Speaker 1: This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Animal Rights on pet Life Radio. This is
your host, Tim Link, and I'm super excited that you
joined us for today. I've got a great, great show.
I'm gonna be picking the brains from one of the masters.
Of course, we're talking about Patricia McConnell, who's an internationally
acclaimed animal behavior is. She knows everything there is about
the animals, and then all of a sudden she comes
out of nowhere with a novel talking about animals. Of course,
so we're gonna talk to Patrician a little bit about
her new novel Away to Me, and of course we'll
pick her brain a little bit about writing writing styles.
How's it different to write a novel compared to some
of the other books that she's written to help us
out with the animals. So it's going to be a
great time and you're gonna learn a lot and it'll
be a lot of fun. So everybody, hangtight, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: Right after this commercial break.
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Speaker 4: Talk pets on petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the animal rights on Petlife Radio. Join
us now is Patricia McConnell. She is the internationally renowned
animal behaviorist. She is professor, and she's a super duper author, right,
and she's got a great new novel out called Away
to Me.
Speaker 1: Patricia, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you for having me. What's fun?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Well, we're super excited to have you because obviously I
know your work from the animal behavior standpoint and some
of the things you're doing on the teaching people about animals,
the zoological things you've done, all your best known and
best renowned books. And then I get a note from
your publicist and editor saying, Hey, I would you like
to have Patricia on the show because she's got a novel,
a new novel out A way to Me, So tell
me a little bit about first of all, away to me,
and then we'll get into the particulars about the writing
and writing styles as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure, A Way to Me is you know really
the elevator sends is that it's a novel about a
woman who risks her life to save a dog. That's
sort of what it gets down to.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: The longa version is the protagonist is Maddy McGowan, who
just happens to be an animal behaviorist parentheses write what
you know, and she is reeling after one of her
few dear friends is killed at a sheepdog trial. She
has a little farm and sheep and she's starting to
compete in sheepdog trials and she's devastated when one of
her few friends because she tends to sort of stay
by herself and push people away, but he's killed a
sheepdog trial, and so she's recovering from that. She fosters
a dog from a shelter, sort of a mess, but
they're both doing better, and then she goes home to
a farm one day and one of her beloved dogs
is gone, just gone. I think every dog owner could
imagine you walk into the house, right, and where's the dog? Yeah,
and so she's and by the way, just another parentheses.
I had to argue with my editor about this, but
no dog dies in the making of this novel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw.
Speaker 1: I thought excellent.
Speaker 2: Excellent because even in fiction, we don't want to see
that the dogs are any animals, right.
Speaker 5: And so so given that, still there's tremendous drama and
she basically risks her life, ends up in a with
a romantic twist with a shelter worker, and you know,
the drama ensues from there.
Speaker 2: It's really fascinating to me in the fact that there's
a lot of different angles here. And I love what
you said about write what you know. Obviously you know
about animals, and you know about dogs and particular breeds
in particular that we talked about that you obviously have
in your furry family. But how did you wrap around
all the ideas of the book. So what I mean
by that is, you know, you definitely got to have
a heroin or a lead person in there. You've got
to have some dogs, because whenever you add dogs, it's
immediately best seller right there, That's what I say. And
then you tie in some a little trist on the side,
a little bit of this, a little bit at How
did you concoct that stew and decide.
Speaker 1: What you're going to put in there to create such
a great novel?
Speaker 5: You know, good question, because it took a while for me.
You know, I set out to just play with writing fiction,
almost as a fun game for me, and I was over.
I wasn't seeing clients anymore. I'd stopped traveling around the
world getting speeches, and I just wanted to write something fun,
and so I just started with the first chapter. But
then I got I really got into it, tim, I
really got into how do you write, you know, a
hero's journey? How did people write these novels where it's
one in the morning and you're like, I can't stop reading,
damn it?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, how you do that?
Speaker 5: So I started getting into learning how you do that?
I read every book there is I read. I've always
read a lot, and I've always loved mysteries and fiction.
So I read and read and read and read. I
went to some seminars at the Medicine writing Studio. I
have lots and lots of help, and so I worked.
