Don’t you just love it when the universe sends you a gift? That’s exactly what happened to me recently. Trust me, this post does have to do with writing: Just read on!

A friend sent me an email about a dog massage workshop. The price of admission was a bag of dog food and an open mind. Well, this sounded really appealing to me because my dog Ryder is a feisty fourteen-year old with a serious bit of arthritis. Dog massage sounded like a great idea. It was — and not just for Ryder, but for me.

After a demo of massage techniques with Max, a big, amiable black lab, the instructor started chatting about animals. And so did all of us dog lovers crazy enough to attend a canine massage class on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. There were inspiring tales of wonderful therapy dogs and the instructor mentioned a book called Rounds with Oscar about an amazing cat who works in a hospital, which sounds intriguing.

Anyway, long story short, she also started talking about a woman by the wonderful name of Linda Tellington-Jones, who has revolutionized the way that horses are trained using touch. As soon as I heard about this, I thought, Wow, I’ve got to find out more — maybe I can weave some version of her approach into my YA novel! All the way home I was really excited about the whole idea. It just goes to show, you never know where or when something might pop up that you can use in one form or another in your writing. Makes it all even more fun, doesn’t it?