Art mirrors life

 This week’s installment falls into the I Swear You Cannot Make This Stuff Up category.

First, SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t read “How to Live with a Ghost” yet, you might want to skip this post. Or if you’re one of those readers who likes to know what happens before it happens so you can enjoy it when it happens (weird, but I get it), read on.

 

My father’s lone living sister, Joyce, is the Hanson-Gaskell family historian. She has spent decades recording the stuff family genealogies are made of, but it’s not just who-married-whom and how many kids they had. She also records stories like the wife who shot her husband for going fishing in his Sunday suit. These are my people. (I’d like to know more about the fishing incident but no one seems to recall the details and it might better that way.)

 

Aunt Joyce writes poignant, often sobering and frequently funny “memory lane” posts dusted with the dry sense of humor that seems to be a Hanson genetic trait. She distributes these via email to various branches of the family tree, since we are scattered to the four points of the compass and possibly the China Sea. Seriously. I’ll get back to that.

 

WRITERS & RELATIVES

 

So, my aunt recently shared the following after some gentle prodding by me to elaborate on a different topic she had referenced in a previous email.

 

“Dear Melinda (insert chatty familial catching up here) . . . Congratulations on your new book . . . I am anxious to start it soon, and know that my mom (my paternal grandmother, Laurel Gaskell Hanson, whom I never met) would have been so proud of you. She was a great story teller and both Rosey (my dad’s other sister) and I told her she should have written a children’s story book.

 

Laurel Gaskell Hanson, 1950s
I am blessed to have this quilt.

My aunt went on to inquire, “Have you read any of the books that were written by my great-great-great-great English aunt, Elizabeth Gaskell? Actually, she wasn’t a blood relative as she was a Cleghorn and married one of our ancestors in England. He was a Unitarian minister. She is buried in a side chapel in a cathedral in London. Her two best books—she wrote over 15—were ‘North and South’ (about England) and ‘Cranford.’ They are pretty good.”

 

Well. No. I had to admit I was not aware I had a (add another great to the above list) who penned books in England in the 1800s. A quick check of Google confirms she wrote “detailed studies of Victorian society, including the lives of the very poor.” 

 

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell,
Victorian-era novelist and my 5x great-aunt

 

Then Aunt Joyce dropped the bomb.

 

“I was impressed that the forwards in the books were written by Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, who she was good friends with.”

 

Well. Alrighty then. Perhaps Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was only a relative by marriage, but she’s still a branch of the family tree, and I was this many years old when I found out an ancestor of mine rubbed elbows with Dickens and Austen.

 

Before I got too puffed up about my literary ancestors, Aunt Joyce continued:

 

“My Grandfather Walter Gaskell thought he was a great writer. He was not, as proven by editors with many rejection slips. I have a copy of (his) stories if you ever want to waste the time reading them.

 

“It’s kind of funny as the original handwritten copies have been passed around . . . no one wants them, but no one wants to throw them out. I sent them to a cousin last Christmas, wrapped up, and she says I get them back this coming year. Someday my kids can throw them out, which you will understand if you ever read them.”

Maybe my great-grandfather wasn’t Hemingway when it came to literary achievement, but an inkwell that belonged to him found its way to me about thirty years ago, via my dad’s other sister, who thought I should have the it because I was a newspaper columnist. No word on how she ended up with it, although both of my dad’s sisters wrote beautiful letters back in the era when people still wrote letters. 

 

My Great-grandfather Walter Gaskell's inkwell
has received more appreciation than
any of his literary non-achievements.

 

Anyway, I love the inkwell. It’s a cool bit of history and sparked a brief passion for collecting inkwells and ink bottles, until I began disposing of my disposable income on dog show entry fees.

 

WHISKEY IN ODD PLACES

 

Okay, seriously stop reading NOW if you don’t want to get some major hints about the ending of “Ghost.”

 

I did some research for certain elements of “Ghost,” but I wasn’t trying to get a Ph.D. in American history, and let’s face it, at the end of the day, fiction is just a writer sitting at a keyboard, making stuff up. (And honestly, that’s why we do it—we’re thumbing our noses at everyone who told us we shouldn’t “tell stories” when we were kids. Look at us now—telling stories and making money. Okay, telling stories.)

