Brando on Petfinder

Thanks for joining us for Day 6 of Ken Foster’s interview! If you are just joining us on this series you may want to scroll back to Day 1 and follow the series from there.

Ken has begun telling us about he came to be a dog lover and rescuer. It began in Costa Rica with a dog named Duque. But it was Brando who Ken found on Petfinder who really claimed his heart.

Joy: Let’s go back to Costa Rica. I want you to go to the one point you’re saying to yourself, “When I get home I have to get a dog.”

Ken: Part of it was that I think I was sort of grieving for this dog that I couldn’t bring back. Yeah and I thought to occupy my thoughts–instead of obsessing over this dog that am I going to be thinking, “Is he being taken care of? Is he okay?”–if I can take care of another dog then I can hopefully not worry so much about him. Or at least not obsess about it. Also it was that I came back and wanted to continue to get work done and I immediately noticed that without the dog I just woke up and stared at the wall.

I have to say I spent a couple of days not getting work done and I spent a couple of days where I would find myself going to Tompkins Square and looking into the dog run, past the sign that says “No people without dogs allowed.” And I thought I’m not going to get any work done until I get a dog. I made a decision within days of returning, I’m absolutely getting a dog. I went on to Petfinder. There wasn’t really a long period of time where I was trying to figure this out. I went to Petfinder and found Brando, his little picture.

Joy: As you’re looking at his picture, what goes through your mind?

Ken: When I looked at it then I thought he doesn’t look like any dog I’ve ever seen. I want a dog that doesn’t look like one I’ve ever seen because I don’t want to get a dog that seems like a replacement for the one I’m really missing.

Joy: What’s bad about getting a replacement?

Ken: I was worried that I would have expectations that it would be the dog that I was missing instead of being the dog that it was. Or that I would be disappointed that it wasn’t really like the other dog. Looks like him but doesn’t act like him. I just thought if I get a dog that doesn’t look anything like him then I can’t have any expectations and I can let the dog be who it really is and maybe move forward and not foster this obsession with a dog that’s living in another country.

At the time I still wanted to make sure I was making the right decision and I went to visit. I actually went to several shelters. I went to the ASPCA and there was a dog there named Maury who actually did look a little like Duque and was really big, because he was an adult, and he had some issues and mostly because of his size I just thought, “I can’t adopt this dog. He’s too big.”

Then I went and saw Brando, who was a puppy and therefore not big, and I was convinced that he wasn’t going to get any bigger, because somebody at the shelter told me that. But obviously I wanted to believe that because anybody looking at him would know he wasn’t fully grown. I visited him everyday for a week. I didn’t want to rush into anything. I didn’t want to make a decision I regretted. I didn’t want to have to go back and say I made a mistake. I’m giving this dog back. So I would go visit him everyday and try to take him for a walk but he didn’t won’t to go for a walk cause, I realize now because he had separation anxiety and he just wanted to stay wherever he was. Yet at the same time I completely fell in love with him. Each day he would get more and more excited to see me, even though he didn’t want me to take him anywhere. He would literally tumble out at my feet from his pen. He was so excited that all he knew was to somersault across the floor at me.

Joy: As you see him and he is tumbling out, at what point are you telling yourself that this is the dog who has to go home with you?

Ken: To be honest, when I first laid eyes on him cause I went there and I said, “I’m looking for a dog named Brando,” cause that was his name on Petfinder. And somebody had actually changed his name so the people at the front office there didn’t have that name on anything and said, “We don’t think he’s here but you can look at the dogs we do have.”

So I went over and walked in and I’m looking at these dogs and they were in a temporary shelter at the time so there were no windows and the only light was a bare fluorescent bulb. It was kind of depressing of course. They all started barking like crazy, which now that I’ve spent a lot of time shelters I know means absolutely nothing, but at the time I thought, “I wouldn’t take one of these dogs. They’re all crazy!” As I was turning to walk out, I saw Brando.

I didn’t see the sign that said Brando. I just saw him, the dog, and he was just quietly sitting, staring at me.

I thought, “That’s him.” I hadn’t recognized that it was the dog I had actually gone there to see. I just thought that, “there’s my dog.” Then I looked up and saw the sign and thought, “Oh! There IS my dog!”

See you tomorrow back here for Day 7 of Ken’s interview!

Welcome to day 5 of Ken Foster’s interview with your dog blogger! If you’ve missed any of the previous five days just page on back to read the rest.

Yesterday we left off as Ken was telling us about his interactions with the Costa Rican dogs who opened his eyes to the world of dogs.

Joy: Tell me about one of these times when you’re with the stray or feral dogs in Costa Rica.

