What your Dog Wants - a must for dog lovers!

Those of you who have kindly read Sell the Pig will know that dogs are a big part of my life. I've had them since my late teens, usually German Shepherds or border collies. Meic, you may recall from the book, was a border collie.

Twitter wasn't around at the time of Sell the Pig, or at least, if it was, I hadn't yet discovered it. Which is a shame as through it I met the wonderful Karen Wild, @WildPaw, who talks so much sense on the subject of training and behaviour in dogs. She has a newly published book out, What Your Dog Wants, and I'm getting my autographed copy.

I'm sure it would have helped me a lot with Meic, and will do wonders with the current canine incumbents who are a pair of border collie hooligans.

I'm pleased to report that Sell the Pig continues to do well, thanks to all you kind people out there, and the many lovely reviews it has received, mostly 5-star. If you've read and liked it, please tell your friends. If you've not yet read it, why not give it a go?

It's available for Kindle from Amazon.co.uk where it's currently in the top 100 for Travel > Continental Europe> France, from Amazon.fr where, at the time of writing it's at no. 30 for Travel > Europe > France and from Amazon.com.

No Kindle? No problem! You can download a very simple FREE app that lets you read it on your computer or posh phone. And believe me, if I've managed to do it, it must be easy.

It will be coming out in paperback soon, I promise, hopefully before the end of the year, and will include some black and white photos.

What would you particularly like to see pictures of?

Famous author of Sell the Pig, Tottie Limejuice

Some authors have to wait for years after their demise to get this sort of recognition, but I just had to share what my friends David and Tiger have been up to ;)

Have dog, will move to France

As promised, I decided to start this blog to support my book, Sell the Pig. Those of you have read it may like to see photos of the main characters, to put faces to names.  And those who have not yet read it might enjoy reading a few excerpts to see if you might like to.

A very brief recap, it's about the, some would say, bizarre decision for my rather unusual family to up sticks and move to France together. Unusual in that the family consisted of Mother, aged 89, and pleasantly barmy with vascular dementia, Brother, a manic-depressive alcoholic with a double decker bus as a plaything, Meic, my larger than life border collie, and me, a decidedly dotty middle-aged freelance copywriter.

For those of you interested in dogs, here's a bit more about Meic.  For those not interested in dogs, my usual advice - look away now.

"I hadn't exactly intended to get Meic. When I'd left my riding centre in Wales, in the early 90s, to move to Dorset, I had a small black collie cross named Mady. She came from a rescue centre, where she was called Mandy, but she was so definitely not a Mandy, I just dropped the N and she became Mady."

Mady

"She was very happy as an only dog. She was a very easy and biddable dog, though inclined to be a little bit bossy with other dogs. She did on one occasion up-end my friend's lovely Staffie, Camilla, whilst giving away a huge amount of weight in the contest. That's how tough and determined she was."

"I wasn't in the market for another dog. There was no danger at all of my wanting one when Anna-Lou showed me the remaining two puppies. But then I saw Meic. Or Mott, as he was called at that time. And something cracked. To Mady's intense disgust, she found herself sharing the back of the car on the way home with a squeaking, peeing, puking puppy who had not had much experience of car travel."

Meic, aged 5 months

"I'm sure there are those amongst you, if you've read thus far, who will be thinking why not just put him to sleep and move and get a new dog once installed in France? Trouble is, I'm a bit of a softie with my dogs and always apply the Toy Rule – as long as a dog is still quite happy to play with a favourite toy, there's too much life there to extinguish, in my humble opinion."

Meic, demonstrating the Squeaky Toy Rule

So there you have a couple of doggy faces to put to names.  The rest is up to you, dear reader.  Tell me what you would like to see photos of and I shall do my best to post them here for you.

A blog about a book

Well, I've finally done it. After writing many blogs for clients, I've given in to pressure and am starting my own. Those of you who have kindly read Sell the Pig http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sell-the-Pig-ebook/dp/B007AU6NZY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1332959871&sr=1-1 have all said you would have liked to have seen pictures of the people and places I wrote about, and are looking forward to a sequel.

This blog is the place where I hope to give you some snippets. It's where I also hope people will pop in and feel free to leave their comments, good or bad, about Sell the Pig and to tell me what things in particular you'd like to read about in the sequel.

I'll try and post some pictures but I'm not very techie and it will take me a while to get the hang of this. I'm also not the sort of writer who thinks it's essential to blog every five minutes. So I'll probably only update it about once a week but I promise to try to keep an eye on things and respond as quickly as I can to your comments.

If I don't, just give me a poke on either Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000073567904  or Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/tottielimejuice and I'll come whizzing back to respond.

Those of you who have read Sell the Pig will know that Mother and my dog Meic were two of the most important characters, and central to the whole business of moving to France. So it's only right that my first picture should be of the two of them together, long-suffering Meic in his role of Santa's little helper, visiting Mother in the home in St Helens where she was so well looked after.

Thanks for following me on my little blog and thanks for all your kind interest in both my book and my somewhat unusual family!