 

I totally made up the bit in “Ghost” about home-brew whiskey being hidden in Bishop Cemetery by Prohibition-era bootleggers with plans to distribute it via the Iowa River. Yepper—plucked the idea right out of the clear blue sky. It sounded like a fun bit of make believe and a nice twist to what everyone thought was in the cemetery. Had no idea anyone actually DID that.

 

Then just as the book was going into serious production and we were past the point of no return on major edits, my aunt drops another bomb in a family and local history email episode.

 

Hiding hooch in cemeteries WAS a thing.

 

Prohibition stone in the Wapello, Iowa, township cemetery.
The date on the stone predates Prohibition but I suppose
it could have replaced the original grave marker. These "whisky monuments" were not
made from stone at all, but "white bronze" (zinc), hollowed for storage of alcohol
awaiting transportation by bootleggers.

 

Alex, I’ll take “Stuff I wish I’d known as a kid” for $100.

 

There were “Prohibition stones” on graves in the township cemetery near the farm where I grew up (which was near the Iowa River). I asked my aunt to expound on that, please, and she wrote:

 

 “Many (Prohibition stones) can be found in the cemeteries along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and also further south. They are usually hollowed out, with space to hide booze. Mom told me about them in the Wapello Cemetery . . . They are also called ‘zinkers’ as that is what the door would have been made of, and sometimes I guess the entire stone was zinc. The ones in Wapello have been painted over and can’t be opened any more. More can be found close to the rivers, as that was how a lot of alcohol was moved.”

 

RELATIVES & BOOTLEGGERS

 

My aunt continued with her tale of enlightenment:

 

“Did you know you have a bootlegger in your history? My dad’s brother, Ralph Brueck, was one. He transported liquor from up river (Mississippi River) into Burlington (Iowa) using a shallow draft boat. Dad (my paternal grandpa) said that he knew the river well and would go into shallow side flows where the Revenuers could not follow with their bigger boats. If necessary, he would dump the liquor into the water.

 

“This activity was well-known in the family, as Dad would laugh about it. Apparently, he made money at it, as he started Brueck Plumbing and Electric Company in Burlington. I liked Uncle Ralph, as he was always jolly, but it upset Mom so much that he smoked cigars and that they served beer at their kids’ weddings.”

 

I guess if this writing gig doesn’t work out, maybe I could take up moonshining. 

 

Or not.

 

It would probably be best for everyone involved if I just stuck to researching and discovering the antics of the people who came before me because they were undoubtedly better at it than I could ever be.

 

MORE GENEALOGY TO END THE WEEK

 

My aunt comes up with the most delightful bits of history from the Danish/Swedish branch of the family. (The crazy Celts are on my mom’s side and apparently no one has ever looked too closely at the antics of the Mills-Cameron family tree.)

 

Anyway, back to Danes doing Dane things:

 

“. . . did you know that Dad’s great-grandfather was a Danish sea captain who went down in the China Sea? (Apparently his death was never confirmed.) Maybe he survived and we’ve got cousins over there! . . . I do have Grandma Christine Hanson’s family back to Sweden in the 1600s (farmers) and the Hansons in Denmark back to World War I (farmers). After that, church records in Denmark were destroyed, but I know Grandpa snuck out of Denmark with a younger brother to escape having to go into the German army.”

 

There you have it. The result is a fun smorgasbord of lineage to pick from when trying to figure out why I am the way I am.

 

Check out the sidebar for dates I’m giving author’s talks and signings. Hope to see you there!

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author for updates from my very small corner of the literary world.

News from the hobbit hole

 Thank you.

 

I don’t know what else to say, so I’ll just keep saying it.

 

Your response to “How to Live with a Ghost” has been beyond my wildest dreams. Thanks for taking the time to leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Thanks for posting “Ghost” on your social media and telling friends “You have to read this book!” Thank you for sending copies to unsuspecting friends from coast to coast. Thank you for sending me messages saying how much you enjoyed it. 

 

I especially love everyone who has said, “I was so sad when it was over.” Yay! Well, I’m not happy that you were sad, but I’m delighted you enjoyed being part of Jess McCallister and Dan Sinclair’s world so much you miss them now that you aren’t there. I spent so much time with them over the last few years, I miss them, too.

 

 

I also love that so many of your messages ended with “When is your next book coming out?” Okay, that makes me twitch a little (the final weeks of pre-publication on “Ghost” were not a kind and gentle experience), but I’m ready to do it again. Older, wiser and all that. 