Ken: This was sometime later when I was still in Costa Rica. I went down to eat in a restaurant in the village near this farm I was staying at. It was sort of an open air restaurant and they would let these stray dogs come in and sit next to you at your table.

There was a huge long-haired sort of shepherdy dog who came over to my table and I was sort of petting him and talking to him. The next thing I knew he had climbed completely into my lap and curled up. I was like this dog is just so great! I kind of wanted to take them all home and yet my airline wouldn’t let me take any dog home for some reason. Even if I had the paperwork they weren’t going to take an animal. So I had to leave Duque. I had to leave him behind. And actually when word got around that I was going to be taking him, several people including the gardener were furious with me.

Joy: Let’s go back to the point where the dog has climbed up in your lap and you’re telling me this is a wonderful dog.

Ken: Yeah and there were several others who weren’t in my lap, because there wasn’t room for them, but they were all gathered around the table being cute, cute stray dogs.

Joy: What’s going through your mind surrounded by all these stray dogs and this wonderful dog is sitting in your lap?

Ken: I think I was just thinking at that point, I had been there for three months and the intensity of living in Costa Rica where everything was so gorgeous and yet you couldn’t go a day without seeing something really horrible and depressing as well. Poverty, homeless animals. So I would burst into tears at some point every day, either because something was incredibly beautiful or because something wasn’t. That whole period of time just made me intensely aware of the beauty of life. So it wasn’t just the dogs and it wasn’t just the mountains. Everything was part of the whole.

As I’m talking about this I’m realizing a term that I didn’t know at the time. The idea of the sublime. It was part of the gothic and a certain period of American art where its like the person standing completely dwarfed by an enormous waterfall or enormous mountains. That was my daily existence for three months, where everything was bigger than me. Including this dog in my lap. He wasn’t literally bigger than me but somehow the very existence of this dog in my lap made me feel like I’m a smaller part of the world than he was.

I think it all goes back to whether we exist in our heads or whether we exist in our environment.

For so long I lived in New York and I worked in publishing and I was a writer and I had a Masters degree from Columbia and all these things we are taught to think are important and interesting but really aren’t. I think to be taken out of that; cause at the time when I went to Costa Rica I thought, “Man, I’m going to miss so many great parties and I’m going to miss so much good gossip about who’s signing a book deal with whom and for how much and when I got to Costa Rica I never thought of it again. It made me just realize if my entire life is living in a small village with animals, I don’t think I’ll have any regrets.

Joy: How does that make it better for you?

Ken: Cause I think I’m happier and I think I’m actually spending money on things that give something back to me. Whereas in New York, I was constantly striving to prove something to sort of an invisible board of people who I don’t think really existed. Do you know what I mean? It’s sort of like you’re waiting for approval but you don’t even know who you’re expecting to get it from. Whereas with my dogs now, and again this is something I realized when I went back to New York and then got a dog and started taking the dog out for walks and to the dog park, my world even in New York expanded to include a much broader sense of the city that I’d lived in at that point for six years, or maybe eight. Where I suddenly didn’t know just writers, I knew doctors and lawyers and craftsmen, jewelers and students; people that I never had any way of being introduced to except that our dogs introduced us.

I would take my dogs for walks and the city of New York became the outdoors for me, which it never had been before, I would walk three to five miles a day with my dog. A lot of our walks were the same walk we would do everyday but then we would also–because he had separation anxiety so I tried to spend a lot of time with him but I would also try to exhaust him everyday. So we would take these sort of field trips, as I referred to them in my head. “Where can we go that we’ve never gone to before today?‿ Let’s see if we can walk to midtown. Let’s see if we can walk to Times Square and see what he thinks of that.

Joy: What does Brando think of the trips and what does he notice that you don’t?

Ken: He knew there were flowers and a candle here that weren’t here before. “I want to sit here and figure this out.” He slowed me down. He stopped me. He made me notice these things because I wanted to notice what he was noticing and going around New York it was similar. I would see it through his eyes and I would notice the squirrels for example, which I’m sure when I was walking by myself down the street before I had a dog, I would never notice that there are a gazillion birds and squirrels in the city. With my dog, every squirrel we had to stop and stare. Every flower we had to, he would actually walk by flowers planted in the park and would want to stick his nose into each individual flower. These are the things that I would shut out because I don’t have time for flowers. I don’t have time for birds and trees. But of course, I should have time for those things. And so that’s how he taught me.

And there was a pet store. I’m suddenly remembering all the things I had to take him to because he expected it at a certain point. There was a pet store on 14th Street that we would go to and he would go immediately to the back where there were rabbits in cages on the floor and he would lay next to them and press his nose up to them. And the rabbits would press their nose back against his nose and he would just lay there, completely fascinated by these rabbits. (Brando) was an amazing dog to spend time with.

