She’s Gone to the Dogs - a guest blog by Margaret Mizushima

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: You all know I love dogs. And I love mysteries. I also love small towns and danger in the wild outdoors. So I was astounded I'd never run across Margaret Mizushima's Timber Creek K-9 series until recently. It presses all of my buttons (plus, there's a simmering will-they-won't-they romance that develops in the background.) 

Those of you who were a little faster on the ball than I will be delighted to hear Margaret's latest, STANDING DEAD, is out now, and those of you who are saying, "Ooo, sounds good..." are in luck - STANDING DEAD is the eight book covering the adventures of Officer Maggie Cobb, handsome veterinarian  Cole Walker, and K-9 Robo, so there's a lot of great reading you can catch up on!

You might guess a writer who has been praised for her realistic, heart-felt portrayal of a working K-9 German Shepard and her relationship with her handler must have a lot of experience with canine friends. And you'd be right! Margaret is here to tell us about some of the memorable dogs in her life, and how those good boys and girls helped shape her award-winning fiction.

 

 

 When I married a veterinarian, I knew he loved animals, but I didn’t foresee that he would become a dog collector over the years. If I’d been paying attention, though, I would have read the signs. During vet school and before we married, Charlie adopted two unwanted dogs and then found them loving homes. After we married, he brought one black Labrador retriever into our home while I contributed two black half-Siamese cats. Black fur everywhere!

 

 

After forty-one years of marriage, we’ve lived with and loved countless pets, and we’ve also collected countless memories and stories. The first that comes to mind features a tri-colored Australian shepherd named Bear. Like so many of our dogs, Bear came to us through our vet clinic. Shy and sensitive, he preferred to lie at our feet or be petted rather than to work cattle or sheep like other herding dogs. When we realized how afraid he was of livestock, we gave up on training him and let him stay in the yard instead of going up to the barn. He soon became very attached to our five-year-old daughter.

 

One day, Charlie set up electric fencing in the open space next to our house so that we could graze sheep on the grass and weeds there. After releasing a ram and four ewes, he decided to leave the stock trailer in the middle of the enclosure to provide shade. As he worked to set up the trailer for shelter, he didn’t notice that our daughter had ducked under the fence and was running out to join him. But she caught the ram’s eye, and soon that big fellow squared off to charge.

 

Charlie lifted his gaze in time to see the ram charge, but he was too far away to intervene. As Charlie began to run and yell, Bear streaked under the fence and faced off that ram. Although frightened and trembling, that courageous dog saved his girl. You can bet he got extra treats that day.

 

Another story comes to mind about our Rottweiler named Ilsa. This dog came to us through our clinic at a time when our oldest was a latchkey, elementary-schooler and our youngest a toddler. Originally, we thought Ilsa would be a great dog for protection. But then a youngster in our community became lost during a family outing in the mountains and wasn’t found until much too late. So my husband and I decided to train Ilsa in Search and Rescue just in case one of our girls strayed from our campsite when we took a trip to the mountains.

 

 

Ilsa took to SAR training like she was born to it. Rottweilers are herding dogs by nature and when socialized and trained correctly, they want to assist their humans. Ilsa used a combination of air scenting and ground tracking as she became more and more skilled in finding people. Thank goodness we never had to ask Ilsa to search for a lost child. But during her training she was great at finding our kids in the yard when we asked them to hide before we shouted, “Ready or not, here she comes!”

 Little did I know that over twenty years later, I would turn to fiction writing and create a German shepherd character named Robo who was proficient in tracking, narcotics detection, and patrol. The Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries feature Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner Robo, and a veterinarian named Cole Walker. Together they solve crimes that impact their fictional mountain community of Timber Creek, Colorado. There are eight books in the series, including this month’s new release, Standing Dead. I invite you to join Mattie, Robo, and Cole on their latest adventure.

 

Dogs can be our companions, our support animals, our helpers, and our protectors. And for this, all they want in return is love, food, and shelter. Roger Caras once said, “Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” I think dog-lovers would agree with Caras. Do you have a story about a special dog or pet in your life?

Deputy Mattie Cobb and her sister, Julia, travel to Mexico to visit their mother, but when they arrive, they discover that she and her husband have vanished without a trace. Back in Timber Creek, Mattie finds a chilling note on her front door telling her to look for “him” among the standing dead up in the high country.      The sheriff’s department springs into action and sends a team to the mountains, where Mattie’s K-9 partner, Robo, makes a grisly discovery—a body tied to a dead pine tree. Mattie is shocked when she realizes she knows the dead man. And then another note arrives, warning that Mattie’s mother is in desperate straits. In a last-ditch gambit, Mattie must go deep undercover into a killer’s lair to save her mother—or die trying.

 

 

 

Margaret Mizushima writes the award winning and internationally published Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. She serves as past president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and was elected 2019 Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She and her husband recently moved from Colorado, where they raised two daughters and a multitude of animals, to a home in the Pacific Northwest. Find her on Facebook, on Twitter as @margmizu, on Instagram and on her website www.margaretmizushima.com.