 

An author friend warned me the ink would barely dry on the first book before dear readers started asking about the next one. I can think of worse problems to have.

 

But . . .

 

Publishing a book is the literary equivalent of hosting Thanksgiving dinner. You spend ages cleaning the house, planning the meal and shopping for groceries at four different stores. You get a flat tire in the process and have to call AAA, then you realize the spare is UNDER the dog crates and the only way to get it out is to take the crates out first. (I’ve done it. Zero stars. Do not recommend.)

 

Tire crisis solved, you manage to defrost the turkey without the cats gnawing on it (not my experience but a childhood memory I’ll never forget), and make accommodations for great-aunt Ethel’s gluten intolerance and nephew Johnny’s strawberry allergy. You nearly break your neck dusting the ceiling fan, then scrub the dog snot off all the windows, only to discover now they let in so much light you have to go back and deep clean everything over again. 

 

Then you roast, bake, boil, blend, peel, knead, beat, frost, baste and wash dishes for what feels like a lifetime and set the most beautiful table ever, complete with starched linens and sparkling stemware. You get up at zero-dark-thirty to put the bird in the oven and let the wine breathe. There’s a military grade spreadsheet on the refrigerator detailing oven temps, bake times and ins and outs in order to have everything come together at the appropriate time.

 

Then it takes your guests about twenty minutes to eat the meal.

 

All analogies between writing and food gluttony aside, I can tell you a few things with certainty.

 

There WILL be a next book.

 

It WON’T be a Fox Hollow mystery. (I’ll address that in a sec.)

 

It WILL be a cozy mystery involving a murder at a dog obedience trial—new setting, new characters, total immersion in the crazy that is the sub-culture of competition obedience trainers. There are no ghosts but there is a dead body in the Utility ring, and no one can figure out whodunnit. The trial chair stumbles onto the reason why the victim was killed, and although she doesn’t know whodunnit either, there’s a good chance she’s next on the killer’s list. On top of everything, a friend is pushing her to adopt a wild young Malinois from a local rescue, and she’s mentoring a Beginner Novice exhibitor who traded rodeos for dog shows but won’t give up his cowboy boots. While I can’t say with any certainty when it will be released, my goal is early autumn. 

 

 (Takes deep breath.) I’m excited to say I DO have a plot idea for a sequel to “Ghost.” However . . . I want to actually outline the thing this time before tackling the writing. Having said THAT, I am under no illusion I will actually follow said outline, but I wrote “Ghost” by the seat of my pants and it was a pretty reckless experience I’d prefer not to repeat. That blatant disregard to anything resembling good sense made things super awkward when it came to character and story development, which in turn was one of the reasons it needed about a dozen rewrites. I would like to avoid that again. Like, really, really like to avoid that again.

 

Oooh, is this a mysterious clue to what's next for the Fox Hollow crew?

 

So that’s a lot of grand plans for 2026. Plus the usual dog induced mayhem.

 

Infant canine mayhem. It's bigger now.
And so is the accompanying mayhem.

 I’ll spend the next couple of months complaining bitterly about winter here in the Midwest, but secretly loving the excuse to hide in my little hobbit hole, maintaining all my relationships with fictional characters.

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author for updates from my very small corner of the literary world.

 

 

 

The dogs of "Ghost"

I hope 2026 brings wonderful sparkly things for all of you!

 

Happy new year and thank you all so much for your support of “Ghost.” Since its release two weeks ago, you’ve bought it, shared it on social media and left wonderful reviews. I’m loving that you’re loving it! 

I’m especially loving reviews where readers highlight what they felt made the book relatable and enjoyable. That gives me ideas to build on for . . . um . . . possibly . . . another McAllister/Sinclair adventure. Maybe by then Jess will be able to go for a walk without falling into an open grave or onto a skeleton or off the edge of a river bluff. Seriously. Looking back, I’m not sure how I got her through three-hundred-plus pages without her breaking her neck. 

 

On to this week’s topic: if you’ve known me for longer than five minutes, it’s no surprise I found it easier to create the canine characters of “How to Live with a Ghost” than the human ones. If we’re relatively new acquaintances, I’m glad you’re here, and it might be beneficial to point out I am a certified crazy dog lady. I earned my first AKC obedience title on the family beagle when I was 11 and things . . . escalated. Fifty years of dog sports later, it’s that connection with another species that meant many of the supporting characters in “Ghost” were naturally four-leggers.

