on the Love Seat

            While both dogs are weak on plot points and meaningful critiques, they do like to participate in phone conversations. Apparently, the ringing and answering of a telephone between the hours of 8 and 5 is the international signal for group barking. And they listen to my stories. In the end, isn’t that what all writers want—someone to share their stories with?