Sit Stay Heal!
Mel Miskimen
Non-fiction
E-book $7.99
Print $15.99
Audible $20.95
Buy on Amazon
Buy on Barnes and Noble
About the Book
Rowdy, reckless Seamus is the last dog you'd find in a
training field. Instead of obediently retrieving, he stubbornly follows his
heart, wherever it may lead.
Mel Miskimen's heart is heavy. Her mom, the family rock, the
provider of apple pies and stubborn fan of Brett Favre, just died. Even more,
her curmudgeon of a father isn't really coping. How can Mel reconnect with an
old man more interested in field dog training than discussing his feelings?
Enter Seamus. The hapless black lab throws their grief into
joyful disarray. Mel encourages her dad to mold Seamus into a champion
retriever.. But as the seasons change, and memories follow, Mel realizes she
must face her own fears, and that the road to Seamus's field trials might just
heal them all.
At turns hilarious and heart breaking, Sit Stay Heal will
touch the souls of dog lovers everything, and speak to anyone seeking a way to
connect with those they've lost.
From the Author
My parents had
known each other since they were 12, went to high school together, got engaged
then married when they were just 21. They had known each other for close to 70
years, and when my mother unexpectedly died, my father was lost. He needed a
project to help him wade through the muddy waters of grief. I needed something
to keep me afloat. Enter my 7 year old underachieving labrador, Seamus.
Dad was a hunter.
An expert when it came to training retrievers to fetch felled fowl. My dog,
however was good at getting the newspaper, balancing a biscuit on his nose and
keeping me warm on the sofa. Could my father help me train Seamus to be a
‘real’ dog? Over the year after my mother died, he and I (and dog) took to the
muddy fields every Wednesday morning. I learned the finer points of being in
command, something I wasn’t really keen on, and underneath my father’s gruff
and rough outer layer, was a soft and chewy center.
We needed a goal.
Something to aim for. I don’t hunt . . . so . . . what then? Vindication for an
embarrassing appearance at a Fastest Retriever Contest Seamus and I entered
when he was a yearling and I was . . . inept? Yes! I had brought shame upon the
family when Seamus and I were kicked out of a competition. He went rogue. I
went comic relief. The sting of that moment lingered. I wanted a do-over, no .
. . I needed a do-over. With the help
of my father (fluent in retriever) Seamus and I entered the contest. The
outcome? Well, you have to read the book!
Writing it was difficult – all those feelings
of sadness came bubbling back to the surface just when I thought I was done
with grieving. I miss my mother. Not the frail, wasting-away version of her,
but the funny, quirky her. We are getting used to the new normal – life without
mother. Life with a better behaved dog. Life with a father who never called me
on the phone just to chat and now calls me and talks for 12 minutes!
About the reader:
We all grieve.
There are parts of the process that are absurd and funny, so when I wrote about
my experience, I had to include those parts, like . . . when the funeral
director showed up to collect my mother’s body and he had 2 black eyes and an
‘x’ shaped bandage in the middle of his forehead. You’d have know my mother to
understand why that was funny. She would always describe people like this: “You
remember Alice? She has that hump?” or “Frank . . . he’s the one with the weird
ear.” I could just hear her, “. . . and the funeral director had TWO BLACK
EYES!”
Humor is a coping
mechanism. It’s how I get through life. Read this book and laugh, and weep.
It’s the human condition.
About Mel:
Mel Miskimen is an award winning
Wisconsin writer whose works have appeared in the Huffington
Her book, Sit. Stay. Heal: How An Underachieving Labrador Won Our Hearts and
Brought Us Together, (Sourcebooks 2016) is available at Boswell Books,
select Target stores, Amazon.com and Barnes and Nobel.com. It was called a
‘must read,’ by Modern Dog magazine. The book will be featured on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Chapter a Day program in May of 2017.
She lives in Milwaukee with her
husband Mark and dog Seamus in their 130 year old, drafty, empty nest they have
been in the process of restoring for over 33 years. Of course, she’s writing a
book about it. You can find her website: www.melmiskimen.com and follow her on Twitter:
@mmiskimen.
