![\"Dog!\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.everywritersresource.com\/selfpublished\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/dog1.jpg?resize=404%2C685\" "\\"Dog!\\"")
Author<\/h2>\nMike Robbins<\/p>\n
Mike Robbins is the author of two books of travel memoirs, a novel, and a scientific book on climate change. He has been a journalist, traveler, development worker and climate-change researcher.<\/p>\n
Born in England in 1957, he graduated in 1979 and worked in rock-music publishing, financial journalism, as a traffic broadcaster and as a reporter on the fishing industry.<\/p>\n
In 1987 he went to work as a volunteer in Sudan, an experience he described in his book Even the Dead are Coming (2009). He later also worked as a volunteer in Bhutan and went on to live in Aleppo, Brussels and Rome. These travels led eventually to a collection of long travel pieces, The Nine Horizons (2014), and a novel, The Lost Baggage of Silvia Guzm\u00e1n (2014). A collection of three novellas, Three Seasons: Three Stories of England in the Eighties, was published at the end of 2014. He expects to complete another novel in 2016. Another non-fiction book is also in the works, a collection of pieces drawn in part from his blog (www.mikerobbinsNYC.blogspot.com).<\/p>\n
Robbins is also the author of a scholarly work on agriculture and climate change, Cropping Carbon: Paying Farmers to Combat Climate Change (2011), published by Earthscan (now part of the Taylor & Francis group). He currently works as an editor in New York.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 1975 a Welsh hypnotist, Arnall Bloxham, startled everyone in Britain in a TV programme in which he regressed three subjects to their past lives. One had served on a ship of the line in the Napoleonic Wars; another remembered being a hunter-gatherer in the prehistoric Balkans; and another recounted fleeing from a pogrom in medieval York. The programme, The Bloxham Tapes, has never quite been forgotten in Britain, but few people can remember watching it now and it probably no longer exists.<\/p>\n
But writer Mike Robbins, 18 at the time, never quite forgot it. What happened after death? If you were reborn, would it be as a human again, and if not, why not? Forty years later, stuck on a book that was going too slowly, he broke off to write the novella Dog!, the story of an elderly rescue dog who is not quite what he seems. \u201cI wanted to explore the possibilities,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, what if that pug you saw in the park this afternoon was actually Henry VIII?\u201d<\/p>\n
Dog! isn\u2019t religious or philosophical (and its author, too, is neither). \u201cIt\u2019s the dramatic possibilities that I wanted to explore,\u201d says Robbins. \u201cI also wanted to have a bit of fun with the subject. I\u2019d been working for years on a novel set in postwar England, and the research had been killing me.\u201d He came up with a cheerful slob called Bazza (the English often abbreviate names into Baz, Caz, etc.), a university lecturer in a provincial English city. Bazza adopts an old dog, but finds it unaffectionate and uncommunicative. Still, the two of them live together cheerfully enough, despite the dog\u2019s contempt for humans and its habit of licking itself when guests come round. Then a Himalayan monk comes to stay for a few weeks while teaching courses in the city. He senses at once that there is something strange about the dog. He is right.<\/p>\n
But perhaps that\u2019s all that should be given away. Except that, as the book\u2019s blurb says: \u201cDog is a powerful story of love and loss, sin, redemption and dog mess. You\u2019ll never see your pet the same way again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The monk descended from the front most carriage. He was tall and muscular and his face was dominated by his high cheekbones; his head was shaved and he wore reddish-orange robes and, oddly somehow, trainers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looks as if he could beat someone to a pulp,\u201d said Bazza.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat wouldn\u2019t be very karmic, Bazza,\u201d said Caz.<\/p>\n
The monk approached, set down his modest case and bowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cTshering,\u201d he said in a voice that seemed too high for his large body.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarry,\u201d said Bazza, \u201cbut Bazza will do. This is Caroline but everyone calls her Caz.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed,\u201d said the monk. He inclined his head a little. \u201cTshering is, in fact, my only name. But I am called Tshering Thinley for passport purposes. It seems one cannot cross borders with just one name; though I have never felt I needed more.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked down at the dog.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this is the dog,\u201d explained Caz.<\/p>\n
Tshering made as if to pat him, then hesitated. He looked into the dog\u2019s eyes. The dog looked back. They stared at each other for several seconds. The dog put his head slightly on one side. Tshering did the same. He frowned. He muttered something.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry?\u201d said Caz.<\/p>\n
\u201cI beg your pardon, I spoke in Dzongkha,\u201d said Tshering.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re all right with dogs?\u201d said Bazza anxiously.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh yes,\u201d said Tshering. \u201cMy father was a yak-herder. We had many dogs to protect the yak. Bears and boar are a problem, you see, especially in winter pasture.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d said Bazza. \u201cThey must be big dogs if they fight bears.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are very big dogs,\u201d said Tshering, smiling. Then his face grew serious again as he looked at the dog. Now he did bend down and pat the animal gently on the neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes,\u201d said Caz, \u201cwe think he is an old soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tshering chuckled. He seemed to relax as they left the station. \u201cWe do not think in such a way,\u201d he said. \u201cTo be sure, when one passes, one\u2019s spirituality may enter another realm, but not one\u2019s spirit; there is no individual \u2013 one is \u2013 what did your Milton say? \u2013 each one a part of the main.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have read Milton?\u201d asked Caz.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are surprised?\u201d said Tshering. He smiled. \u201cBut you know, when we were in winter pasture, my parents would send me to an aunt in a village below, where I could go to school; and I had an Indian teacher, from Cochin, who read it to us. He wanted us to understand that Buddhism was more complicated than we thought. Until then, all I knew of religion was the terrifying deities on the temple walls, and the phallic paintings on the houses in the valleys.\u201d<\/p>\n
He thought for a moment, then intoned:<\/p>\n
No man is an island,<\/p>\n
Entire of itself,<\/p>\n
Every man is a piece of the continent,<\/p>\n
A part of the main.<\/p>\n
If a clod be washed away by the sea,<\/p>\n
Europe is the less.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.mikerobbinsnyc.blogspot.com\/<\/a><\/p>\nBest place to buy your book<\/h2>\n