Another time too he had this blue ball he was fascinated by and we would walk down along the East River and there was a little dog park there that he would play in. And then we would take the ball back. One day he kept wanting to carry the ball so I let him but he dropped it and it rolled into the river and, of course, disappeared. But he sat there waiting for the ball to come back. Finally I managed to get him to move and we walked back and went to the 14th Street pet store where miraculously there was a ball just like that on the shelf. I kept thinking that I hope he doesn’t think that if you drop the ball in the river it will appear here everyday, because I can’t afford that.

That’s it for Day 5 of the Ken Foster interview but join us tomorrow for more!

Ken and Zephyr pitching out first ball at a New Orleans Zephyr game

Welcome to Day 4 of the Ken Foster Interview! Ken’s most recent book, The Dogs Who Found Me, details his experiences with dogs he has met along the way. Today,Ken begins the story of how it all started in Costa Rica and the dog who started it all, Duque.

Joy: Earlier you’re telling me about this time in Costa Rica where you have this interaction with this dog who keeps coming up to you. At some point during this interaction this change happens where you say I have to have a dog. Let’s go to this time where you actually are realizing that you’re now becoming a dog person.

Ken: There was a dog, I remember it’s sort of embarrassing because its like this soft focus memory of meeting the love of your life. I arrived in Costa Rica. I knew nothing except that I had been invited to go there for three months and was met by people I didn’t know at the airport, who drove me. It was night time, through these rocky, unpaved mountain roads in the middle of the pouring rain, with no street lights anywhere so its just pitch black. I’m thinking, “Where am I?” And we arrive at this farm and they show me this little apartment building. I have sort of a four-unit building that had been built to host writers and artists. They were showing me my room and there was one little light outside the house. It was still raining lightly and this dog appeared from the other side of this grove of trees. He looked at me.

His picture is on the title page of Dog Culture. He was a mutt basically. I’m not sure what his mix was. He may have been a little pit bullish but not much, like pit bull shepherdy. And he had a cropped tail and under the single light that was shining down on him in the rain his little nub of a tail wiggling back and forth. The person who was showing me the grounds said, “This is Duque. He’s my dog.” And of course it turned out that he was his dog but he didn’t care for him that much.

At some point the dog started following me back from the main house after lunch. It was strange because he would follow me back from lunch and come into my little apartment and curl up under the desk to take a nap. Then he would get up after twenty minutes and leave. I just started taking a nap with him. Not under the desk but in my bed. A nap after lunch is a really good idea. Then he would get up and follow the gardener all day. And then he would come back at dinner time.

I remember the first time he came to dinner because I actually cooked dinner in a separate building and I heard what sounded like knocking at the door and opened it up and it was him. I was so excited. I was like, “Come on in!” And then he started coming and staying in a chair facing my door while I slept at night. As soon as it was morning he would go out and follow the gardener again and then he’d meet me at lunch time, take his nap, leave and meet me at dinner.

I realized it started giving me this schedule and I got work done. When he came I took a break, which is a much more efficient way of working than to work straight through the day. And then I decided I wanted to see some other parts of the country and I had to leave him. That’s when I realized I’m worried what he’s going to do while I’m gone.

I ended up going to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica to a little town. There was this beach and there was this whole pack of dogs. Like a poodle and a Golden Retriever and a Great Dane and all these different mixes of dogs running in the surf of this little beach. I was watching them play and somebody who was local turned to me and said, “You realize none of these dogs have an owner.” Which I hadn’t realized because when you think of a wild or stray dog you don’t think of them happily bouncing through the surf on a beautiful beach together. Later that night I saw they all gathered together at the bus stop and all slept there together.

I became fascinated by these dogs. Also, these dogs who were homeless in this particular town seemed so happy. Which I know homeless dogs are not happy and they don’t live long, obviously. And yet somehow the character of these dogs that they weren’t being taken care of and yet they still were incredibly friendly and would come up to you and would make you think this dog must have an owner because they were, to be honest, much better behaved than the owned dogs I see in Manhattan. I became fascinated by the good nature and the reasonableness of the dog.

Visit us again tomorrow for Day 5 of the interview. In the meantime, check out Ken’s blog where you can see more pictures, read about the rebuilding of New Orleans and other events in Ken’s life.

Brando in the Element he shares with Ken

It’s Day 3 of Ken Foster’s interview. The author of, among other books, The Dogs Who Found Me, is a delightful, caring man who opened his heart to us just like he has opened his home and heart to the many dogs who found him.

If you’re just joining us, you may want to scroll back a few days and read the interview from the beginning. Meanwhile, we left off where Ken was just saying that one can’t live in our world without interacting with dogs.

Joy: What does that say about our society that you really can’t go through it without interacting with dogs now?