 

The main canine, Raider, Jess’s Belgian Malinois, was the first to interact with Fox Hollow’s invisible resident. He enjoyed connecting across the veil while Jess was either oblivious or in denial or both. It was easy to use him to create tension, serve as comic relief or save the day. 

 

Raider the fictional Malinois is based on my very real Malinois, OTCH, U-OTCH Carousel’s Call of the Wild, UDX, MX, MXJ, TT (Phoenix). Phoenix liked who he liked, and if he didn’t like you, well, sorry. One of my favorite scenes in “Ghost” comes late in the first chapter, when Dan Sinclair drops in to meet Jess, as the new owner of Fox Hollow. His initial attempt at a friendly handshake quickly changes to “Is your dog going to bite me?” while Raider gives him the classic Malinois FAFO look.

OTCH, U-OTCH Carousel's Call of the Wild
(Phoenix the real Malinois who was the
prototype for Raider the fictional Malinois)

 Raider, my very real Australian shepherd, is named after Raider the fictional Malinois. That weaves some kind of twisted connection with Phoenix, the very real Malinois. When Raider the Aussie goes over-the-top nuts or gets spicy, I feel like there’s a bit of Phoenix still with me.

Cedarwoods Macallan Red Label, UDX, OM2
(Raider the Aussie)

 Through the years, all my dogs’ call names and/or registered names have shared a literary theme linked to either a character or a book title. Raider the Aussie was the first one to deviate from that path. While his call name referenced a canine character in the unpublished manuscript that absolutely no one had read at that point but which would eventually become “Ghost,” his registered name, Cedarwoods Macallan Red Label, was a nod to whisky, no literary connection in sight. 

 

Now, I’m laughing even harder at the whisky reference because after “Ghost” went through several rewrites, well, if you know, you know. 

 

Having spent decades experiencing dogs’ intelligence and ability to problem solve, not to mention being blessed with the soul-deep relationships that come from working so closely with them, I wanted to present dogs as sentient, intuitive beings whose behaviors fill the lives of those around them with a richness that defies description. I hoped to capture my four-legged characters exhibiting normal canine behavior but with the underlying current of thoughtful intelligence and more often than not, a sense of humor.

 

Raider the Malinois was easy to write because I spent eleven too-short years with a Mal who never let anything stand in the way of what he wanted (including but not limited to fences, vehicles, farm fields, furniture, crates, trees and buildings). He was also obsessed with tennis balls.

 

Ruby, Dan Sinclair’s Australian cattle dog, is a nod to every tough, loyal, bossy, herding dog out there who not only thinks they know better than you do, they don’t GAF whether you agree.

 

Kerri Grimm’s Aussies reflect all the wonderful Australian shepherds who convinced me to switch breeds in real life from Belgians to Aussies. Seely, Kinna, Julia, Mia . . . you know who you are. I had written quite a few more of Kerri’s Aussies into original drafts of “Ghost” but they didn’t make the final version. Damn word count.

 

Cannon, Susanne Bartacheck’s fabulous BIS, BISS German Shorthair Pointer, was inspired by Carlee, the GSP who went BIS at Westminster in 2005. I remember watching her gate and stack and thinking she was absolute perfection on a show lead. When I needed a breed dog for Susanne, she immediately popped into my head. 

 

Mare MacGregor’s “incorrigible corgi” Poe doesn’t get a lot of press, which is a shame because corgis are wicked cute little beasts who deserve a supporting character role. Maybe he’ll get to shine in the future.

 

The other dogs who trot through the pages of “Ghost” were chosen more or less at random, because they seemed to fit their owners’ personalities, as well as represent the variety of breeds taking part in dog sports across our nation. If there’s any subliminal text here, it’s the message that all dogs should receive a baseline minimum of obedience training to make them good canine citizens in a world that expects them to conform to human demands while at the same time, neglecting to give them the skills to do so.

 

Thanks again for reading and reviewing and being part of my marketing team by telling your friends about “Ghost.” I’m doing some book signings in eastern Iowa this month. They are listed on the right side of this page. If you don’t have anything better to do, come and listen to me prove that I write better than I speak.

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author. 

Now what?

