Bookmarks, Bouchercon, and the Next Ginny Reese Mystery

Everyone who knows me knows I live for that first day at the end of the summer, when the temperatures drop 20 degrees and the humidity is cut in half. You can take a deep breath without feeling as though you need gills, and walk the dogs without feeling as though you live in a greenhouse. As someone with poor heat tolerance, I loathe summer. I get it when friends bemoan the coming winter months, when the skies are dull and gray, and you have to deal with sleet and the occasional snow. But give me a break. We barely get any fall or winter these days, whereas summer is nearly year-round now.

Let me have my autumn, darn it. Bring on the spooky season, I say!

“Summer” starts sooner and lasts longer each year now. Every year shatters heat records from the year before. We almost never see snow around here anymore, and are perilously close to losing fall as well as winter.

I incorporated a little ode to Autumn in the opening paragraphs of A Nose for Death (Ginny Reese Mysteries Book 4) that had to be eliminated when I moved the time sequence for the story from fall to early spring. I’ll share it here:

Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year. And not just “fall” but autumn in every sense of the word. It’s the crackle of dry leaves underfoot as they skitter across the sidewalk on a windy day. The smell of wood smoke in the air, and the wet mulchy scent of damp earth. It’s the honking of geese overhead on a cold, gray day, the mournful sound resonating in your bones as you pull out your heavy sweaters and boots for the first time of the season. It’s how the spectrum of sunlight shifts from white to gold, slanting through trees with leaves of yellow, orange, and red, lighting up the emerald-green blades of grass in the fields with an intensity seldom seen at any other time of year. It’s waking to air so crisp, it’s like biting into a fresh apple, with tracings of frost on the windowpanes.

Sadly, what we’re experiencing now is what’s being referred to as ‘false fall.’ Yesterday we got the lovely break in heat and humidity, and tonight the temps are dropping into the upper forties. Normally I’d be thrilled, but we’re told the temperatures are going to bounce back up into the 90s again and stay there well into November. As someone who loves hiking with the dogs, this is depressing, to say the least.

But I’m taking advantage of it now, making a point to get outside after work while we have this temporary reprieve from living in Satan’s armpit. Yesterday, while walking the dogs, the solution to a thorny plot problem that has been tying me up for months miraculously revealed itself to me, and I had to dash back to the house and write it down before the resolution escaped me. I’m not much of an outliner or plotter (some would point out the advantages of being one right about now) but as I wrote down the details of the solution, it held up. Which means I can finally move forward to finish this book.

I’d be hard-pressed to say exactly why it is that I’ve been struggling to finish this WIP. Work stress, life stress, just-getting-darn-old stress have all been factors. I try not to be annoyed with myself and just accept any progress, the Eureka moment when I solved my sticky plot problem being one of them. This means I’m entering the homestretch of Nose at last, and I’m hoping for a fall release date. Another reason to love fall!

I’ll be attending the big mystery convention Bouchercon in Nashville next week, meeting up with friends and sitting in on some panels. I’m busy making swag bags with stickers, QR cards, temporary tattoos, and candy, as well as decorating bookmarks. I find the process of sorting beads, deciding on the colors and patterns, and then creating the handmade look very soothing. But at this point, I’m planning on bringing so much with me to Nashville, I might as well move there!

The swag bags and bookmarks are for the author speed dating event I’m doing Thursday 8/29 am, where I will be circulating a room of attendees, pitching the Ginny Reese Mysteries in a 2 minute spiel to each table. On Saturday 8/31 at 8 am, I’ll be on a panel discussing how to avoid the pitfalls of indie publishing, after which there will be a book signing in the dealers room. If you’re near Nashville next week, you should check out Bouchercon at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center! If you’re attending, look for me there–I’d love to meet you!

Also, if you’re not following M.K. Dean on BookBub, I’d love the support! I can’t take advantage of certain features on the site (such as their release announcement function) until I have at least 1K followers. It costs nothing to create an account if you don’t have one, and what I love about Bookbub is you can tailor your preferences when it comes to their featured deal notifications so you’re alerted if there are discounted/free books in your favorite genre. Check it out!

 

A Series of Small Doors Closing

TW: Pet loss/grief

A stranger on the internet is grieving the unexpected loss of her elderly cat right now.

So many times, my social media feeds share these bright pinpricks of sorrow, and I’m often at a loss as to how to respond. As an empathetic person, it’s easier for me to be weighed down by posts where someone shares heartbreak than I am buoyed by people’s happy stories. Many times I respond with sympathetic words. Sometimes, for the sake of my own mental health, I scroll by without replying, especially if the person grieving is someone I really don’t know at all.

This particular person is so bereft that I want to make things better for her and yet words are inadequate. Grief must be processed. First it overwhelms you. There’s shock, loss, and the crushing pain of knowing someone or something that you loved will never be there again. You may be the type to rage against it. To fall into despair. Eventually, it recedes. Other traumas occur. Happy events occur. We aren’t designed for sustained grief any more than we’re designed for sustained stress. Our mind will do its best to pretend it’s not there after a while.

I often say animals are the perfect vessels for our affection because they give so much of themselves and love us unconditionally in a way few things on this planet can do. Losing that kind of love, the kind that is glad to see you simply because you walked through the door (and have opposable thumbs to open cans of food), is brutal. If you’ve loved an animal for a long time, it’s been through the good times and the bad times with you. It’s not just a dog or cat. It’s the purring cat who settles on your chest when you’re reading a book, or stretches out a paw just to touch you. It’s the dog who rests his head in your lap at the end of a bad day. It’s the animal who follows you into the next room simply to be where you are. It’s the thousands of photos on your camera roll and all the memories that go with them. It’s a vessel of love that taught you the meaning of joy and how to live in the moment. To have that ripped away–regardless if you saw it coming or not–that’s losing the best part of yourself. 