Ken: I don’t know what it says. To me, its like here they are. They’re part of us. They’re a part of our world and because they are social they don’t stay in their own little space and wait for you to invite yourself in. They sort of scamper up to you and say, “I’m a dog and I live down the street from you. Hello.”

The other thing that’s amazing, which is great and we see it more and more, is service dogs. You get on the subway in New York and there’s somebody, this happened to me a couple of weeks ago, there’s someone with a one hundred and fifty pound mixed Irish Wolfhound seizure dog. He was standing across the entire width of the subway car. And there were several people who were completely freaked out, including a nun who was sitting next to me and made me trade seats because she was afraid of the dog. And some people said, how did you get that dog in here? The woman who had it explained that this is my seizure dog and then people were very appreciative. They were very interested and amazed at this creature. The woman explained too that she had started training it when it was young and didn’t know what the mix was and she was a little horrified herself when it grew into a big dog. But after you’ve spent all that time with it and trained it you can’t be, “too big, too bad.”

Joy: Let’s go back to the point when you’re having to trade seats with the nun. What does that say to you when someone is that afraid of a dog like that?

Ken: In some cases it’s because they’ve had a bad experience with a dog or so many people learn their fear of dogs from their parents. But what this nun said was that the church or at least some part of the church believes that the gift of being able to appreciate and understand animals is given by the Holy Ghost. She leaned over to me and said, “I have not been given that gift yet.”

Join us tomorrow when Ken tells us about meeting the love of his life, the dog who changed his world — Duque.

In the meantime, check out Ken’s website or his Dogster pages for Brando, Zephyr and Sula.

Welcome back to the Ken Foster interview! Yesterday we left off right after Ken had started talking about how his interactions with dogs had changed him. He specifically mentioned that they made him a “more efficient person.”

Joy: Tell me about that.

Ken: I don’t sit around thinking about myself. I don’t sit around worrying about myself. And so, I’m always multi-tasking in a way. I’m always walking the dogs and planning my day as I’m walking the dogs in the morning. And talking with my neighbors as I’m walking the dogs in the morning. So before I even sit down to my cup of coffee, I’ve already talked to everybody in the neighborhood, and set out what it is that I need to get done today. Whereas before, I would wake up and since I didn’t have dog to get me going and to force me out of the house I would spend four hours just sort of sitting: What am I supposed to do today?

Joy: How does that make you feel that you are more efficient now?

Ken: I don’t think about it that much. It feels like this is what life is supposed to be. It’s not that I think everyone needs to have a dog or they should all have three rescue dogs or they should have ten or whatever but I think being responsible for something else and appreciating the life of something else. I mean that in watching another living thing on a day to day basis and having it interact with the world, it teaches us so much. Its not something you realize you’re learning until years later. But also I think the thing about dogs is, because they are so social, they are very close to being like us. But they’re not us, which is how we learn from them. They aren’t other people.

Joy: Talk about that some more, that they’re very close to us but they’re not other people.

Ken: And part of it is not that I value dogs more than I value other people. I don’t think my dogs are children. Because first of all if I had children I would not keep them in crates when I’m out and I would not put their food on the floor. Again, the fact that they’re not children does not mean that I don’t love them and feel responsible for them and learn from them and respect them and get a lot of joy out of them. And because they’re social they sort of make us social even when we don’t necessarily feel social. And because they’re not us or they’re not human they interact with the world at a different level. And again I think they’re aware of so much.

When I had a heart problem that I was ignoring, my dogs didn’t ignore it for a second. When they were acting like there was something wrong with me I kept trying to ignore the fact that they were acting like there was something wrong with me. And then finally, its like “you guys, I’m going to go to the doctor today and we’re going to get this taken care of,‿ still not knowing it was a heart problem that was going to put me in the hospital. But, I say in the book, if I was a dog and I had that heart problem I wouldn’t have spent two months pretending that there was nothing wrong with me. I would have gone to my owner and been like, I don’t feel good. However a dog can communicate that. And so, that’s what I think I learned from living with these particular animals.

I know people that live with horses that have similar feelings and I know cat people will criticize me for saying this, but I don’t think living with cats is the same as that. I love cats but I don’t think its quite the same thing. Which is why dogs fascinate me. Also, the fact that you can go through life without having to interact with a cat if you want to but you can’t go through life without interacting with dogs because they have become such a part of our society in good and bad ways. So even if you’re not a dog person you’re going to spend time with dogs at some point.

Come back tomorrow for Day 3 of Ken’s interview where he reveals a close encounter with a nun who REALLY didn’t want to spend time with dogs.