First things first. Huge thanks to everyone who ordered hard copy or Kindle downloads of “How to Live with a Ghost” when it was released earlier this week. Many of you have listened to me talk about this book for years, and it was your encouragement that kept me going when I felt trying to publish was like hitting myself in the head with a stick and then wondering why I had a headache.

The evening after “Ghost” trotted into the big, wide world on its own two feet, I faced a new reality. The problem with reaching a goal that you’ve dreamed about for years is that once you achieve it, you’re kind of left floating in the ether. The thing that consumed a ridiculous amount of my mental energy since some point in 2022 had been checked off the to-do list. What was next?

Sales and marketing!

 

 

I may have mentioned my publisher, Pearl City Press, is a small operation. I went into this knowing much of the sales would fall on my shoulders because they do not have the people-power to drive a big marketing campaign. Or a small marketing campaign. Or any marketing campaign. If I wanted people to notice “Ghost,” I was going to have to make it happen.

 

Much like the farm wife who wears the hats of cook, meals-on-wheels driver, pickup fetcher, gate watcher, parts runner, weather reporter, cow chaser, fuel dump operator, and wagon hauler, I stepped into the position of publicist, sales executive, and event promoter.

 

I was not cut out to do this. My degree is in journalism. For three and a half decades, I made a living reporting the news, not being the news. However, unicorn dreams and glitter rainbows aside, once you’ve published a book, the goal is to sell the book. Books, annoyingly, do not sell themselves.

 

Speaking of selling things, let’s step back a few years. I grew up selling Girl Scout Cookies door-to-door to our farm neighbors. I sold candy bars to raise money for my 4-H club, candles and jewelry to finance the high school Spanish Club’s trip to Spain, and magazines to support the junior/senior prom. I hated every minute of it. I was a shy kid. I did not want to talk to strangers, let alone try to sell them stuff nobody really wanted. Well. Except the cookies. Everybody wants cookies. Of course, they all bought cookies and candles and magazines because that’s what you did back then. Their kids had sold stuff to my parents, so when I showed up on their doorstep, trying not to vomit, they cheerfully ordered a token box of Thin Mints or renewed their subscription to Field and Stream.

 

This does not seem like a viable marketing strategy for book sales.
But yay, Girl Scouts!

 

Here I am, many years later, trying to capture the attention of book readers, book buyers, booksellers, and the media in a climate filled with thousands of other authors doing the same thing. This would be easier if I’d penned a best-selling, forty-seven-title series because name recognition is everything. You can walk into a bookstore and tell who the big-name authors are without having read any of their work. Their name on the cover will be larger than the title. 

 

But here I am. First-time author. Debut novel. Single book. Not even the promise of a series (more on that another time). Just me, dizzy with relief at this lone achievement and wanting to share it with the world. 

 

Well, look at that, will ya?

 What I’ve learned so far can be summed up in one word: networking.

 

I am calling in favors left and right, relying on contacts from my years in the newspapers, and thanking God in Heaven for a friend with a marketing degree who has given me some excellent ideas. She would cringe if she knew my approach is still more reckless than methodical, but I feel good about the results. 

 

And incredibly nervous because it still involves talking to strangers. Substitute “book” for “cookies” and it’s a flashback to the 1970s, clutching the order form in sweaty palms and trying not to mumble when I ask, “Would you like to buy my book?” Only now I’m holding a press release praising “Ghost” and handing out business cards and smiling in what I hope is a friendly and professional, not deranged, manner.

 

I'm fine. Really. Just fine. Delighted to be here.

Author events an exhilarating and terrifying concept. Some writers are naturally gregarious. I am not one of them. Put me ringside at an obedience trial and I can talk the ear off a total stranger, discussing the judge’s habit of running teams into the gate before calling the turns on heeling or the hysterically obsessive inspection of each exhibitor’s dumbbell. (Yes, I know the regs say the judge will inspect the dumbbell, but I’ve had several that made it look like the ceremonial weighing of the wands in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” But I digress.)

 

But ask me to speak to a room full of people who may or may not be expecting to hear great literary truths or just didn’t have anything better to do with their time that night and, well, it’s hard. I am not good at putting myself out there. I was raised with the belief that you shouldn’t attract attention to yourself. I suppose that’s a good approach if you’re a burglar. Not so much if you’re trying to sell books.

