Raylene King’s first book is such an exciting experience for both author and publisher. Front Porch Resources is happy to present her first endevour into the writing world. Below is Raylene’s personal story of how her book, 31 Lessons I Learned From My Dog, was born. It’s not that my husband and I had anything against dogs, really, our lifestyle just did not seem to support having a dog.

Like most people, our days and even our evenings seem to become more jam-packed each week.

I don’t know if you are aware of this fact, but dogs are a lot of work: the walking in all kinds of weather, the training, the grooming, plus the fact that everything has to be on a fairly tight schedule with not much room for error. Seeing to all these needs can be very time consuming; it is a never-ending, daily routine of love and effort.

I guess we were rather spoiled after having a cat for the last several years. Now granted, cats are moody and dogs are always ready with affection, but cats are also very low maintenance. Just some food, water, litter box, and they’ll let you know loudly if they want anything else!

Along with all the work, also to be considered is the famous negative puppy behavior; chewing, barking, and accidents everywhere!

So, like I said, nothing personal against dogs, but we just didn’t think it was right for us.

That is, until our son’s girlfriend Anna requested a miniature dachshund puppy for her birthday. He so sweetly complied, drove a couple of hours, and paid a couple of hundred dollars to purchase this special gift.

We were doing o.k. , firm in our resolve that “We really are more cat people”, until we saw that little guy who was the color of a piece of melted chocolate, and who doesn’t love chocolate? Once our eyes met those brown eyes pleading “love me”, we were done for!

Since Anna was in college and needed quiet to study, and since dachshunds are famous for barking, the little guy named Cosmo began to “visit” us on weekends. Eventually, because of changes in both Anna and our son Joe’s living arrangements, neither of them could keep Cosmo, so they began to talk about options for him. They were discussing sending him to Chicago to live with her brother, when we realized we were totally smitten and could not stand to see him shipped up North! Besides, he’s a shivery little dog and he would freeze in the Windy City!

And so, we began our new occupation as fulltime caretakers to this little guy. It was during some of the daily chores I mentioned earlier that I began to see some spiritual parallels developing between our dealings with Cosmo and our Master’s dealings with us. I hope you can see yourself in these too!