Meanwhile, you can check out Ken’s site and his upcoming appearances around the country. They include:

7/13: SFSCPA, Maddies Place, San Francisco
7/14: Kiehl’s and Pets Unlimited, San Francisco
7/15: Kiehl’s and Dove Lewis, Portland
7/22: Belladonna Day Spa (with $5 microchipping), New Orleans
8/6: Sqwires, St. Louis (celebrating Quentin the Miracle Dog’s “rebirthday” with Randy Grim and Stray Rescue of St. Louis!)

You can also visit Brando’s Dogster page.

Ken Foster at Furry Friends in Chicago

It’s time for another interview and this time its Ken Foster, author of The Dogs Who Found Me: What I’ve Learned From the Pets Who Were Left Behind. The book is about the dogs Ken has rescued (or as might say have rescued him) and how they have changed him and his life. Ken has lived through 9/11, Katrina, a serious heart problem and the deaths of friends and he credits the dogs for getting him through it all.

Have you ever met someone or even gotten on the phone with them and before you knew it time had flown by and you still wanted to talk? Just imagine if this was your first time ever talking and that happened? That was my experience with this urbane, delightful and open writer (who also happens to be a Dogster himself). What a delight to interview! I hope you’ll experience some of the fun I had as you read through this 10 part series. That’s right, 10 parts! There as just WAY TOO MUCH good stuff to get tossed on the proverbial cutting room (or in this case computer room) floor!

So plan on checking back in every day and getting to know Ken better!

Joy: A little bit on how you got started with writing The Dogs Who Found Me.

Ken: The way I got started writing it is someone asked me to write it, which is a little bit unusual and in spite of the fact I was asked to write it I initially said no. I had done a book before this that was an anthology of dog essays.

I’ve worked with the same editor—Ann Treistman— on all my books at two different publishers. When she moved to Lyons Press we thought we wouldn’t work together again because they do outdoor, nature, animal books and I had nothing to do with those things. Then I got a dog and she got a dog and we started running into each other again and she said do you want to do a dog book? At that time I said “I don’t think I can write a whole book about a dog. I can’t imagine that I have that much to say. “ Laughable now but that’s why I did an anthology first.

Then later when we were working on the paperback edition of that book, every time we were talking I had a stray dog in the house that I would refer to because I would put down the phone and go do something with the dog. She, like all of my friends, would say, “Oh you still have that dog that you found two weeks ago?” And I would say, “No, it’s a different dog.” That’s when she said maybe you should write a book about rescuing dogs and again, I said, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not any kind of expert.” But then the more I had people who were surprised that I kept finding dogs, the more I thought well maybe there is something unusual about this for some people, something that I could explore. And then I decided that I would write it and I wanted to try to really figure out what this is about and not just make it a series of anecdotes even though it is that in a way. But to also try to figure out why, why am I finding them when other people aren’t seeing them. Why do I feel compelled to do something when I used to be the kind of person who wouldn’t, to be honest. So that’s how the book began essentially.

Joy: You weren’t the one finding them. What does that say about you now that you are the kind of person who rescues them?

Ken: That’s exactly the question I was trying to answer in writing the book. Whenever people ask it I think, well, it took me two hundred pages to answer that question.

I think part of it is that I got a dog. A dog first in Costa Rica came to me every day for three months and I fell in love with him without meaning to at all, as frequently happens. When I couldn’t bring him home with me I was sort of devastated first of all but then when I did go back to New York I needed to get a dog because I didn’t know how to live without one at that part.

I think part of it is that I fell in love with dogs so I think living with dogs I have learned to become more intuitive and spontaneous and so the things I would filter out from the environment around me, whether it’s a stray dog or something else, I no longer filter those things out. I’m completely aware of everything. I think that’s one of the things the dogs have taught me because as you know dogs don’t ignore things and dogs know there’s something around the corner even if they haven’t seen it yet. And I think we’re capable of being not quite as intuitive but we’re capable of being more intuitive than we have been in the past couple of hundred years.

Joy: What’s important about having that kind of spontaneity and intuitiveness?

Ken: I think it changes your priorities. I think a lot of our human priorities, especially in contemporary culture, are false. They involve things rather than beings. And they involve things that exist only on paper and things that are televised and things that are electronic and they don’t really involve the actual living world. And I think that’s another part of the book. There are times when I would have to make a commitment to an animal without knowing what might happen or how long it was going to take to solve the problem of this animal’s health or this animal’s homelessness or whatever and I had to give certain things up. I couldn’t do whatever I wanted. I couldn’t take a vacation or I had to delay a vacation or all of those things. But as dog people we do this all the time actually. But it made me realize too, like what if I don’t get to visit my friends this weekend, it’s not that big a deal. I’ll visit them again; it just won’t be this weekend. That’s not such a big sacrifice to make.