The hardest part for me was creating a plot. And
I'd write a chapter and then i'd get rid of it,
and then I'd write two chapters and I'd turn it
into one chapter, and then I'd changed the characters. So
I did what apparently is really common in fiction is
you start and always need to know the end. You know,
who did it when you're writing a murder mystery. Well
I didn't. I didn't. I did it pass backwards. I
just started writing, and as I was writing, I'd be like, oh, oh,
this has to happen. Is that going to work? I
don't know, let's try it. So it wasn't not a
s beauty process, but it was really fun and I
learned a ton and I learned. I have so much
respect now for people who write great mysteries and great thrillers.
I'm just the skill involved in doing that just blows
me away.
Speaker 2: It's night and day, it really is, you know, and
if obviously I've had to show for quite a number
of years and I write, you know, interview people that
write fiction and those that write nonfiction, and very few
bleed over from one to the other. I will say
that because it's a different carriage. It's just like asking
someone who writes it's a great mystery or in a
novel or anything to do with fiction, to now start writing.
Speaker 1: Okay, what do you know? What do you really know?
What is your expert?
Speaker 2: Tell me about how to write? Sort of like what
you said. And that's a whole new ball game to
teach the message across, to be able to teach people
these lessons on how to do it, and whether it
be about animals or how to write in this case.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I can actually think of an analogy from
my own life, and I'd never thought of it this way, Tim,
but you got me thinking. You know, I worked as
an animal behaviorist with companion dogs, usually with serious behavioral problems,
some cats, a few horses apparent or two, but mostly
I work with aggression because that's mostly what behaviors end
up seeing or else severe fear of phobias, thunder phobia,
et cetera. But for my hobby, like Naddy McGowan in
Who Lives a Lonely old Farm, and as an animal
behavior as both of us started dabbling in running dogs
and sheep dog trials, and it is fascinating running a
sheep dog in a sheep dog trial competition. It is
incredibly difficult. You have to make a billion decisions every
tenth of a second, which is not which is not
my best skill. Although I could work with really aggressive
dogs and read their faces and have less of the
tenth of a second to respond, but that didn't necessarily translate.
So I became a good intermediate handler. But to be
a really great cheap dog handler competitor in cheapdog trials,
I would have had to have not written the novel
or have a garden, you know, because I would have
to have done it, Like that's my passion to be
good enough, and I really wanted to write a.
Speaker 2: Novel, right right.
Speaker 5: But it was sort of the same thing as one skill.
People used to come up to me and say, I
can't wait to watch you run because I know you'll win.
It's like, no, no, this, you know, what I did
in an office with a dog who bites the neighborhood
kids is not what's going on out here.
Speaker 1: Right right?
Speaker 2: I mean in competition especially, I mean you have to
work hand in paul for months, if not years, with
a particular animal become one, so they not only know
your voice commands, but they could fill your energy, they
can feel your movements whatever it may be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you have to have the experience where you've just
done this over and over and over. You have sort
of a muscle memory, you know, where you don't have
to stop and think about should I stop my dog now,
should I pause him? Or should I send him left?
You know, what should I do? It was like, you
shouldn't have to stand there and think about those things
because by the time you've got the answer, it's too late.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's it.
Speaker 2: And even in the title of the book, away to
Me that has something to do with it, explain that
a little bit it does.
Speaker 5: Away to Me is a queue to a sheep dog
to go counterclockwise around the sheep. But it's also a
metaphor for Mattie McGowan. Mattie McGowan is she stays in
her lane pretty much. She's pretty closed in. She talks
about rarely something quote that happened in New Mexico, but
she doesn't want to talk about it. But Maddie is
sending out mixed signals because she pushes people away, but
deep inside. She really wants them to come to her,
to me away to me, And I'm working on the
second book. This is hopefully a trilogy. Oh yeah, it
has come by, which means go counter go clockwise around
the sheep. But it's the same metaphor. It's come bye bye.
But the last book, if I live long enough to
write it, tim is that'll do, And that'll do means
thank you dog, come back to me. Your work is done.
And that's when Maddie's going to get it all figured out.
Speaker 1: Very nice, very nice. I love that.
Speaker 2: I love the dual meaning behind it all, and I
definitely love the fact that it's going to be a trilogy.
So it means I get to see your lovely face
and hear your voice a couple more times down the road.
Speaker 1: So that's exciting too. Well, tell me a.
Speaker 2: Little bit about more about Maddie, because I know from
reading the book and then reading a little bit about
the bio in the background, is you really came attached
to Maddie and really became part of who you are
in your fabric of who you are as a as
a writer and as a person.
