In 2009 one of my teenage daughters brought home a mutt-puppy. My first reaction was “No, we can’t keep him. Take him back.” We already had two dogs and I didn’t like getting surprised by her obvious ploy to “show, not tell.” Fifteen minutes later, I was hooked. He had a small color marking on his head that looked like the letter “J”. After thirty minutes, my daughter in a brilliant move of manipulation suggested we give him a name. We dubbed him Stumpy Joe. In that simple little gesture, he became our latest member of the family. At the time, my elderly parents were living with us and I could immediately tell there was a connection between him and my father who was suffering from failing health.
There was nothing about him that gave away his heritage, but as time went by, it became evident he was a CoJack – half Corgi and half Jack Russell. Like most mutts, he quickly endeared himself with his crazy antics and personality. His most amazing trait was an ability to catch a line drive throw of a racquetball. A friend of mine dubbed him “The Shortstop.” My father took him for walks twice a day. We lived on a small horse farm at the time and he was always by my Dad’s side, except at night. Nighttime was for me. He slept by my feet every night of his life. It was the first time in my life I’d ever let a dog sleep in my bed, but I never regretted.
Stumpy Joe brought joy into the lives of everyone in our family, but probably more so with my father, who was by his side in every waking moment. On perhaps one of the saddest moments of his life, a year and a half after Stumpy came into our lives, my father took Stumpy for his evening walk when a reckless driver came speeding down our driveway and hit him, killing him almost instantly. We were all at home. I was stunned and nearly unable to process what had just happened, but as I picked him up to bring him to our house, I noticed my father sitting on the ground, his face in his palms, crying like a child. Seeing my father like that made the entire incident so much more intense. I was flooded with emotions that even today I cannot adequately describe. I had only seen my father cry once before, many years before when my brother was killed in a car accident at the age of nineteen.
My family grieved for a very long time. It was then I realized how attached I was to Stumpy Joe and what a powerful role he played in the lives of our family. Losing a dog is not like losing a human family member. Most people don’t understand this so we all had to process it internally. It’s hard to explain to people. I found myself getting angry when people would simply say “It was just a dog.”
As I approached the age of 60 a few years later, contemplating checking off an item from my bucket list and writing a book, the experience with Stumpy Joe wouldn’t leave me alone. Thus, the idea of Canine Plague emerged. I’ve been a voracious reader of fiction since my early teens. One of the books that inspired me early on was Alas Babylon, perhaps one of the first dystopian novels to reach literary success. So I decided to take the plunge and after four months of writing, decided to publish my first and perhaps my only novel. I kept my writing a secret, telling only a very few people. My wife had no idea I was doing this and I didn’t tell her until after it was available on Amazon.