Joy: What’s bad about having this focus on things and things on paper?

Ken: Because you can spend a lot of energy on those things and they don’t give us very much back. The living world is continually giving back to us.

When you rescue a dog you make a commitment and you make sacrifices. Even if the dog doesn’t stay with you the rest of its life, even if the dog goes on to live somewhere else, there’s a huge reward to doing that, which sounds, I hesitate to say things like that because I listen to myself and think it sounds so corny.

My dogs have saved my life more than once. They’ve made me appreciate really simple things and simple things are also really affordable. My parents sometimes worry that I spend a lot of money on my dogs, the medical bills and things like that, yet I think they keep me at home when I might have gone out to dinner and spent fifty dollars on an entrée or given me entertainment that doesn’t require that I gas up the car and drive out of town. And so, I feel like the existence of the living world, particularly in this case, animals, dogs particularly, it’s just a much more efficient way of living and appreciating our lives, to me.

Joy: What does that do for you to have that much more efficient way of living and appreciating your life?

Ken: It makes me happier for one. It makes me feel more alive. I often think what did I spend my time doing before I had a dog? I think what I spent my time doing was thinking a lot about myself, which is just sort of embarrassing. (Laughs) Particularly when I almost died and had to get a pacemaker I was sitting there thinking, “What about the dogs?” Again, I thought, thank God I’m thinking about the dogs. It would be so embarrassing if I were in this situation and thinking , “Poor me!”

Joy: What does that do for you that you can think about them and not yourself?

Ken: I think it’s very liberating. And I think in some ways, I’ve become, to go back into the terms that what we value in society, I think I’ve become a much more efficient person.

Come back tomorrow for Day 2 of the Ken Foster interview! He’ll explain what he means by a “more efficient person” and how the dogs helped him cope with a life-threatening heart problem.

If you can’t wait until tomorrow to know more, you can always visit Ken’s website to see some pictures of the dogs and read up on other things happening to this New Orleans resident and fromer New York City bon vivant! You can also check out Brando’s website here on Dogster!

Brando

Welcome to Day Four of Gina Farago’s interview. Gina’s book, Ivy Cole and the Moon, is the tale of a responsible dog-training werewolf living, and killing, in a small mountain town.

In the last installment of Gina’s revealing interview she told us that part of the reward for her in writing this novel is helping others come to better understand and appreciate wolves.

JW: What’s important for you about doing something worthwhile like this for the wolves and the dogs?

GF: I have always grown up with a real concern for the environment, a real concern for animals. I’m a member of the Defenders of Wildlife, the World Wildlife Fund, the Humane Society and it’s very satisfying for me to know that I can combine my passions. I can be a writer. I can entertain with a story. But I can make a difference to perhaps educate and help people learn about wolves and love wolves and consequently, love dogs because they’re so much love for dogs in my story that I feel that someone who may never have given their family pet much thought or has never owned one might think, “wow, I never realized the amount of depth that a dog can bring to a family.”

JW: Take us to a point in time when you’re telling yourself that this is the right book, the right subject, the right everything.

GF: There was a magical moment for me. Surprisingly, it wasn’t right at the wolf facility. It was down the road. They were having a cookout for the participants of the seminar. It was October. It was very crisp night. The sky was clear. The moon was out and there was a campfire. I was sitting at the campfire just myself and my husband. One of the little handlers came over and began asking me about my book. Before I knew it a small crowd had gathered because all the other participants had come over. So now I’m sitting at this fire. I’m surrounded by this small group of people. I’m telling the story about Ivy Cole and in the distance, the wolf pack started to howl. And so it was like I was being serenaded by the wolf pack as I told the wolves’ story. And that is a moment I will never forget.

JW: I’m getting chills as you’re telling me about it. As you see this time in your mind’s eye, what goes through your mind?

GF: Grateful. I feel grateful.

I feel grateful that God has put me on a path where I can combine the things I love and get these opportunities to do these really special, remarkable things and then share them with other people. I just feel grateful.

JW: What is it about the combination of the wolf and this magical moment you’re telling us about that’s really adding to that grateful feeling?

GF: I almost feel like I have their validation.

I was telling the story and I was talking to these people who also loved wolves and I was talking about how I wanted to do right by the wolves in my story. It would be very easy to write a werewolf story and make people walk away hating the werewolf and wishing the werewolf were dead and that is not the goal of my story. I wanted them to love the wolf and love the werewolf. I’m talking about this and the wolves started to sing to me, it was almost felt like it was a sign that you’re on the right path.

JW: How does that make you feel?

GF: Really good. It makes me feel encouraged. It gives me the confidence that I am doing what I’m supposed to do and I am working on the sequel so her story will continue onto another book.