Speaker 5: You know, I've read about this, but it's you know,
it's always different when you read about it versus when
it happens to you. Is I became really fond of
all the characters in my book. You know, Maddie and
her best friend Dorothy, and this guy she starts hanging
out with, and George, who is who is her dear friend,
who is actually shot at a sheep dog trial inexplicably
who who she grieves over. It just tremendously. So it
really is true that it happens that you get so
attached to these people that you write about that you
feel like they're in the same room with you. They
do sort of become their own people, and it's really
weird and fun and interesting.
Speaker 2: And I think it's a sign a great writer, to
be honest with you, when we're talking about writing a novel,
is become, you know, creating characters that not only your
reader will connect with, but that you connect with and
really become part of who you are. Because, like you said,
you know you're going to write three of these books.
So some of these characters, hopefully we'll stick around, maybe
some will leave. And how do you choose who leaves
and who you know sticks around? Because believe me, your
fans if you leave out a character they love in
the second one, Oh boy, it's.
Speaker 5: Certainly going to be there, without question. She's spoke through
line through the whole books, and Jack her Borri Collie
absolutely will be there and Bo Pepe, the sheep guarding dog.
Nothing's gonna happen to both.
Speaker 2: Pepe, I promise, love it, love it. So we're gonna
look forward to that for sure. Well, we're gonna come back,
read his commercial break and talk a little bit more
with Patricia McConnell a little bit about the contained about
the book away to me, and then talk a little
bit more about writing and how does it compare writing,
you know, nonfiction to fiction, How to compare being a
TV superstar and an adjunct professor. Wow, a lot of
hats going on here, So everybody hangsight.
Speaker 1: We'll come back right with this commercial break.
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to animal rights on pet Life Radio. Tenure
conversation with internationally renowned animal behaviorist and author got the
latest novel away to me? Now, Patricia, when you sit
down and you wrote your first novel and you say,
I'm glad that's done, but I'm super excited for the
next one. What do you hope the readers get out
of it? Why do you think their walkaway is going
to be that? You say, Hey, at spot, that's what
I hope to accomplish.
Speaker 5: Well, First, I hope they feel like they read a
really good story, you know. I hope they don't want
to stop turning the page. I'm sorry, but I hope
they stay up at night, and then when when they're done.
What I hope is that they are as fond of
Mattie McGowan and want to know what happens to her
as much as I do. And I'm not sure everything
that's going to happen to her. I have a lot
of ideas I have started the second book, but that's
what I hope. I hope. I hope people really like
her and are interested in her world and her life
and what want her to find what she really really needs,
Because isn't that every story? I mean, this is a
kind of a hero's journey, right, you know, every man,
every woman some faces this huge, massive, epic kind of
problem and you know, has to risk their life to
try and work through it. Right, But we all have,
all of us, all of our lives are really a
kind of a hero's journey. We're all seeking, we're all searching.
We're all faced with issues and problems and you know,
things we have to deal with. There's a book that's
got It's a New York Times bestseller called The Correspondent,
and it's a brilliant book. It's not an animal related book,
but it's a brilliant book. And at the end of
the book, the protagonist, who is an older woman, says
something like, it is astounding how much life throws at you.
And I think we all feel that way. And so
in a way, Maddie is us. You know, we all
have things that life throw us, throw at us, and
we all want to rise above them. And so so
that's the question. So does Maddie, you know, does Maddie
ever become sort of the whole person that she could be.
I'm rooting for her, That's all I can say.
Speaker 1: I'm rooting for her too.
Speaker 2: I love that, and I love the fact that that
statement because I will say that before we started the show,
I was talking to our producer, Work Winner about life
and how things you know throw at you and people
you know, and looking back on life, how it's exciting
but it's different maybe you expected, but yet it's ever
changing every single day and you just got to roll
with it and have fun with it. And now it's
time before the break. Now, obviously you still got a
lot going on and a lot to do, which is fantastic.
But you know, you've had a lot of hats that
you've worn. You know, you've taught people from a behavior
standpoint through all the wonderful books and the consultations that
you do. You've taught at the university level as well.
You have appeared on TV on Animal Planet teaching people there.
So you did a lot of teaching and now you're
teaching people in a little bit different way. When you
say by having a new novel out, yeah.
