June 2026

A reflection on how my Rocket character came to be.

One month before I wrote Rocket Gets a Home, I was given a small crocheted dog—only four inches tall, with plastic eyes and a pink tongue. It didn’t look like much to anyone else. To me, it was everything.

It was a Christmas gift from a good friend. Like me, she is a dog lover and knew how much I missed Rocket after he passed. As a special remembrance, she commissioned her sister—whom I’d never met—to crochet a little dog in Rocket’s likeness…or at least as close as you can get with yarn and incredibly talented hands!

The gift was special. I was touched by the kindness and friendship behind it, the time and care invested by someone I didn't know, and one
detail in particular: his left ear.

That’s right, his left ear.

Rocket’s left ear was slightly longer than his right—something I had never mentioned to anyone—yet this little crocheted dog had the same uneven ears. I knew it wasn’t intentional. How could it have been? She had never met me or Rocket.

A few weeks later, I was showing the dog to a friend and telling her I couldn’t shake the significance of that left ear. What an amazing coincidence.
I wondered if it meant something deeper.

Maybe not in the way people often think.

But it did spark something important.

Right there in the middle of our conversation, an idea appeared: this little dog would make an adorable character in a children’s book—lopsided ears and all!

For a few minutes, we joked about a children’s book and even a cartoon. Then we moved on to other topics.

But the idea didn’t.

It stayed with me.

Quietly.

Patiently.

Looking back now, I can see that before there was a story, before there was a book, and before there was an author, there was a tiny crocheted dog and a simple act of kindness.

The seed had been planted. 🐾