The path you walk with grief isn’t linear, however. Nor is it the same for everyone. People talk about the five stages of grief but no one really seems to mention that you can skip stages or revisit stages more than once. To me, grief is not a stage but a creature that haunts your footsteps as you walk a trail that has entered a darker section of woods. The sun struggles to break through the trees. The path ahead isn’t clear, and it branches in different directions, sometimes even doubling back on itself. There’s a way out, but you have no idea how long it’s going to take, and you’re walking it alone now, alone except for this sense of something tracking you.

At first, even walking seems impossible. You’re stumbling over roots, or your boots become mired in mud. Breathing hurts. This does get better with time, but just how long it will be before the path evens out again depends on so many things: where you are in your stage of life, what kind of support system you do or do not have. Eventually, that grief creature feels less threatening. You’re never exactly friends with it–but there comes a time when you can nod at it in passing and keep going. There are other times when Grief will nod back with a smile, and then just as you come abreast, it will sucker punch you in the gut and laugh because you didn’t see it coming–six weeks, six months, six years later. Grief doesn’t care. It’s both durable and patient. It can’t be rushed.

As I’m getting older, there’s a new element to my grief: the shutting of small doors.

My friends and I are all getting up there in age. We’re reaching a point in our lives where we have to consider the wisdom and logistics of another pet. More and more of my friends are choosing to remain petless now. I don’t want to think about this stage of my life. My animals have been my chosen family for most of my adult life. I wouldn’t be here now without them. The idea of not having a pet in my life is devastating, and yet at some point, my hand may be forced and another door in my life will close.

I went through an incredible period of loss from 2017-2018. During that time, I lost four cats (two elderly house cats, and two ferals that I loved just the same), my beloved dog, my mother, my uncle, my brother, and my first horse, whom I’d had for 30 years. The punches came so hard and fast I didn’t have time to process one before the next one knocked me flat. 2019 gave me a breather and then we all know what happened starting early in 2020, ha-ha thank you very much, pandemic. In 2021, I lost my last horse, and another door shut for good. I didn’t process grief. I walled it up inside me. I don’t recommend doing this, by the way. It has a terrible way of damaging the foundations, leaking toxic material into the framework and rotting the floors. I walk around in a state of self-protection, closing out those I love in an attempt to prevent any more pain. Don’t do that. Don’t miss out on the joy of what you do have for fear of losing it. That path means you lose it twice. I’m working on dealing with it now that I’m no longer in survival mode. But I suspect healing is going to take rebreaking of metaphorical bones that didn’t heal right in the first place.

Last week, I euthanized my last elderly cat. He’d been doing well with kidney and heart disease right up until the point that he wasn’t anymore. It was the right decision. Knowing this doesn’t make it any easier, however. So the pain of some random stranger on the internet is really biting me hard today. I’ve had cats since my freshman year of college. I’ve been incredibly fortunate because my dogs and cats have always gotten along. But my current young dog, a marshmallow in so many ways, discovered a nest of baby bunnies last summer, and since then, he looks at young cats with a whole different gleam in his eye. I’ve decided not to risk introducing another cat–and potential tragedy–into the house at this time. I’m looking at being catless for the foreseeable future, and it’s with tears that I shut another door.

I don’t know what this internet stranger’s circumstances might be. I don’t know if it is possible for her to ever get another cat or if she even would consider one at some point down the road. Some people run out and get another pet right away. Some people know they need more time to process and plan for another pet at some point in the future, and knowing there will be another pet brings them comfort now. Some people decide there will not be any more. Some say there will not be another–and then the right animal, one that needs them as much as they are needed–shows up at the right time. Like navigating grief, choosing to open up your heart again to something whose life is much shorter than ours is an individual decision. Sometimes Grief says one thing, and two weeks later you feel differently. I just know she’s hurting and she’s reached out to the internet for help in how to navigate this pain. Some kind people have shared that they still feel the loss of a beloved pet and that she’s not alone in her grief. Others have made gentle suggestions of things she can do to help her find solace. (One troll suggested they enjoyed having a clean house and being able to vacation whenever they wanted but clearly this person is being a vicious little guttersnipe on purpose, so I hope no one gives them the attention they clearly desire)

I had words to say, but didn’t feel I could adequately convey what I wanted in 240 characters on Twitter. I started to send her this link, but that felt intrusive, so I told her the post existed if she wanted to read it at a time when she was ready. I hope she realizes her cat knows she was loved and treasured, and that is not a small thing. We don’t get enough of that in this world. Choosing to love another pet won’t diminish the presence of Grief shadowing you on that path, but it does mean you won’t walk it alone.

And I hope she can take some small comfort in these words, should she come across them.

 

 

Halloween fun: Help me name the next Ginny Reese Mystery!

This past weekend, I participated in an outdoor book signing at a dog agility trial. Makes sense, right? Dog lovers will adore the Ginny Reese Mysteries! As a matter of fact one competitor advised a buyer not to start reading An Embarrassment of Itches until after the event was over because she’d started it the night before and stayed up far too late to be at her best for the competition. What better endorsement than that? Even though I did feel a little guilty…

All weekend long, I was fanning myself in 80 degree weather and slathering on sunscreen, but now, only forty-eight hours later, it’s only 43 degrees and we’re under a freeze warning for tonight. I made bread and potato soup this morning, have a fake fireplace playing on YouTube, and some light jazz playing in the background while I work on a Ginny Reese holiday novella. I still need a title for it, so I thought we could play a little game.

