Extract from Paws for Thought (second edition):
“I remember telling you that I had favourite toys when I was a young puppy, back when I lived with Mom Jenny and Dad Mike. I had hours of fun playing with my fluffy sheep and running around with my tennis ball in my mouth. I still have lots of toys, even though I’m now a grown up, responsible guide dog.
There is something so satisfying about holding onto one end of a dog rope and pulling with all my might. Sometimes Mom or Dad will hold onto the other side of the rope but mostly it’s my sisters Emily and Allie. We get so excited play fighting over the ropes and chasing them when Dad throws them down the corridor. Even if, most days, the rope gets forgotten amidst the play-fighting and we all land up wrestling and chasing one another all over the house.
For a long time when I was younger, I would wait for my mom and dad to finish eating supper, pounce on my rope, and demand that they play with me. And then my sisters would join in, and it would all be wonderful chaos. Thinking about it, playing with long strands of seaweed when we go to the beach is much the same as playing with a rope, only it tastes different.
No matter how much I loved my ropes, my favouritest toy is my squeaks. I discovered squeaks only a few years ago. It used to belong to my older sister Eccles when she was working with Mom. Mom told me that Eccles would pick up squeaks and run around the office where they used to work, squeaking it to tell everyone that it was time to pack up and go home. Once Eccles retired, so did squeaks, because my sister Emily, who was younger and naughtier then, tried to rip squeaks to pieces. So, for years squeaks lived in the piano stool.
I never realized what a treasure trove the piano stool was, filled with so many dog toys. Until one day, when Dad was searching there for a piece of music, he found squeaks and I grabbed it and ran around the house copying Eccles, who had gone to doggy heaven years before. And Mom began laughing. Since then, I have loved squeaks and play with it as often as I’m allowed to.”
Reflections on Publishing the book:
I always knew that I would try to complete Fiji’s story, adding in the remaining blog posts and adding more stories. Of course, it happened long before I dreamed it would. Generally our dogs live to a good age, with several of them reaching sixteen years or thereabouts. Losing Fiji when she was only 9 years old was quite a shock.
When I sat down to update the original edition of Paws, I had no real plan for how I was going to proceed. In reality, It turned out easier than I anticipated, with the additional blogs and stories flowing onto the page with little hesitation. As always, that turned out to be the simple part. Because then I began thinking of what changes and additions to include in the new version. That was where the planning began.
Amongst my initial list of things to be done was alterations due to reviews the book had received. Of particular interest were comments from a reader who would have liked to know more about the process of training guide dogs, and an additional note that in some ways they felt the original book felt a little like a sales advert for my own memoir, A Different Way of Seeing. I decided to find ways to shift away from that view of the book and to add in the information they had been looking for, considering that both changes would make the manuscript better.
I also made a few changes to the existing content, thinking of the book overall, rather than as an accurate copy of the blogs that had been published. Essentially, I considered how the text flowed, the duplication of certain information and the difference between reading a blog over several years and a book with a continuous narrative. Not to forget becoming aware of inconsistencies in the naming of certain characters. Finally, as my interest in accessibility of my platforms grew, it became important for me to find a way to describe the beautiful images by my husband Craig, Fiji’s puppy raiser Jenny Evans, and Tania Robbertze.
All of which took a startling amount of time.
When it came to the publishing of the manuscript, one of the hardest decisions I had to make was how to reveal the passing of my precious girl in the book description. I didn’t want people to decide not to read the book because of her death. But I also didn’t want people to be unprepared for the ending of Fiji’s story. As it was, I had feedback from my editor, Melanie Harvard of Harvard Ink and one of my beta readers, Sue Mann, that the way I had presented the final Paws for Thought blog was an emotional shock. So I needed to find strategies to soften the impact of that blog while not losingn the powerful emotional impact of that part of the tale. I decided to openly dedicate the book to the memory of Fiji, and that statement now appears in the book description on both Amazon and GoodReads.
For now, the book is available at a reduced cost. It will increase at some stage, but due to unforeseen changes in my own life recently, I haven’t done much work to announce the launch of the book so people do not know it is out there. I want to give Fiji’s friends a chance to get hold of a copy at the lower cost first.
Here’s where you can pick up a Kindle version:
South African print copies will only be released during the second half of the year, due to the realities I am now living with, that I’ll share in the Beyond Sight blog in the coming weeks.
I hope you decide to get hold of a copy of the second edition of Paws for Thought: Seeing the World Through the Eyes of a Guide Dog. I cannot think of a better testimonial to my beautiful girl than this book. I hope you love reading her story as much as I loved writing it.
