LONE WOLF is created by Sara Driscoll, the author pseudonym of the writing team of Jen J. Danna and Ann Vanderlaan. As a team, we were asked to talk about our pets, past and current.
Mia
Jen: The dog in LONE WOLF is based heavily on Shady, the black lab my family owned all through my childhood and teenaged years. But I haven’t owned a dog since then because of my children’s allergies. For years, we were unable to have pets; then we were able to
Autumn and Milo
own a sequence of very social, hypoallergenic hamsters. Still, this is not the same as owning a companion animal. But our lives changed the day my youngest daughter started to volunteer at the local humane society. In the introduction for teens and parents, the instructor warned the room that we might end up adopting an animal or two. Ha! I thought.
That will never happen. Until Jordan met Mia, a tiny, sickly calico who she cared for in the sick room for weeks. She started bringing home pictures and then I started seeing Mia regularly when I picked Jordan up from her shift. Long story short, we all fell in love with her. And lo and behold, when she was well enough to adopt, she was ours. Sadly, we lost Mia two years later after a hard battle with lymphoma, but her legacy has been the two rescued cats we now own, Autumn and Milo. Because, for us, a house is not a home without a cat. Thank you, Mia, for teaching us the joys of pet rescue.
Ann and Kane
Ann: In the last six years I have adopted five pit bull type dogs, and have fostered at least ten others who have gone on to forever homes. But two dogs in particular stand out for me.
Diva was an elderly, black female pit bull who was high heartworm positive, and had a serious heart murmur and partial pharyngeal paralysis when she was rescued from a 100% kill shelter. Within two weeks she was running my pack of much larger males without a single growl. I waited months to adopt her, since our rescue does not allow adoption of sick dogs. Diva is the only dog I’ve ever had who watched TV. She loved Vikings on the History Channel—I think it was the screams. Her “don’t mess with me name” was Godiva, not that she answered.
Diva and Kane
Kane is a bit different. From the moment I saw him, I knew he could be a therapy dog. He has presence, style, and a demeanor that people seem to automatically trust. He loves babies and can charm most mothers with just a big smile. He also has a huge head with an impressive olfactory apparatus. His love of nose work underlies much of the working detail in LONE WOLF. His “don’t mess with me name” is R Kane; the ‘R’ stands for “raising”.