This pet and holiday themed mystery features a Secret Santa mixup and is focused on a Christmas caper as opposed to murder. Drop your suggestion in the comments and if I select it, you’ll receive an acknowledgement as well as a little gift package from me. I’ll also choose three people at random from the comments to win a $10 Amazon gift card–and we can all use that for the holidays, right? Contest ends Nov 15th because I have to have a title by then! Be sure to share this with your cozy mystery loving–and dog loving–friends!

 

 

Does the Dog Live? I need to know!

I don’t know about you, but I always get a little anxious about books and movies that have animals in them. It’s the one time I’ll skim ahead in my reading: to make sure an animal sidekick is still alive at the end of the book. There are books and series I’ve had to stop watching because of the emotional punch of losing a pet.

I make heavy use of the website doesthedogdie.com to screen my entertainment because that particular kind of loss is triggering for me. The website describes itself as “crowdsourced emotional spoilers for movies, TV, books, and more”. It even has a subcategory rating for when things look bad for the animal companion but turns out okay. I get my friends and family to screen material for me as well. I have an emotionally demanding day job; I don’t need to be crushed by my entertainment too!

Which is why I am so pleased to be part of this promotion: The Dog Lives! 24 mystery and crime fiction stories where the animal sidekick, furry or feathered, is guaranteed to survive! As soon as I heard about it, I knew it was the perfect promotion to join!

I’m offering The Dog Days of Murder (Ginny Reese Mysteries Book 2) as a runup to the release of A Corpse in the Condo on June 1, 2023! You can pre-order Corpse now!

While you’re at it, in order to take advantage of many of the author services on BookBub, I need hit 1 K followers. My M.K. Dean account could use some love! Follow me there? If you’re an author, I’ll follow back!

In the meantime, grab your free mysteries and enjoy this spring weather!

What’s New in 2022: It’s a Party and You’re All Invited!

I don’t know about you, but somehow the end of the year snuck up on me without my realizing it. Life got crazy there for a while, and I never got around to making my EOY post, which is fine because I hate doing those kinds of reflective summaries anyway. I never seem to have been as productive or as successful as I might have hoped, you know?

Most of you who follow this blog know I like to create a power word or phrase for the coming year, and that looks like it will be a bust this year as well. I chose fearless for 2019. It was audacious for 2020. Resilent for 2021. I think maybe it’s time to retire power words for a while, don’t you?

I had a Tarot reading done for 2021 heading into 2022. The Tower and Judgement cards were major players in my life in 2021 (sadly, this could apply pretty much to every year since 2016), with the Devil and the Fool being factors in the upcoming year. I can overcome if I play to my strengths and ditch my issues with self-confidence and self-sabotage. Sounds ominous? I think so, too. 😉

I was recently exposed to Covid through the workplace, which led to a scramble to get tested. I’m negative at the moment, but isolating from my high-risk family members to be on the safe side.

All in all, I’m surprised I’ve gotten anything accomplished this month!

But the good news is I finished the draft of the second Ginny Reese book: The Dog Days of Murder! It’s off to editing soon. Look for a release date late winter, early spring! If you are signed up for my newsletter, you’ll get a sneak peek at the cover before everyone else! The gang’s all there: Ginny, her dog Remy, Ming the Merciless, the Siamese cat, as well as the cast of characters living in Greenbrier, including her mother, the indomitable Julia Reese! Ginny’s plans to open her own vet practice go awry when a newcomer swoops into town with mysterious financial backing AND a connection to Joe. Of course, this new veterinarian winds up getting murdered, right? 🙂

I did a fun interview with Marcia James about pets in books and why I include them. Be sure to check it out and see some great pictures! 

Tomorrow, I’m participating in a big release day bash for Kerry Blaisell’s latest release, Damning the Dead. There’s going to be a Facebook party with 13 other authors, with games and prizes galore. Not only are you invited, but you should invite your friends too! It’s Jan 5 from 4-7:30 Pacific Standard Time, so be sure to join us!! Join the group now so you won’t miss a thing!

Here’s the schedule:

Schedule of participating authors:
  • Jeff D. Ellis ~ 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Bob Herold ~ 4:15 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Tena Stetler ~ 4:30 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Dan Rice ~ 4:45 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • McKenna Dean ~ 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Hunter Skye ~ 5:15 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Pamela Thibodeaux ~ 5:30 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Shelly Chalmers ~ 5:45 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Theresa Finn ~ 6:00 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Augustina Van Hoven ~ 6:15 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Janet Raye Stevens ~ 6:30 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Anna M. Taylor ~ 6:45 PM PACIFIC TIME
  • Sally Brandle ~ 7:00 PM PACIFIC TIME

 

And now that I’ve finished the second Ginny Reese book, it’s time for me to go back to Bishop and Knight’s story. When we last left them, Rhett and Peter had become very close, but they’d also been fired from Redclaw and hired by the competition: Rian Stirling! We all know that Rian has his eye on Rhett as well, so this doesn’t bode well for our intrepid duo. Sometimes, however, you must form an alliance with an enemy to defeat a more powerful adversary. No spoilers, but we’ll find out the source of all those mysterious artifacts and why the planet has been seeded with them…

 

Maybe I should chose a power word after all. How does confidence sound? 🙂

 

 

Teaching Yourself New Tricks: Advice from an Old Dog Trainer

The other day I was complaining to a group of friends how frustrated I was with my journey to better health. That I was so frazzled and stressed that even the smallest things seemed impossible. That I was so angry at how much I’d had sacrificed and given up in the last few years that I resisted like hell when asked to give up anything else. How exhausted I was all the time, and how this impacted my ability to make good personal decisions when all my energy for good decision-making was reserved for work.

