Meet the Doodles
Long before they were characters, they were simply my best friends—and little reminders who taught me that even though they couldn’t speak, their feelings had something to say. The pack you are about to meet in the Doodleheart series, are or were real dogs, right down to their names and personalities. They can’t wait to walk you through their stories.
Ferris’ superpower is noticing. He is a tender-hearted thinker who feels each moment deeply and looks before he leaps. He is comforted by us, as we are him. He sleeps ON my feet while I work. His prized possession is his ‘baby’ (a stuffed dog), that he takes to bed with him every night.
Sailor really does wear a little pink bow, sometimes, for about two minutes before she takes it out. This girl is BRAVE! She lives with me in a family of boys and is braver than all of them. She will make a four-foot leap from the sofa to the ottoman—no problem. She will challenge a German Shepard on a walk. Most importantly, she is our lovebug—if you’re sitting down, she’s on your lap!
Clyde is the smallest of the bunch, but the most methodical: a careful planner who thinks three steps ahead and wouldn’t back down from a dog twice his size. He will guard blueberries that he doesn’t even want just to keep the other dogs from having them. Every night, I fall asleep to his shallow, snorty breaths in my face as he shares my pillow with me and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Hank is the pack’s cannonball: the youngest of the group, the first to try anything, the first to tumble and the first to smile about it either way. He belongs to a family member, but he does come visit quite often. He loves wrestling with Sailor and will challenge Clyde for those blueberries (Hank actually eats them).
If you have spent any time with the Forever Mind Project, you already know its heart. It was born out of an immense amount of love and remembrance for my aunt, whom we lost to early-onset Alzheimer's. She was the one who taught us to love dogs as though they were people: wholly and without conditions. Having no children of her own, she gave that love to her dogs instead, and they became her children— dozens of them across a lifetime, three or four at a time. Each one rescued from a shelter and welcomed into a home full of warmth she shared with my uncle. Out of all of them, across all of those years, Twister was her absolute favorite - a wise, gentle soul who seemed to carry a quiet understanding no one had to teach him.