Here's a video of my first therapy dog, Bella. She was recused from Dead Dog Beach in Puerto Rico and we adopted her when she was four months old. She was super active and my vet suggested that she needed a job. We tried agility but it wasn't the right fit. But when she became a therapy dog at age five, we were all set. Bella was intuitive and curious and knew just what to do whether working with students or visiting patients in the hospital. This volunteer work provided the perfect balance to writing, and I'm still at it, now with my second therapy dog, Rudy. My book about Bella is titled "Joy Unleashed: The Story of Bella, the Unlikely Therapy Dog." It's done really well and is in its third printing. Enjoy!

I am reacquainted with puppy belly every morning, and the smooth, full fatness of it-- brings me joy. Even in the leanest of times. Each morning since March 13 I've woken-- sometimes on puppy time or husband time or son time, but mostly on my own time (definitely not job time)-- and felt my dachshund-beagle mix, Ray, curled up next to me. "'Ray' like the girl in the new Star Wars?" people ask me. "No," I say. "'Ray' like in Ray Bradbury." "Oh," people say, confused. Maybe because they don't know who Ray Bradbury is or maybe because he was a man and my Ray is a girl. These days, she's a ray of sunshine, and I see beauty in her like I see in Bradbury's words and she certainly thinks she can perform the Jedi mind trick. (Those brown eyes. "You're going to feed me," they say.) Every morning, as I stir, the perfect curl of her body becomes a stretching comma. Then I say, "Good morning, Ray Ray," and she goes belly-up like a sprayed roach, legs and arms splayed, her magnificent puppy belly exposed to the world. Vulnerable but trusting. I wish I could have that much faith in the world right now. The best part is, she gets sucked into our 3-inch foam topped mattress, unable to move easily, frozen into a pose of "pet me now." So I do. I wave my hand back and forth over her rough white hair, so different than the smooth, black coat she has on top. It's a marvel. I pet her from her small barrel-like chest down to the convex arch of her taut puppy belly, the curve of which I might have never paused to notice in the "normal" world, the one where I'm always crushed for time-- the alarm, the waking of sons, the packing of lunches, the feeding of dogs and chickens, the hurried making of coffee, the brushing of teeth. Ray doesn't wag her tail in these moments. She's still and submissive and full of faith. Maybe she doesn't wag her tail because moving through the foam is like moving against the current. Too much effort. Maybe she doesn't wag because she senses that movement nudges our day forward. It compels us to make some type of progress. And we should be still and live in this puppy belly moment. The world outside is moving fast enough.

Oh my gosh! I am almost there! I have just chosen the cover for my book Viktor which is estimated to be out sometime in the summer of 2020. Time is flying by or have you not noticed?? LOL It is so great to be publishing. I have waited forty years to do this and I am ever so excited. My fantasy fiction novel is about a young vampire who has fallen in love. He desires a normal life and wife and kids and the whole nine yards. He is moral and loving; but, he must fight for all that is good. He is loved by many and wanted by all. In his fight for his life he must save himself and everyone else for if he doesn't; all will fall into hell. I'm proud to say so far that Friesen Press is helping me to Self publish this book. I am so excited and thrilled to be able to see my work in a real book. This is amazing to me and something everyone should try and do. This past summer I retrieved myself another Chi. She is adorable and her name is D'aff N'aia. She compliments my Bonzo quite nicely. Quite the little monkey she is; I might add, yet her lovely demeanor is very loving. Right now she is teething and biting my hands up to shreds. She loves my knuckles and has taken a liking to chomping on them at any chance she gets. She cries whenever she can't see you and has dug up the dirt in my plants. I love that she airrates; but the mess!!!LOL puppies! She's also discovered she likes coffee! Yes, when she kisses me she can taste it on my lips. She is very smart and has come to using her paws to pull my lips apart and get in a few laps. Her nails are so sharp when she paws you, that you cannot help but open your mouth! You're laughing too hard not too and she just jumps in there and starts lapping up the remnants! I swear she's too smart for her own good! Well, she's not getting any more than that! She's definitely hyper already without coffee in the mix! Honestly, she is too cute! Well, at some point this winter I must carry on with "In the Garden of Life". It has been waiting for me. Doing the re-writes for Viktor has taken me away from writing it; but now, I have the time to dedicate to this children's novel about two bees in the garden. I'm trying to make it a magical story and yet I'm not polished at all on magic! Time to study!! Honestly, I haven't a clue how this story will turn out and yet I am excited to write it. Time will tell! Looking forward to hearing from you, Best Regards, Jules