I begged for their support. I was hoping for some other bit of miraculous advice, the perfect diet plan that would allow me to shed twenty pounds in two days, feel AMAZING with just some small tweaks in my routine, and take at least twenty years off my appearance. Okay, not really. But certainly that’s the expectation we have when starting any new ‘clean up your act’ plan. Miracles in 21 days or your money back.

The response I got startled me.

One of my friends said, “You wouldn’t expect a reactive dog to make huge improvements overnight. Why do you expect the same for yourself?”

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a reactive dog is one who over-reacts to things in its environment. This kind of behavior can be hard-wired into the dog through genetics (certain breeds, especially the working and herding dogs, have been bred to respond to certain situations and stimuli, and can be more reactive as a result), through poor socialization (not having seen enough different things as a young pup, which makes the whole world an intense place), or from a terrifying incident–like getting attacked.

Reactive dogs are tough to live with because almost everything sets them off: movement, sound, certain situations. They lunge and bark in public spaces, making them difficult to walk. The tendency is to keep them home, which makes the problem worse, especially if you stop having people come over. The risk of a reactive dog biting someone is high because their displays are often fear-based, and if you can’t calm them down, their response is disproportionate to the stimuli.

I’ve had two reactive dogs, so I’ve had to learn a lot about managing them.

The first was Abbey, a female German Shepherd that came from bloodlines that featured a lot of Schutzhund champions. Schutzhund is a dog sport that tests a dog’s performance during tracking, obedience, and protection work. That is not to say that a Schutzhund dog can’t make a great family pet, but the sport does prize drive as a characteristic, and reactivity can be a consequence of high drive.

Abbey would have probably been a tough-but-manageable dog had she not had a horrific experience. When she was about three years old, we were out walking after a heavy snowstorm. My neighbors had a litter of adult mixed-breed shepherds that lived in a pen with little human interaction. On this day for the first time ever, they decided to let their unsocialized, untrained dogs loose to play in the snow. Four dogs all about Abbey’s size jumped us as a pack with the intent of killing her.

Had it not been for the excessive snow, they probably would have. Abbey dove under the snow pack while I waded into the mass of dogs, screeching like a banshee, grabbing dogs by the scruff and slinging them across the yard. Their owners came charging out of the house to collect their dogs–with never a word of apology or to see if me or my dog had been injured, mind you.

And after that, if Abbey saw a dog even 100 yards away, she went into an impressive display of barking and growling, pawing the air while I held her back by the collar. Going for a walk was no longer fun. We were like victims of assault, constantly looking over our shoulders for another attack. Abbey thought a good offense was the best defense. She even reacted on garbage days when people set their trash cans on the curb. Whatever was new and different in her environment was grounds for being defensive.

Over the next three or four years I worked on her behavior, taking “aggressive” dog classes, working with trainers and behaviorists. It wasn’t until one such trainer helped me to see that she was over-reacting out of fear that I was able to start managing her better. In the end, we were able to safely introduce her to strange dogs, and pass another dog-walker on a six-foot-wide trail without her blinking an eye.

But it didn’t happen overnight.

When I got my next reactive dog, Sampson, I had a better handle on what to do. I’d made sure Sampson had been well-socialized as a puppy, but his problem was he had a strong prey drive. If it moved, it lit him up. I could always tell when he wasn’t getting enough exercise because he’d flinch if a car or a jogger passed us while we were out walking. I’d have to take him to the side of the trail if we met someone on a hike and ask him to sit while I fed him treats. This required me to be hyper-vigilant, always scanning our environment for something he might react to and heading off that reaction before it occurred. Fortunately, he was very food-motivated, and eventually it got to the point when he saw the jogger, the cyclist, the car, etc, he’d flip around, plant himself in front of me, and stare at me while drool streamed out of his mouth.

A wonderful dog, but not easy to live with.

I bring this up because much like all worthwhile things in life, retraining a reactive dog is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires patience, dedication, and consistency to see results. You can’t decide that this time, you won’t reinforce the behavior you want while discouraging the behavior you don’t want. The results matter because not following through will lead to a lifetime of trying to prevent your hysterical dog from hurting himself or someone else. Not to mention it is horrible to live in a state of such anxiety all the time.

And at no point did I tell either of my dogs they were fat, lazy, or stupid for behaving the way they did. I didn’t scream at them. I didn’t tell them they were ugly. I didn’t set them up to fail. I didn’t ask them to do something not very much fun without providing some kind of reward to make it worth their while. I didn’t expect them to get it right 100% of the time, either. I accepted anything that moved in the right direction until it became a consistent habit and I could ask for a little bit more. I acknowledged that if they got it wrong, I was usually to blame because I wasn’t paying attention.

Why would I treat myself–and the changes I want to make in my life–with any less patience and compassion?

I shouldn’t. And neither should you.

