picture books by Alison McGhee

More Dogs of Destiny!

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Screen Shot 2017-03-21 at 3.56.23 PMIn celebration of my new picture book, Percy, Dog of Destiny, just published last week, I asked you to send me photos of your dogs, with or without some of their favorite toys.

This has been the most fun project. Thank you for your beautiful photos. They make me love dogs even more than I already did.  Enjoy.

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This is Rosie. She started a dog advice column a few years back. One of her most popular posts is about the delicious sunflower seed, notoriously difficult to catch in the wild. Her advice is to lie motionless beneath the bird feeder and be ready to leap when the moment comes. Thanks for the pro tip, Rosie.

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Bones are Stella’s favorite toys, and Stella is Cairo’s favorite toy. In their personal opinion? Balls are highly overrated.

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Please meet Barkley. He enjoyed playing with many toys in the course of his long and dignified life, but his favorite toy of all was his boy Ian, who is a firm believer in the “shame shared is shame halved” school of coning.

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This is Daisy. She has twelve loofah dogs but this one is her favorite. She is tired of defending herself against onlookers who speculate that her loofah dogs are longer than she is. Please. They aren’t.

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This is Jo and her favorite pink ball. Jo is in dog heaven now, but she left this photo behind to remind one and all that no one could fly through the front door the way she could. She would also like you to know that she always stuck her landing.

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This is Widget, who would like it known that he is a good dog. Most of the time.

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This is Widget again. Sometimes he gets a little cold, and that worries him. He has quite a bit on his mind, really. One of the things he wonders about is his humans. Do they know how much he loves them? Do they?

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This is Boomer. He’s an Australian shepherd. Boomer will be 14 in May. He spends a fair bit of time these days reflecting. Did you know that in his youth he was a mainstay on the Frisbee Dog circuit? Oh the glory days of yore.

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Meet Aku and Yumi. They are pictured here in their  element of snow and cold. During their time on earth they had the power to hypnotize humans with their unearthly husky beauty and mesmerizing eyes. Please gaze upon this photo with caution.

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This is Arthur. He lives on an island and rides the ferry back and forth to the mainland. He also has his own Instagram account and is working at a high-end dog collar start-up. Talented beyond measure, Arthur could be spending his spare time clubbing with supermodels, but he remains humble and sets aside time each morning for meditation and reflection.

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This is Rafa. He’s an academic dog best known for his work on the famous longitudinal study “Socks vs. Toys.” He will neither confirm nor deny rumors that he engages in rabbit poop eating. @therealrafa: “Enough with the poop innuendoes. Fake news! @mainstreammedia get your mind off turds! SAD!”

IMG_6565This is Callie. She’s in dog heaven now, but in her glory days she excelled at searching out and gobbling down poop of indiscriminate sources. She also had a lovely, elegant habit of lying on the floor with her paws crossed in front of her. Rest in peace, sweet girl.

Dogs of Destiny

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Screen Shot 2017-03-21 at 3.56.23 PMTo celebrate the release of Percy, Dog of Destiny, written by me and illustrated by the wonderful Jennifer K. Mann, I sent out a call for photos of your dogs.

Please meet some of them, with more to come, pictured below in all their glory.

(I did not tell my own dog, Petey, about this blog post, as he would be jealous that I was looking at other dogs.)
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This very fine fellow is named Percy, just like the dog in the book. He’s a political activist. We need more public servants of his ilk.

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This little scragglepuff is Sarah Moochie. She loves hanging out in the ballet studio and chewing up ballet slippers if she can get her paws on one.

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This is Piper. This is also Piper’s ball. Do not try to take it away from her, please.

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Meet Mo. He doesn’t really play with toys, but he does love his bone.

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This fine fellow is Jackson. He’s a one of a kind Schnauzer-Schipperke mix. Currently retired from his gig as a bookstore greeter and looking to pick up some part-time work if you hear of anything.

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This is Yoda. She likes bones. Chewing is only one of her many passions, along with barking. She was feeling demure when this photo was taken.

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This is Wrigley with his kong. He grew up to be a highly trained American VetDog. He rides in helicopters, wears goggles to protect his eyes from the sun and desert sand overseas, and brings love and comfort to veterans in need. (This is all true! Google him.)

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This is Khaki with her squeaky pink dog. She might look slumberish but she’s got her eyes on you, so keep your paws to yourself.

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This is Miss Chloe. She’s two years old and she’s trained to go into nursing homes and work with folks who suffer from depression, but in her spare time she loves destroying squeaker toys. In the background is one she hasn’t yet found the key to destroy. Don’t give up, Miss Chloe. We’re rooting for you.

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This is Charlie, taking a nap with Piglet, his favourite* toy. (*Please note that Charlie spells favourite with a u. That’s because he is Canadian.)

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This is the beloved Mr. Pickles with his favourite toy watermelon. Pug sibling Pancake, also pictured, cares not for toys. (Please note that Mr. Pickles, like Charlie above, is also Canadian.)

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According to one of their humans, this is Wolf-butt and Bark-face. According to their other human, this is Finn and Daisy. According to both humans, Wolf-butt/Finn and Bark-face/Daisy are each other’s favorite toys.

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Blackie relaxing with her Lambie, which she has been known to parade back and forth before guests in an “I know you want this but guess what, you can’t have it” sort of way.

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This is Guinness (he’s an Irish terrier) happily guarding Jello, his favorite toy.

Send me photos of your dogs and their toys!

Posted on by alisonmcghee

img_6168That dapper little gentleman to the left is our dog, Petey. Petey is almost fourteen, and every day he wears a bandanna from his large collection. He loves pig ears. He will wade with great caution into the lake if he can a) see the bottom clearly and b) only up to his chest, at which point he will c) bow his head so that he can take a few sips before d) retreating. When his hair gets too Rasta we take him to Royal Pet and get him a puppy cut, which a) makes him look as if he’s lost ten pounds and b) prompts our neighbor Kathie to look askance and say, “I see you got him that rat cut again.”

Petey is indifferent to most dog food but he loves our cat Hobbes’ food and was known, up until a year or so ago, to leap in a catlike manner onto the counter in search of it. He is very fond of fresh-baked goods and once a) snatched an entire pound cake off its cooling rack and gobbled half of it before I ran screeching into the kitchen and b) another time somehow managed to paw two cooling racks full of oatmeal scotchies from the very back of the counter onto the kitchen floor and gobble them all down. Screen Shot 2017-03-21 at 3.56.23 PM

In his early years I took him to the dog park once or twice a day, where he used to meet up with his buddies, including the fabulous Oatmeal Raisin Cookie, a basset hound who had spent her first five years living in hell, trapped in a crate so small her tail broke, and whose rescue human used to paint her toenails and lavish her with love and affection in an attempt to make up for those lost years. 

Petey’s great love, back in the dog park days, was his tennis ball. He loved to play catch with me, a game which involved me throwing the ball for him, him racing to retrieve it, and then him spending the next half hour refusing to drop the ball. Petey’s obsessive love/addiction/compulsive hoarding of tennis balls, and the zealotry with which he would guard any that came his way, was the inspiration for Percy, Dog of Destiny, a new picture book that comes out this month, illustrated by the wonderful Jennifer K. Mann. What ho!

In celebration of Percy, Dog of Destiny, I’d love to feature photos of your dogs and their favorite toys. Please send them to me! And spread the word – there can never be too many photos of dogs and their beloveds.