 

Anyway, I venture to say my initial — if slightly feeble — marketing strategy is going . . . maybe . . . kinda . . . sorta . . . well? I’ve got some book talks and signings scheduled in January. I even added a coming events widget to the right side of this blog so if you’re in the eastern Iowa area and there’s no Cyclone or Hawkeye basketball game on TV that night, you can get out of the house and beat that cabin fever. Come listen to me prove that I write better than I speak.

 

Also in the good news report, several local retailers have agreed to add “Ghost” to their inventory, and I’ve started the daunting process of contacting indie booksellers in the area. I say daunting in the bestest way possible. It means I finally have a finished product to share with the world, not just a sparkly dream.

 

One last thing, when you finish “Ghost,” if the spirit moves you, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. This is the stuff authors live for. It helps boost sales and is helpful in marketing the NEXT book (hint-nudge-wink).

 

If I don’t get back to you all before then, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a blessed new year. As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author. 

 

Dog show packing Tetris

Now that the dust has settled on Raider’s and my 2025 obedience trial season, it’s time to review a critical element that can make or break the success of any team.

Packing for the weekend. 

 

If your non-dog-showing human partner has ever looked at the pile of bags sitting by the back door on a Friday afternoon and said, “You’re just leaving for the weekend, right?”, you understand. 

 

If the show site was within a two-hour radius, I used to be that handler who got up at the hour of stupid on Saturday and drove there from home to avoid hotel expenses. I would drive home again at the end of the day, fall into bed and get up the next morning to do it all again. Driving back and forth to shows eliminated the need for packing clothes, toiletries and other survival gear like four pair of shoes, five jackets, my laptop and forty-seven feet of charging cables. I told myself I was saving money, which was ridiculous, because people who do dog sports save money by living on ramen noodles and not buying their husband Christmas gifts. Sorry, honey. Love ya, but entry fees.

 

As the years and the odometer clicked by, I did the math and realized I was not, in fact, saving anything. Fuel costs, plus wear and tear on my vehicle as I racked up the highway miles, ate up the imagined savings earned by avoiding hotels and restaurant meals. 

 

Plus, as I—ahem—matured, I discovered I really disliked driving in the dark. Dark driving is rife with annoying things like deer. And other drivers.

 

With the decision to abandon my long haul, road warrior lifestyle and embrace the “get a good night’s sleep within twenty minutes of the show site” approach, came the need to become an efficient packer. Sure, I’d hotel’d it enough over the years to have a good grip on the basics, but I was not necessarily good at it. 

 

There is a fine art to assembling all of the stuff you need for a weekend on the road and packing it neatly into your car. And by luggage, I mean everything from that screen-printed canvas bag from a national specialty twenty years ago to the wheeled carry-on with its fancy 360 degree spinning wheels and titanium handle that could withstand being flung around by gorillas in a remake of the 1970s Samsonite commercials. (Yes, I’m that old. We’ve discussed that. Move on.)

 

Like everything else that comes with the glamorous dog handler lifestyle, packing is a minefield of overthinking. I admire the people who can throw a toothbrush and a change of underwear in a backpack and be away from home for three days without looking like a refugee. If I tried that, the only thing I’d pull off is the bridge troll look.

 

 

I've created a master packing list to ensure I don't forget anything vital. The essential categories break down as follows.

 

The dogs’ training gear bag: leashes, collars, dumbbell, backup dumbbell, toys, treats, brush, training journal, obedience regs, weekend judging program, etc. Basically, all the essentials you need at the trial. If you forget your toothbrush, you can go to Walmart and get another one. If you forget your custom-sized, hand-crafted, maple and cherry wood dumbbell, you’re screwed. The gear bag is the first thing that goes in the car.

 

The people bag: human clothing and toiletries. Regardless of the season, deciding what to take for a weekend means consulting multiple forecasts, tea leaves and a crystal ball. I end up packing more clothes than I need but hey, I like to be prepared. Husband points out I am prepared to not come home for two weeks. He likes his little jokes.

 

The dogs’ motel bag: dog food, food and water bowls, sheet(s) to cover the bed and/or furniture, entertainment items (toy, bully sticks, bully stick holder), poop bags, extra poop bags and anything that didn't fit in the people bag.

 

The food bag: snacks. Self-explanatory. Long trip? Lots of snacks. Short trip? Same amount of snacks. Possibility of getting caught in a blizzard on I-80? All the snacks. Don’t take chances.

