You're an animal

Sixty percent of all Americans owe a pet. That is a huge number. Don’t worry, I’m not here to sell you the next amazing pet product. But it does mean that animals play a part in most American’s lives and yet how many pets are represented in fiction?
I have written fourteen 100K novels. I think I have featured pets in half of that number and other animal-human interaction in two more. I’m not really surprised. I am a pet owner. We have one dog and four cats in our family. (Don’t worry about the dog, he’s pretty sure he’s a cat. A really, really big cat. The cats know better.)
Our dog was a rescue puppy, one cat was bought through Petsmart, one was rescued by my husband at his job (she was about to be squished by a forklift, and two were rescued by me, hand fed by me as they were only a week and a half old, de-fleaed by me, (Mom was eaten by a coyote) yet they belong to my oldest daughter. Cats! Where’s the loyalty. Okay, technically, I belong to the dog and he makes sure the other animals know it.
So, I like to read about animals in books. To me it is normal for people to have them in their lives. Yet I also understand that some plot lines aren’t going to work as well if we have to bring along Fido or Fluffy. But if your going to include animals, they need to be more than just a prop or a marketing point.
Make the animals count.
Make their personalities as unique as any other character’s.
Make them reflect a trait of the protagonists.
And don’t forget where they are!
I just recently read a book where the dog disappeared halfway through I even though I went back and check I never saw them again.
Not a nice thing to do to the dog or the reader!

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