Join us tomorrow for part five of this seven part series!

Welcome back! Its Day Two of the interview with Gina Farago, author of the werewolf story with a dog twist — Ivy Cole and the Moon (NeoDeo Press). Gina has lived with and worked with dogs for many years (she’s a certified canine massage therapist) and had just mentioned at the end of yesterday’s installment that there is a difference in books about dogs when the people really are “dog people” versus just writing a dog into a story or book.

JW: How does that make it different? There are dog stories out there. How does it make it different that it’s somebody who really loves dogs and has the kind of history in dogs that you have, being a certified canine massage therapist and long history in dogs? How does that make it different for you writing that and ultimately for the reader reading that book?

GF: I think a lot of people when they write, if they’re not a deeply engrained dog lover, the dog is in the story but he’s a peripheral character. He’s not really important. He’s not really that much a member of the family. He is just a presence in the household. But when you truly love dogs and you write about dogs, it’s very clear that they are integral to a family. They are a family member. And because I’m around dogs so much and I know their behavior I can make my dog characters very realistic in the story. I think that’s something that people who aren’t dog lovers, but throw a dog in their stories, they can’t capture. They don’t have that hands-on, day-to-day experience with the animal that a true dog lover has that they can pull out for their story.

JW: What’s important about capturing that real “having the hands-on”?

GF: When you’re writing a fiction novel about a werewolf, that’s way out there anyway. And my story is set in modern day. It is today. It’s in a small mountain town where views are going to be very close-minded. I’m writing about such a fanciful topic, to not have as much realism in it as possible, would make my werewolf even more unbelievable. So I pack the story with all kinds of facts and realistic details to bring believability to my werewolf character.

Particularly with wolves, I actually went to a facility in Indiana. It was called Wolf Park. I went up there to work hands-on with wolves. I was doing all this textbook research but as a writer there are just elements and details that you can’t get from reading a book. You have to be able to run your fingers through the fur and smell them and hear them and touch them and see with your own eyes how they act with each other. So I went to that facility in Indiana and I got to do all these things with real wolves. Including Wolf howl. That’s what I brought to my story; that particular element of realism. I had found that people who love dogs, also love wolves. It’s quite a cross-over.

JW: You’re saying being at the Wolf Park really gave you more of the intensity. How did that change or add to your view or feelings of dogs?

GF: It made me see how they are so connected to their wolf ancestors. I have observed my dogs doing things that I might think that’s stalking behavior or that’s hunting behavior but then when you go to a place and see a wolf doing the exact same thing. Now one of my dogs, bear in mind, is a miniature poodle. I mean you couldn’t feel more removed from a wolf than a miniature poodle but then to go up there and see wolves doing the same behaviors that I see in my house every day; that was very exciting. You know that the dog descended from the wolf but to go up and see the wolves doing these things that you’re already familiar with in your own animals, I really loved that part!

Come back tomorrow for the next installment in this interview series with author Gina Farago!

Randy Grim and Mambo

If you’e just joining us in the interview, you may want to page down to Day 1 and read back to this point. I got a chance to visit with Randy Grim, founder of Stray Rescue last week and we’ve been talking about the feral dogs he rescues and how he got into rescuing. Today Randy talks about rescuers and what makes them different.

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JW: What’s different about rescuers? What makes them get out there?

RG: I think one common thread is that we all seem to be the misfits of the world and I mean that in a good way. I’m glad I’m not quote, unquote normal. Everybody seems to have a lot of compassion behind them and everybody seems to have had maybe a tough childhood or early adulthood. I think they get out of it what I get out it, that feeling of self-worth by helping something that’s not capable of helping or speaking for themselves. It draws an eclectic group of people. It really does. I don’t want to say anti-social people but maybe a little bit.

JW: What about that little bit?

RG: This is about a dog website, correct? I hear all the time from volunteers how they don’t really care for people too much so I think it’s a lot of people who don’t care for people too much.

You ask good questions. You ask different questions than I normally get. I usually have stock answers but for you I don’t. You’re really good. You pick up on the things I don’t really think about. Then you make me be honest here when I say a lot of us don’t really like people. We have over two hundred.

JW: I won’t ask you how difficult that’s got to be.

RG: It’s always hard because they’re volunteers so it’s not like you can say, “oh, you did that wrong or something. You have to always be appreciative of their help.

JW: Well, since a lot of the readers are volunteers themselves what would you say to them about how to volunteer and what’s the best way for them?