So remember the tenants of dog training when it comes to yourself and the changes you want to make in your life:

  1. Set yourself up to succeed. Look ahead for the triggers and plan redirects around them.
  2. Calmly and firmly tell yourself no when faced with a decision that isn’t good for you (like walking into the break room and discovering boxes of doughnuts from the best bakery in town). Be sure to reward yourself for making the right decision. This is critical! You’ll have to figure out what your “high-value treats” are. Try not to trade one bad habit for another (i.e. you’re trying to quit smoking so you’re eating lots of cookies, or you’re spending too much money shopping online).
  3. Be patient. You’re in this for the long-haul. Getting ten little things right can be set back by getting one major thing wrong, but getting something wrong isn’t the end of the world. Just do better next time.
  4. Remember that you’re making changes for a reason. Failure to stick with it has consequences. Failing to train your reactive dog may result in your dog biting someone or getting into a serious dogfight with injuries. Failure to make needed changes in your life may result in further damage to your mental and physical health.
  5. Remember that some of the behaviors you’re dealing with may have their roots in past trauma. I never blamed Abbey for over-reacting to the sight of strange dogs–we both could have died on that snowy day! Be kind to your wounded self too.
  6. Learn from your mistakes. Failure to plan is planning to fail. I wouldn’t leave the house without a treat bag full of high-value tidbits to distract my dog in certain situations. I also learned to recognize which situations were too overwhelming for her to start, and adjusted our interactions as a result. Identify your triggers and challenging situations and plan accordingly.
  7. Accept that it is up to you to affect the changes you want to see, and that you can’t necessarily expect help from others. When you’re out walking a reactive dog, you have zero control over what other people are doing with their dogs, or on skateboards, or with kids in strollers, etc. It is up to YOU to take yourself and your dog out of a situation that you suspect will be triggering. Same if you’re trying to alter your habits (be it food, alcohol, drugs, swearing, or a pervasive need to sing Disney songs, whatever). You cannot expect others around you to create a safe zone for you. Accept responsibility for your own life.
  8. Ask for help and support. Wait, what? Doesn’t that contradict the last rule? No, not really. Training a reactive dog will fail if some members of the house refuse to support the training efforts. It isn’t reasonable or fair to expect the world at large to cooperate with your efforts to make change, but it is reasonable to ask for help from those in your immediate circle. It’s okay to admit that a house full of cookies (or alcohol or Chez Doodles, whatever your poison) proves to be too hard to resist. You can sit your family down and explain that you have to make changes in order to improve the quality of your life, and while you’re not asking that everyone follow the same strictures you might be making for your personal health (for example, going dairy-free), you are going to need to set limits on how much of the high-temptation food is in the house, and that when choosing to eat out, preference be given to a restaurant that has more options than pizza or burgers. It isn’t wrong to ask for this kind of support, particularly in the early stages of change when you are trying to get a handle on it. You wouldn’t take a reactive dog to a dog park until you’d learned how to manage their reactivity in public. A dog park is too much for many dogs, not just reactive ones! You start out with smaller, quieter walks until you know how to manage your dog in more stimulating situations. So if you’re trying to affect change in eating habits, perhaps eating out with the family isn’t the best choice at first.
  9. Consider professional help. Sure, you’ve been training dogs (or feeding yourself, or dealing with your own issues) all your life. But sometimes you need the help of a trained professional to manage a specific issue. Sometimes that reactive dog needs medication to calm down to the point it can listen appropriately to your training. You might need therapy to deal with old wounds. Perhaps your current methods of coping, which come with consequences, have their roots in previous trauma, and you won’t really effect change until you figure out how to heal from that.
  10. Give yourself credit for the changes and improvements you make. They may not seem like much at first, but don’t discount them! A baby step in the right direction is still a step in the right direction. Eventually, you will no longer be satisfied with baby steps, and you’ll be able to continue pushing forward. Six months or a year from now, you’ll look back in astonishment at how far you’ve come.

So there you have it: why training yourself is no different from training your dog. If your dog slips its collar and runs off, you wouldn’t beat your dog for finally coming to you when you called it, would you? No, you wouldn’t–or you shouldn’t, at any rate.

Then stop beating yourself up for returning to the path you want after briefly straying from it. You can teach an old dog new tricks.

Compassion Fatigue: or Why I Didn’t Share Your Post

 

TW/CW for sad things tugging on your heartstrings.

 

 

 

The other day during work I got an email from an acquaintance. A shelter in the neighboring county had posted an urgent notice: they’d been inundated with puppies during the past week and if they didn’t find homes for them by the end of business hours that day, they would have to euthanize them.

Did I know of anyone who wanted a puppy? Like right now? Immediately.

I wracked my brains but couldn’t come up with anyone on the fly.

“Send me the link and I’ll share it when I can,” I offered as a stopgap before delving back into work.

But ultimately, I didn’t share the link. Let me tell you why.

You see, something about that urgent request to spend compassion currency that I have in dwindling supply broke me just a little.

I have to reiterate: it was puppies. Puppies that needed homes right away or they would die. But for the first time ever, getting hit with such a request rang the resentment buzzer instead of the compassion bell.

Whoa. Hold up there. Resenting an impassioned plea to help save at least one or two puppies? Doesn’t that make me some kind of Cruella de Vil?

Sure, I couldn’t do anything directly to save the puppies. But I could share the link, right? How much energy could that possibly take? How could I refuse to put out the word?

Well, there are a couple of reasons. For starters, there was the link itself, which felt very “click-baity” when I read it. “Help us! Puppies will die if you don’t come TODAY!”

Believe me, I know there is probably someone on the other end of that post, hoping against hope that they don’t have to perform the soul-destroying task of euthanizing healthy puppies because some irresponsible person let their dog have them without any intention of raising them and finding homes for them. And my heart breaks for that shelter worker. I know their pain is real, even if they couched their request like so many other posts begging for help.

