- Good Boy is now on shelves!
You know those classic boy-and-his-dog books? The tragedies about mortality in an unforgiving world? I’m not going to do that to you. I wrote Good Boy to show how much a dog and a kid can do for one another. It’s about the confidence and joy that come from that friendship. Sure, you might cry. The pair in question has struggles that I’ve cried through myself. But you’re also going to laugh, and believe me, you’re going to cheer.
The sport of canine agility, the world this boy-and-his-dog fall into, is incredible not just for the physical skills it showcases, but for the teamwork underlying those feats. Imagine stepping onto a court where only you know the rules, but only your partner can touch the ball. Now imagine that the two of you don’t speak the same language. Now that your partner won’t stop rolling in mud and spreading it through the house.
Charlie (he’s the boy) and Ralph (he’s the dog) meet as a mismatched pair who bring out the worst in each other. Their obstacle course extends well beyond the dog park. The duo needs to get through housebreaking and anxiety nightmares before even attempting a double-bar jump. The finish line is a long distance off, but it’s worth running towards because there’s no friend for one like the other. I hope you enjoy cheering them on along the way.
You can pick up a copy right here!
If you’re looking for more ways to support the book, first of all: thank you! The best way to help is simply to talk about it. Recommend Good Boy to anyone who will listen. Post about it all over the place. If your local library doesn’t already have it in their catalog, you can request that they acquire a copy. Lastly, drop a nice review on Goodreads or wherever you purchased yours. You’re such a champ.
Folks in the Dallas area are welcome to join me and my friends in the Richardson Humane Society for a launch event on 5/31 at Interabang Books, where I’ll be signing books, A-ing Qs, and drawings dogs.
By the author, age 12
- Hup! What is agility anyway?
You’re an athlete on a team of two. Imagine stepping onto a court for a game where only you know the rules but only your partner can touch the ball. Now imagine that the two of you don’t speak the same language. Now that your partner won’t stop eating stuff off the ground.
Good Boy is set in the world of canine agility. You likely know it to see it. The obstacle courses with the bar jumps and the tunnels and dogs absolutely boosting through it all? That’s the one. What you probably don’t know is the level of teamwork and communication going on between dog and handler. It’s very much a team sport.
The basic premise is this: teams of one dog and one human each are presented with a series of physical obstacles. Their goal is to navigate these obstacles in a designated order as quickly as they can. The course has a par completion time based on its length, and points are deducted from a team’s score for each second they are above par as well as for faults such as hesitation and wrong turns. More severe faults, such as knocking over or skipping obstacles, disqualify the team’s entire run.
All that is to say it’s not only about going fast. A clean run at par will beat a sloppy one under. Qualifying scores earn teams titles and unlock higher levels of competition — all the way to champion!
But dogs come in a lot of sizes, don’t they? A daschund might struggle to clear jumps that a mastiff can walk over, which hardly seems fair. That’s where height divisions come into play. Teams compete within groups based on the dog’s height as measured at the shoulders, from 11″ and under all the way to 22″ plus. Jumps are set to different heights (and distances where applicable) for each division. Importantly, each division also has a par course time calculated just for them. Tall dogs cover more ground with each stride, after all.
Creating a course is an art in itself, drafted on a canvas around 100′ a side. Each must contain a certain number and variety of obstacles spaced some minimum distance apart within the ring. Certain obstacles like A-frames and seesaws can’t be placed in sequence with one another or positioned as the first or last of the course, and there are additional limits on obstacles’ approach angles, basically how tight turns can get and how twisty the course ends up. It’s all in the interests of both fairness and safety.
The courses featured in Good Boy are all original. It was a welcome challenge to craft interesting runs with these restrictions in mind. The finale includes an A-frame that challenges duos to clear it twice, each time leading toward a different obstacle!
But the most mindblowing facet of agility is this: dogs know nothing about the course until they start running it.
What.
I know! This brings us back to the team aspect. Before anyone runs, the humans get to examine a map and walk the course to learn it themselves. They imagine how their dog will move from one to the next and… do you see the catch coming? How can a handler guide their dog without slowing them down?
They use cues, words and gestures, to communicate from a distance. With this ability, handlers can take shortcuts to keep up. You could math it out as: (slow human) x (shorter route) = (fast dog) x (longer route). When handlers walk the course prior to their run, they’re actually plotting two separate routes that will allow their team to stay connected throughout while keeping very different paces.
The stunts are cool, but they’re only half the sport.
The habits I built doing nonfiction work carried over to this graphic novel: you’ve gotta do your research. I attended Dallas Agility Working Group meets and consulted with local super-handler Adrienne McLean. She and her dogs have a list of achievements so long it’ll make your head spin.
Agility is the most popular, but it’s just one of many canine sports. Snooker assigns point values to obstacles and challenges teams to create their own sequences for high scores. Flyball is a blisteringly fast relay race over hurdles to fetch and return the ultimate prize: a ball. Treibball is herding sport involving a field of large balls for dogs to score goals with.
There are oodles of videos out there of all of the above and more being performed at the highest levels. Should you have the opportunity, though, I encourage you to watch some beginners. You’ll see dogs gain confidence with each step and handlers glow with pride at every attempt. It’s a relentlessly positive scene. Most folks will even let you pet their dog if you ask.
If you’re looking for a story about how that journey impacts a mismatched boy and dog, my graphic novel Good Boy hits shelves 5/20. Folks in the Dallas area are welcome to join me and my friends in the Richardson Humane Society for a launch event on 5/31 at Interabang Books.
Until then, stay good!
- Blast off with HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT!
We have liftoff! HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: Rockets and Rivalry is now available wherever books are found!
I’ve spent the morning updating the reference section over at AforAndy.com, and yowza, what a reminder of how packed this entry is. My thanks to Dwight Eisenhower for creating NASA as a civilian organization and ensuring public access to a wealth of informational resources. In fact, I’d like to take a moment to expand on one incredible record that you can further explore yourself.
Cutaways, cutaways, cutaways!
I knew going in that HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT would require lots of technical drawing. What’s more, spacecraft are highly specific machines. You can’t reference any old craft for any old mission. And you know what the hardest part of a spacecraft is to draw?
The inside.
You can probably picture the outside of a capsule or two, but the inside? Forget about it. These things are so cramped that the astronauts themselves can’t help but block your view in a photo, and before they launch, all you get to see is a square foot or two of seat through the hatch. That creates a real challenge for a book about human spaceflight: inside is where the humans are. Luckily, the Smithsonian Institute has my back.
They created 3D scans of the Apollo 11 command module in their collection (inside and out) and put them online for anyone to tour. That’s already great, but they also allow you to download that model. From there you can open up Blender modeling software, hack away at the precious history blocking your view, and get that perfect reference shot. A civilian mission, publicly documented and accessible through open source software, the fruits of which you can now find in your local library’s collection. That’s the way to do it.
I think you’ll really love this book. If you did, consider leaving a nice review somewhere! Thanks so much to everyone who preordered, and thanks in advance for telling all your friends and family about it.
See you, space cowboys.
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