RG: There are so many different volunteer opportunities at all shelters, but the one key thing is find an organization you feel comfortable volunteering for. If it’s a kill shelter, make sure you’re comfortable with the fact that dog or cat may not be there the next day. If you’re okay with that, and it takes a special person to be okay with that and God knows they need the help, then I would say volunteer with a kill shelter. If its something that you can’t get past, then volunteer for a no-kill shelter. But it can be, we have volunteers who do a little bit of everything. If you don’t like to be involved with the animals because it is too sad, help with the fundraising efforts. I mean, none of this is cheap. Help out, we have someone who comes in and organizes and cleans the office for us. There’s a lot of little things people can do. And the one thing we have so many volunteers for is petting on the dogs. This guy here, Mambo, was just rescued yesterday. I’m just hanging out with him so he knows that people are cool.

Come back tomorrow for the last installation in the Randy Grim interview!

Randy Grim and Mambo

Randy Grim talked about the causes of America’s feral dog problem in yesterdays’ blog. Today he talks about what we must do to begin to fix those problems and how the media treats dog issues.

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JW: Most dog people come from the middle class. What do you say to them if we really want to take America out of this third-world mentality, what do we do?

RG: Wherever you are, encourage your local shelters to get involved in the poor urban areas, or the poor rural areas I’ve heard it’s just as bad. But to get involved. But encourage, if you donate money to a shelter, with your donation check, write a letter saying, “What do you do with the strays you pick up? Do you have a feral dog program?” We’ve got to start as an animal welfare community to at least start recognizing that the problem exists before we can start working at solving anything. I can’t do it alone and I realize that now.

JW: What happens if we don’t recognize that the problem exists?

RG: Then it keeps getting worse. Already its gotten worse in the sense that so many of the street dogs across the other side of the river have TVT. I’d say fifty to seventy percent.

JW: What is TVT?

RG: It’s a form of cancer. It’s a venereal tumor through sex. This is something vets are taught in school, don’t worry. You’ll never see this. We’ve had over a thousand cases. It’s treatable but the best method is chemotherapy. This is going to start crossing over into mainstream society. Once that starts I’m sure awareness will be there but I’m also a little concerned that we’re also an alarmist society we’ll just take the inhumane method. My fear would be a shooting policy, a police shooting the dogs. And its not that I’m against euthanasia; I’d rather see a doggy put down rather than suffer but I think that we need to always try to save them.

JW: Is this reminiscent of what’s going on in the breed specific legislation where people are starting to…

RG: That’s big alarmist hoopla. The thing that kills me about the breed specific legislation that’s being passed now is that there have been no, for the last thirty years, the amount of people who have been killed by a dog attack has not increased at all but the population has increased tremendously so its gone down. The dog that has caused the most injuries to the people in the United States is not the pit bull. The other thing, to identify a pit bull is almost impossible. If you mix a boxer and a lab it looks just like a pit bull. Quentin, the dog that survived the gas chamber, is half pit bull so he’s not welcome in a lot of places but he travels first class on an airplane. Its, we have to be responsible pit bull owners and if you want to pass a law saying no more breeding of pit bulls, I’m all for it but we’ve got to still deal humanely with the ones that we have and the ones that end up being born. I have two at home and I love them and they are the most wonderful dogs in the world. Its just people. Its people. I’m not saying that all pit bulls are the sweetest dogs, but there’s usually a person behind them making them the way they are and I’ve seen that too. If you think back, it used to be the Doberman and it was the Rottweiler. Next it’s probably going to be the Akita. So really if they look at the Center of Disease Control statistics it’s the Cocker Spaniel.

JW: What’s causing that?

RG: The breeding. It’s over bred. The woman that had the face transplant, it was a Lab. But if it was a pit bull, everyone in the world would know. Nobody knows that it was a family pet, their Lab. The all-American dog mauled and took her whole face off. My point is once you start pointing fingers like that. Oh, and my favorite statistic is that you have a better chance of winning the Powerball twice before being mauled and killed by a pit bull. I’m on the streets all the time and I’ve never been bitten by one. The truth is, I have been bitten by a Cocker Spaniel at someone’s house.

The point is that the media really has hyped it. The media loves this. They love scaring people to death. I blame the media for making this, that horrible couple in San Francisco with the Canarios, they’re the reason why all this is happening. It made such news. Even though they weren’t even pit bulls. I think it put the media on alert that there’s always going to be maulings and people dying from dogs. There always has been but the San Francisco story was so big, so international.

JW: Did you see a change in the media or people’s reactions?

RG: I did. I saw a big change in the media wanting to do negative stories on any type of terrier related to the pit bull family and I saw people being more afraid of any dogs that look like the ones from San Francisco. Sure. And you know the odd part is, like I said, that there have always been maulings by dogs that killed people. Last year, a Pomeranian mauled and killed a child. That’s a Pomeranian. These statistics are from the Center for Disease Control. They’re not made up.

Come back tomorrow as we continue our visit with Randy Grim!