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm so glad you brought that up,
because I've been doing as one does, right but when
their book is coming out. I've been doing a lot
of interviews on podcasts, which has been really fun. And
one of the things that's been so gratifying him is
that a lot of people I'm talking to on some
of the dog related podcasts are primarily there are many
dog lovers, but also lots of dog trainers and lots
of animal behaviors. And I have heard so many people
talk about what a joy it was for them to
feel seen, you know, to read about what is it
like to be an animal behaviors? What does it like
to be somebody who sees clients?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: What is it like to see somebody whose dog bites
the little girl next door you know, and the couple
are fighting about what to do about it. People tend
to think that we spend our time running through fields
of daisies with Golden Retriever puppies.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: One of the people all the time are like, oh, oh,
your job's sound so great. I wish I had your job.
It is great, but it's really hard. You spend a
lot of time with people in tremendous trauma and despair
and lots of problems. So it was really fun to
see other animal behaviors go like, this is what my
life is like. I'm so glad to read about that.
So hopefully people who aren't in that world will enjoy
getting getting a window you know, into into being an
animal behaviorist, living in the country in Wisconsant with sheep
and competing in sheep dog trials, which you're really exciting.
It's a really cool sport. That's a whole other world
that people can be introduced to too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love the fact that early on in
our chat tonight we talked a little bit about you know,
to me, it's like you, this is another hat that
you put on and they're continuing to build upon it.
I see these lovely feathers coming out of that hat.
You jumped in feet first said I'm gonna write this novel.
Speaker 1: I think I'll be fun.
Speaker 2: But yet you did your homework, did your research. I mean,
it's not as simple. I wouldn't think unless somebody knows
more than I do, you can't just set out your typewriters,
we'll say, and type out a novel without doing that research,
that homework, learning from others, reading other books, going to
clubs and groups to know what you're doing before you
actually start tinkering around with a different genre, or just
to do it as a whole.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no kidding, you know. I used to say when
I first started doing interviews for this I said writing
a bad novel is easy, but writing a good novel
was hard. Now I say writing a bad novel is
really hard. Just writing a bad one is hard, writing
a good one is.
Speaker 2: Really That's kind of love.
Speaker 5: Good writing and bad writing just hurts my heart. And
I aspire. I aspire to write a book where and
I've been so gratified some people feel a lot of
people have responded that this is how they feel about
a way. To me, you feel like you're there. You
know that you know what it's like to be in
a field in Wisconsin in springtime. That you know what
it's like to be standing in a sheepdog trial about
to run your dog to sheet there are four to
five hundred yards away. You know that you know what
it's like to be working with a client whose dog
has jumped through a second story when no be because
he's afraid of thunder. I've read that that's one of
the things a lot of people like about fiction is
that it often introduces you to worlds you don't know. Yeah,
and so I mean I certainly like that. So that's
very grati find sort of side effects, you know.
Speaker 2: To me, Yeah, and I think it's a wonderful thing
in what you captured very very well in a way
to me is the fact that you took little bits
of your own personal knowledge and professional experience, these type
of things to put people into that on the other hand,
you gave them a little bit of an escape from
it all, and you also gave a little bit about Hey,
I didn't know really all that about you know, sheep herding,
or maybe I didn't know about springtime in Wisconsin. I
thought it was always snow twenty four to seven, three
out of sixty five.
Speaker 1: No, it's not. It's lovely up there.
Speaker 2: So I think you did a great job of blending
all the things that you know, bringing some new things
to the table, bringing a little bit of learning to
it as well, and captured it.
Speaker 1: All in a in a great way in the book
A way to me.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, well, Patricia.
Speaker 2: Where can people find out more about you the book
where you're going to be, How they can learn more
and all that wonderful stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you. They can just go to my website.
It's just easy. Go to my name, which is Patricia
McConnell dot com, and you can go to the events
page and here I am going to be on book
tour in Wisconsin and Texas, and you'll be able to
order my book from that website or anywhere you order books.
Jump on. There's some reviews and there's some excerpts from it,
so you can jump on my website learn a little
bit more about it and see if it's a book
that you might want to stay up a little too
late at night with.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's it. You will definitely do that, So be
prepared by taking nap before you go buy the book,
and then you'll be ready to go because you'll be
staying up all night.
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 2: It's a way to me by Patricia McConnell. Patricia, thank
you so much for coming on the show. Congratulations on
a great success and we'll look forward to chatting with
you again somewhere down the road.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 2: Well, we're coming to the end of the show today.
I want to thank everyone for listening to Animal Rights
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