But practically speaking, by the time I’d put out the half-a dozen or so fires at my job, which also requires a great deal of compassion, it was so late in the day that my sharing the post would have been too late for that litter of puppies. Perhaps it could have raised awareness for someone else out there looking for a puppy that they should check out the shelter, but the puppies in question? Too late.

And that’s when I realized that my compassion bank account was dangerously low.

Because every day we’re hit up with thousands of similar requests. GoFundMe accounts for medical or funeral expenses shared by our friends. Political organizations playing off our justifiable outrage over some restrictive measure that’s just been enacted, and if we don’t donate NOW, warning of the Bad Things coming our way. Just causes demanding we take action. Global catastrophes begging for our financial support. Legal funds for kids in cages, ripped from their families. Egregious acts of racism that deserve investigation and some kind of response. Missing children on milk cartons needing to be identified. And so on.

And yes, I realize that I’m speaking from a place of great privilege because I’m not the one begging for help paying my bills or needing someone to rescue me from having to perform a heartbreaking task.

I think of myself as a compassionate person. Professions that demand compassion tend to attract empathetic people, and I chose my career path years ago because I had compassion to spare. I donate generously to things I believe in because I usually don’t have the time to volunteer in person. I spent years serving as a caretaker to my father because it was my mother’s wish that he be able to stay at home rather than enter an advanced care facility. I trap, neuter, and vaccinate the stray cats that show up around my house on my own dime, finding homes for those that can be tamed and going to ridiculous lengths to take care of the remaining ones (see the expensive catio that I built for these furry freeloaders). I cried when the annoying trash panda, whom I caught three times before trapping the mean tom (who hisses and spits at me every day, despite being nursed back to health), got hit by a car.

I share things. The post about the homeless trans teen who needs help. The post from an internet acquaintance who needs help paying for her cat’s surgery. The posts about fundraisers, many of which I contribute to myself. The posts about organizations raising money to deal with the aftermaths of flooding, fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes. The posts where some mother is asking for likes to show her son or daughter how beautiful they are. I comment with sympathy on the posts of total strangers who have experienced a great loss.

My lack of willingness to share the post about the puppies, and the resentment the request generated, tells me I must draw the line somewhere. None of us are designed with endless wells of compassion. To mix metaphors, we can’t keep overdrawing our compassion accounts to spend on things out of our control. The constant withdrawal of coins to spend on people we don’t know will bankrupt us.

I’m not Cruella de Vil.

I have compassion fatigue.

Put another way, if I’d found a box of puppies myself, I would have taken them into my home. I would have had them vaccinated and dewormed, and tried my best to find homes for them all, while at the same time, trying to socialize them and instill some manners in order to make them the best possible candidates for adoption.

If the local shelter had a fundraiser, I’d volunteer my time, donate some money, and if I couldn’t do either of the above, I’d share the post about it. I’d probably share the post regardless, but in terms of doing something, sharing is the last on the list. I’ve said it before, but sharing posts without taking action is little more than virtue-signaling. It might make you feel good, but for the most part it accomplishes very little.

I wrote a bit about my struggles with social media in general a few weeks ago, and how I think SM breaks are necessary for our mental health. In that post, I mentioned this metafilter thread that my husband had shared with me: What’s Mine to care about and what’s NOT MINE to care about. The original post cited, as well as the discussion thread it generated, is well-worth reading. In the OP, If You Can’t Take In Anymore, There’s a Reason, the poster refers to the need for an emotional circuit breaker because our minds and hearts aren’t wired to care about everything that’s on fire all over the world at the same time, and if we don’t flip that breaker, our whole house will burn down.

I couldn’t agree more. So like the OP, I recommend you pick one fire to put out at a time, and you concentrate on the fire that threatens the things you care about the most. Battle that fire with all your heart and resources. Fight the fire you think you have the best chance of helping to contain, or the one that is the most pressing to you because it’s in your backyard. You can help fight a fire halfway across the world, if that’s the fire that’s important to you, but you can’t squander your limited resources on trying to fight them all.

Because if 101 Dalmatians show up at your doorstep looking for a ride home, you want to have enough compassion in the bank to get them there.

And perhaps if I wasn’t staring down at a compassion overdraft notice, I would have shared the post about the puppies after all. Because that is the sort of thing I care about.

An Embarrassment of Itches: New Cozy Mystery by M.K. Dean

It’s here! And owing to a colossal mistake, it’s live instead of only available for pre-order. Because I am SO excited about this release, An Embarrassment of Itches is only 99 cents AND available on Kindle Unlimited for the next three months!

It’s Diagnosis Murder meets All Creatures Great and Small…

As a house-call vet, Ginny Reese has seen her share of the weird and wacky. But nothing in her previous experience could have prepared her to find one of her clients floating in her own swimming pool.

Local artist Amanda Kelly was extremely wealthy with her share of secrets. By naming Ginny as her heir, not only did she make Ginny the number one suspect, but she painted a big bull’s eye on her friend’s back as well.

With her trusty German Shepherd at her side, it’s up to Ginny to find the real killer and prove her innocence to the sheriff. The new sheriff. Who happens to be her ex.

Piece of cake, right?

But I had this great launch party planned with gift baskets and prizes galore–all my pre-marketing plans for this book got scuttled with the early release. So I could really use your help in spreading the word!

Stay tuned for more information on the post-launch party and how you can get in on the fun!

Most of my social media platforms will remain the same, but if you’d like to follow the M.K. Dean Facebook page, it’s here. Also, here’s M.K. Dean on Amazon!

Can We Please Find Another Way to Celebrate the 4th Without Fireworks?