 

The cooler: more snacks. And pop.

 

It should end there, but it doesn’t. 

 

If you’re showing in Utility, you’ll have an article bag(s) and/or extra articles. Extra dumbbell. Extra gloves. A full set of portable jumps, forty feet of ring gate and stanchions, platforms, props and the entire freaking kitchen sink for practice at the motel when the weather is cooperative. 

 

Now let’s talk about coats. Rain coat. Warm coat. Nanook of the North coat. Jacket for a chilly show site. Don’t forget gloves, scarves and hats. In an emergency, you could use your dog's Utility gloves. Make sure the set contains both a left and right hand. This will not work if you show a chihuahua. If the weather is atrocious and your dog is an itty-bitty or extremely short-coated, you will need dog coats as well.

 

Plus shoes. Everyday shoes. Trial shoes. Slippers for the motel room. Rain boots in the summer. Snow boots in the winter. My personal best for a winter show weekend was four pair of footwear to cover all conditions. Don’t judge. I can be cranky enough without adding cold, wet feet to the mix.

 

Back in the day, I traveled with a dear, dear friend who could not pack lightly to save her life. Actually, she did pack lightly. None of her bags weighed much at all. But there were A. Lot. Of. Them. I was never sure exactly how many of them there were because aside from her gear bag and people bag, the extras were Walmart bags and they all looked alike. Pretty sure she did that on purpose so I couldn’t get a firm count and give her a hard time.

 

We jokingly called them her subsidiary bags. In the tradition of Walmart bags (at least back in the days before self-checkout) they each seemed to contain only two or three items. Nowadays, the best thing about self-checkout is that I can cram a single bag with as much as possible because I am not making four trips to carry sixteen bags into the house when I get home.

 

But I digress.

 

Once, my subsidiary-bag friend, another friend and I and our dogs loaded up a Chevy Blazer (Blazers were a lot bigger back then) for a show weekend. In the interests of not having to rent a U-Haul for all our crap, we agreed to limit our luggage to one gear bag, one people bag and one small cooler per person, plus the necessary crates and chairs. True to form, Subsidiary Bag Friend showed up with a multitude of extras. There was a great deal of eye rolling, but down the road we went. I think we made her hold them all on her lap.

 

Another friend joined us on a weekend excursion and brought her clothes on hangers in a garment bag. She’s a breed handler, too, so we forgave her the reluctance to take chances with wrinkles. That didn’t stop us from teasing her mercilessly about her “ball gowns.” To this day, every time I put clothes in a garment bag, I think of the ball gown weekend.

 

 When I was showing Phoenix, the Farmer made a last-minute decision to go to the ABMC national with me. At the time, I was driving a Chevy Equinox, which was a cute little SUV that fit one woman, one Malinois, one Aussie, and all our stuff quite nicely. Squeezing in another human, his luggage, and a second folding chair was do-able but . . . snug. Then Phoenix won a lovely embroidered chair for High Combined. I seriously thought I might have to find someone to bring the thing home for me. 

Then I remembered a good friend and master vehicle packer’s advice: “You can always go up to the roof.” I wedged that ten-inch-wide folded chair into a nine-inch-wide space atop the crates and we were good to go. Never mind I needed a crowbar to get it out of the car when we got home.

 

These days, when I leave for a trial, my car is packed using a “last in/first out” approach. I’m OCD enough to put everything that goes into the hotel in one area and all the trial gear in another. Nothing rattles. Nothing tips over. I could slam on the brakes and there would be no massive load-shift, mostly because everything is wedged in so tightly it can’t move.

 

By the time I leave the show site on Sunday afternoon, my car looks like I drove past a garage sale with the windows down and people threw stuff into it at random. I’m just happy I can get the doors closed. 

 

Is it wrong that one of my goals for the new year is to master truly efficient packing? I’ll let you know how that goes.

 

IN OTHER NEWS

The final countdown for “How to Live with a Ghost” is officially on! Release date on Amazon is Monday, Dec. 15. Don’t know what to give that reader in your life? Feel like buying yourself a holiday gift after shopping for everyone else? Currently, you can only pre-order the Kindle version, but the hard copy option should show on the release date. Bless all you Kindle folks who have pre-ordered. Here’s the link.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G2KRCN38

 

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author.