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Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs

Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs
a book for when your dog gardens too, too much!

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Third Book in the Buster the Dog series is Launched

The dog in this photo is not Buster the Dog. Buster the Dog is an imaginary dog who lives inside the head of Carolyn Cordon, the person whose blog this is. Carolyn knows the full parentage of Buster the Dog, because he came out her life and out of her imagination. Carolyn also know all about the dog n this photo.

This is Missy, who is a beautiful Pharaoh Hound, and a lovely pet (in almost every way you might imagine). Missy is relatively obedient, and even the bad points about Missy are not too terrible. The reason for this photo on this page is to draw attention. Carolyn has books to sell, Missy is being used, because she is beautiful, and because Missy is also sort of Buster the Dog's half-sister. Confused yet?

If Buster the Dog isn't real, how can he be Missy's brother? it's like this, Buster the Dog is based on puppies that happened that were never supposed to happen. One of Carolyn's Schnauzers (Nena) got far too friendly with the Pharaoh Hound she had (Kharis), when the schnauzer was having her first season, around thirteen years ago. Nature did its things, and yes, Nena had cute little puppies she should never have had ... The illustrator of the Buster the Dogs books is a friend of Carolyn's and she saw those puppies, so knew exactly what such a dog would look like.

 A step has been missed here, hasn't it? The step is that Carolyn gave her friend (Ally Hean), some funny words about gardening, written as if she was a dog. The dog at the time of the words first being written was Carolyn's first Schnauzer and the piece was printed in the Schnauzer club newsletter years before Carolyn and Ally even knew each other. Ally took the  words and used those puppies as the model for her drawing. They both enjoyed the results, so they decided to take this idea further.

More words were written, more illustrations created and so the pair decided to take this idea to a local printer, Grandeur Press and so the book, "Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs" was created! The first print run and all subsequent print runs have been small, and certainly book sales are in the hundreds, rather than thousands. But many people who have read the book have enjoyed it. Carolyn was happy to sign copies of her book, and chat to others about dogs, and gardening, as well as getting some money to cover the costs for bringing the book out into the world!

It seems that one book wasn't enough though, and even though there were no initial thoughts of a 'series' of books for Buster the Dog, Carolyn eventually had another idea for another book by Buster the Dog. She wrote the new book, gave a copy of the text to Ally, and so the process began again. This new book was taken to a different printer, even closer to Carolyn, Bunyip Print & Copy in Gawler. This business had done copies of the first book over the years, when copies ran out. So after this second book "Doggone It! Mindfulness from a Dog's Point of View", had its first print run, Carolyn had an idea, and realised she had a trilogy on its way. This is how and why the new book, "Dog Buddha's Thoughts" which had its first launch during the recent Adelaide Plains Festival of Words, came into being.