This morning I saw a Tweet bewailing the fact the OP’s timeline was full of “anti-fireworks” rhetoric, and it got me thinking about my own dislike of 4th of July celebrations.

I came by them young, when my family would drive for what seemed like an interminable time so we could fight for a spot on a blanket in a mosquito-infested park and watch 15 minutes of fireworks, only to sit in line for over an hour to get out of the park on our way home. Like many other mass group events we participated in when I was a child, this seemed like a huge waste of time for me.

As I got older, I simply didn’t care for the noisy holidays. Give me Halloween, with the excitement of dressing up, the spooky decorations, and the fun of collecting candy. Halloween is the nip of fall in the air and the crunch of dry leaves underfoot. It’s bobbing flashlights in the dark and neighbors pretending to be scared. Or Christmas, with the delight of giving and receiving gifts, filling the house with the scent of cinnamon as you bake cookies and put up the tree, watching old movies, and the promise of snow. (Christmas is always about the promise more than the reality, which is probably why I prefer Christmas Eve to Christmas Day).

I’ve never cared for New Year’s Eve, even without the practice of reviewing the year and assessing your goals and achievements (or lack thereof). Around here NYE has become yet another excuse to light off fireworks. When you live in an area where fireworks are legal, every “fireworks” holiday starts a little sooner and lasts a little longer each year. Sometimes the “4th” starts in late June and runs until the middle of July.

As someone who is both an empath and sound-sensitive, I’ve always struggled when someone’s music bleeds through the walls in group housing, and grind my teeth at the thumping bass reverberating from the car sitting next to me at a stoplight. So I think it’s fair to say that I personally don’t like noisy celebrations of any kind.

Pre-pandemic, around here the 4th meant live music and cookouts at the big park in town. People would start filing in mid-afternoon and enjoy a day in the hot, humid air while vendors sold hot dogs and soda. As soon as it started to get dark, everyone would head over to the big field facing the high school. Fireworks would be launched from the school over the playing fields for the entire town to see. It was a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon. It makes a huge difference when you choose to participate in something.

What I never understood, however, were the people who brought their dogs to the fireworks display. From an early age, I’d learned how devastating fireworks could be to animals. One time my neighbors left their dog outside during the 4th celebrations only to discover on returning home that their dog had panicked and attempted to chew its way back inside the house. He’d ripped the frames off the windows, breaking teeth and nails in the process. Working with animals as I do, one of the most frequent (and devastating) things I hear about are the number of pets that injure themselves or run away during the weekend of the 4th. It’s hard for me to imagine a pet enjoying being present at such a display.

The Forever Dog created a graphic that depicts all the ways in which fireworks negatively living creatures around us, including everything from wildlife and birds ingesting debris, abandoning nests or becoming disoriented to companion animals and humans with PTSD suffering from anxiety and panic attacks. To say nothing of the risk of wildfires caused by fireworks in all settings. Forever Dog has a handy brochure for helping your pets deal with noise phobia. Because my dog has developed a noise phobia after a severe, damaging storm last year, I’ve spent months counter-conditioning him to thunder, gunfire, and loud noises, giving him calming supplements and rewarding him with food every time he hears a loud noise to make a positive association with it. I’ve literally been working on this nearly a year.

Saturday evening, the town celebrated the 4th with their annual fireworks display. It lasted about 15 minutes. Though rattled, my dog handled it fairly well, despite the fact neighbors released bottle rockets and their own fireworks on the ridge behind us. I figured that was the worst of it, and was pleased that it caused minimal distress at our place. The official celebration was over. People wouldn’t go nuts on a Sunday evening, right?

But last night, everyone around us fired off bottle rockets, Roman candles, firecrackers, fountains, spinners, and the like. It was a barrage of noise and light, many times of which went off directly over our house. At no time did I actually see anyone releasing fireworks. The people setting off fireworks weren’t within eyesight. But the acrid smell of powder filled the air, and debris rained down in my yard. With a loud bang, colorful explosions lit up the sky over our trees. At times, it sounded as though the fireworks were going off in our own yard, or could come barreling through a window. The dog, who had managed the night before, now smashed up against me shaking, his lips pulled back in a rictus of fear as he panted. Calming supplements, given in advance of nightfall, failed to touch his panic. When I offered him a tasty treat as usual, he took it only to drop it on the floor (where the little terrier dove in and snatched it). I ended up having to give him strong anti-anxiety meds.

None of us slept well last night. Long after sundown, and well past midnight, an intermittent explosion still took place. My husband had nightmares. Both dogs wedged their way onto the bed between us. I’m sharing this because I don’t want you to think I’m just trying to harsh your squee because I’m a big ol’ party-pooper. I’m sharing this because having night after night like this sucks. And honestly, I don’t understand why your celebrations should impact my quality of life.

At last count, the sale of fireworks is banned in only two states in the Continental US. Ordinances may vary from state to state, but most allow them. I found this handy fact sheet on the risks of injury and wildfire from a law office, which should tell you a little about your liability in such matters. The craze for fireworks is something I don’t understand. Light a few sparklers with the kids (making sure they’re safe and there’s no fire risk for the back 40). Attend a sanctioned event held by your town and run by professionals. One night, 15 minutes, yay for the US of A.

But I think it’s time to retire home fireworks displays. My dog and I will thank you.

Introducing the Real-Life Captain: Pets in Books

Some of you may know I modeled the little terrier in the Redclaw Origins series, Captain, after my own Jack Russell. I introduced the dog late in Bishop Takes Knight, where he had a small but important role. In Bishop’s Gambit, releasing Oct 6, 2020, he has a much larger part to play.