Good Evening Everyone! I hope you like the picture. This is my little guy Bonzo. He is 4 years old and very smart. He's very loving and compassionate towards me. He is quite the tea lover (Earl Grey and English Breakfast seem to be his favorites)and soon he will meet his new mate D'Aff N'aia. I am hoping to get her through the summer sometime and will surely post when she's here. I can't wait for her. She will be spoiled too! Best Regards, Julie Ann

My life is so weird. It's always been weird. That's probably because I was born in 1949, the 3rd child of a family that wanted to stop at two. I was constantly told that I was worthless and was always costing my family money. In those days, children had no social security numbers and if somebody had the right connections they could sell an unwanted child in a black market adoption or even worse, sexual slavery. I think I was three at the time but my parents left me with the baby-sitter on Christmas. The baby-sitter, I found out later from my older sister was also the contact for back-street abortions and black-market adoptions. The babysitter who was an older woman, left me alone with a book filled with Christmas stickers. In those days, there was no self-stick stickers. You had to lick them glued back to make them work. This was the first time I was away from my parents and I was scared. My anxiety increased as I stuck stickers everywhere, hoping my parents would return soon and be proud of my handiwork. Instead a young couple arrived. I remember the woman had long blonde hair and a red dress under her fur coat. My babysitter picked me up so she could hold me when all that anxiety and glue backed up on me and I threw up all over her red dress. She yelled something like "How dare you give me a sick baby!" and pushed me back into the babysitter's arms. I was put into a crib in a dark room after a lot of angry talk and I stayed there until my parents picked me up. I don't remember much of what happened next, but I was very sick because the next thing I knew was that I was in a hospital, being stuck with needles by angry nurses. The story I heard later in life was that my parents left me with the baby-sitter so they could attend my sister's Christmas pagent and was sick with something that was called "glandular fever." My mother said I spent eight days in the hospital. The first seven days I was given sulfa drugs that had little effect on my sickness. The end of that week, the doctor told my parents that he could give me a new drug that was still largely experimental, but my father would have to sign a permission slip because the new drug could cure me or kill me. My father signed the paper and they gave me another giant needle of the new drug. That night I flew. I flew around the hospital. I saw what looked like a woman having an operation. I saw lines of cars and trucks on the roads outside. Finally, I was back in my crib I was coloring in a coloring book and throwing crayons back and forth over the tops of our cribs which lay head to head with a kid named Mikey. The next day, I stood up in my crib and tried to see over the huge wooden top, but I was too short. When the nurses came in, I asked where Mikey was. The younger nurse burst into tears and said "Mikey's dead!" I went home that day. When my mother told that part of the story to my sister and me, she asked "Guess what that medicine was?" We shook our heads. "Penicillin." Our life was rough after that. My father had a successful machine shop but he drank all his profits. My mother took in ironing. Later, I found out she was also turning tricks. When she wanted to insult me, she'd tell me I was "just like my father." For a long time I wondered what she meant by that because weren't we supposed to be like our parents? It wasn't until much later that I found out about the visiting "insurance men." We had dogs but the one assigned to me suddenly disappeared. My mother said it was all my fault because I didn't take care of her and she ran away. Years later my sister told me that she wasn't going to keep a female dog that wasn't spayed. The male dog was never the same. He always kept to himself and never wanted to play. My mother did some darker things to try to "turn me out" but I was too defensive and would say I'd jump out into traffic before I'd go along with that scheme. And I said it while in a moving car going down the Long Island Expressway. My parents bad habits were backing up on them. I got into constant fights at school. Nobody wanted to be my friend. My mother kept trying to get into the local social scene by joining a church but the gossip got about and she was shunned. I was shunned too. Finally, my father lost his temper one last time and decided to move from New York to Florida. In Florida, he bought a bar and had my mother help him run it. I had always wondered why they stayed together for so long. She said it was because he was the only man who offered to marry her. I always wondered why a man would stay with a woman who fooled around. I found out later, he fooled around, too--with other men. The whole marriage thing was one big made-for-social-acceptance sham. My mother liked playing the diva at the bar and my father spent a lot of his spare time fishing. My brother only stayed for the first month when he turned 21 and flew back to New York to stay with friends until he got a place of his own.