What you might not know is how close my representation of the mischievous terrier might be. Aside from Captain’s “special ability” as seen in the books (and I don’t want to say too much about that, as it’s a bit of a spoiler if you haven’t read them), I pretty much cribbed the fictional Captain’s behavior from the real one.

I’d never been a “small dog” person before Captain came into my life. I’d grown up with big dogs, and as soon as I moved out on my own, I got a German Shepherd puppy and have had Shepherds ever since. I like the feeling of security that comes with a big dog, as well as the hardiness that means such dogs will enjoy the same kinds of activities that we do.

But when my mom decided late in life that she absolutely had to have a dog to replace my late father’s spaniel, we tried dissuading her until it became clear she intended to go out and get the first dog she came across, whether it was appropriate for her or not. A friend of mine told me about Captain at the shelter where she worked. He was a great little dog, she said. I should go look at him.

I wasn’t convinced. Still, he had the advantage of being a middle-aged small dog and not the two-year-old pit bull my mother had been eyeing on Craigslist, so I drove out to the foster home to see him. I found out he’d been in the system for almost a year. No one wanted him, it would seem.

The foster mom walked me down to the kennels out back through a large flock of chickens that came running up, obviously expecting to be fed. As she put Captain on a flexi-lead and released him from the kennel, he shot out to the end of the twenty-five foot leash, dashing through the chickens and sending them squawking. I fully expected to see him take down a hen and pop up with a mouthful of feathers, but he just… scattered them. After a gleeful rush through the birds, he came back to the foster mom, his little tail wagging so fast it was a blur. Like in the picture here.

We went up to the house, where I visited with him a bit. He was personable and relatively calm, considering that he’d been kenneled for the past year. I liked him a lot, and realized then there was a very good chance that since I’d inherit whatever dog my mother chose, it might as well be him.

That initial impression proved to be emblematic of the dog himself. An ecstatic burst of joy, followed by relative calm. When two years later, I did indeed inherit him, I worried about introducing him into my already animal-dense household. Terriers frequently did not distinguish between wildlife and cats. We had a LOT of cats. Also, Sampson was still with us then, and I didn’t know how a 20 pound dog would get along with a 100 pound one.

The day I brought him home, a couple of feral cats were hanging out on the porch as I approached with Captain on leash. I wound the lead around my hand, prepared to pull him back should he show any sign of aggression, but Captain merely glanced at the wary cats and sat down to look up at me as if to say, “Oh look. Cats. Can we go into the house now?”

I needn’t have worried. He meshed into our household as though he’d always been there.

But I was determined to rehome him. We already had too many animals. We didn’t need a second dog. I tried four times to place Captain in another home, and each time, the arrangement fell through. After the last failure, I stalked down to the pet store and put his name on a tag with our contact information. He was our dog now.

And what an adventure that proved to be. I’ll never forget the day I left a sandwich on the kitchen table to get something to drink, and in a flash, Captain bounced from the floor to the chair to the tabletop, snatched up the sandwich, and leapt off the table to run down the hall with it. Sampson, the Shepherd, looked at me with a bug-eyed expression as if to say, “That’s allowed??”

We discovered the long stretch of being kenneled made it nearly impossible to board him, but the first time we left him with a pet-sitter (an experienced dog owner and horse trainer), she called in a panic because he’d stolen an entire plate of sausages when her back was turned. Far too much fat for a little dog to consume, as it could have triggered a life-threatening case of pancreatitis, so I had to walk her through inducing him to vomit. Had she not been successful in this act, she would have had to take him to the emergency clinic. She refers to him as “Sausage Plate” to this day. 

I did warn her about the food-snatching behavior…

He proved to be so chill with the cats, I jokingly said he couldn’t be a real terrier, only one day when I had the dogs loose in the fields, they plunged in the bushes after something. Moments later, the foul stench of skunk filled the air. I shrieked at the dogs, who came charging out of the bushes wiping their faces on the ground. Sampson clearly had enough. He came back to me on the run.

Captain, however, gritted his teeth and barreled back in for the kill.

Just now, when I took the dogs out for the final elimination break of the evening, something scrabbled away from the door as we came out of the house. The motion-sensitive light came on, catching the undulating movement of something about the size of a possum. It moved like a ground hog, and yet it was much slimmer and with a narrower head. I thought it was a groundhog, only they aren’t supposed to be active at night, and there was something about it that made the hair on the back of my neck rise. Both dogs alerted on it, but it was Captain who nearly pulled me off the porch to go after it. It’s astonishing how strong a 20 pound dog can be.

Just then, one of the feral cats saw us and came trotting up. Now you’d think a terrier in full-blown attack mode might redirect onto the cat (and I made sure the cat stayed back until I was sure it was safe) but nope. Captain knew the difference between “our family” and “vermin.”

It’s this dichotomy between sweet, loving little dog and “show me the vermin!” killer terrier that made me immortalize Captain in the Redclaw series. Okay, it might have something to do with the fact that I am besotted with this little dog, and wanted part of him to be with me forever. But seriously, the night and day change in behavior when he spots a rabbit or a squirrel versus how he behaves the rest of the time is like watching someone flip a switch. Small wonder I couldn’t resist putting him into my stories. He’s just so darn stinking cute, and then there’s this vicious little killer lurking within. He steals food, digs holes in the yard, rolls in stuff so smelly it requires an IMMEDIATE bath, and is a little escape artist, too. He weasels his way into bed with us and has to be persuaded to share space with the humans. Every morning he turns over on his back and wriggles in place, grinding little white dog hairs into the comforter.

And I think he’s pretty darn near perfect.