THE WOMAN BEHIND EHA

Emerald Hounds Abound began with a dog.

Shamrock was my first Irish Wolfhound, my heart dog, and the hound who changed the direction of my life in ways I am still discovering.

I started writing stories simply because I wanted to document his life. There were too many moments I didn't want to forget—the funny ones, the ridiculous ones, the beautiful ones, and even the ordinary ones that didn't seem terribly important until later.

I wasn't writing them for an audience. I was writing them for me.

After I lost Shamrock, those stories became even more important. They held pieces of a life I could no longer reach back and touch, and they gave me a way to keep telling the story of a dog who had become far too important to simply disappear.

Then came Clover.

Then Hooligan.

And the stories kept coming.

At some point, almost without thinking much about it, I started sharing some of them on Facebook.

And people read them.

They laughed with me. They cried with me. They remembered dogs they had loved and lost. Sometimes they told me that something I had written stayed with them long after they finished reading it.

That surprised me.

These were my dogs and my memories, but somehow the stories weren't staying mine. Other people were finding pieces of their own lives in them. They wanted to know what Clover had done next. They laughed at Hooligan. They came to know Shamrock even if they had never met him.

And slowly, I began to understand that the stories could do something I hadn't expected.

They could introduce people to the hounds.

Somewhere along the way, these three hounds gave me an entire world that exists between the ordinary and the impossible.

Because life with Irish Wolfhounds is both.

They are magnificent creatures descended from hounds whose history reaches back through centuries of kings, warriors, hunters, legends and lore. They can stand beside you looking as though they remember civilizations you have only read about.

Five minutes later, one of them is stuck under a piece of furniture, stealing something wildly inappropriate, arguing over a couch, or staring at you with the unmistakable expression of someone who has made a terrible decision and would now like you to fix it.

That is the world I write about.

But somewhere along the way, Emerald Hounds Abound became about more than stories.

I began to realize that photographs and words can only take you so far. They cannot quite convey what it feels like to stand beside an Irish Wolfhound, reach out your hand and feel that enormous, gentle reality beneath it. They cannot fully explain the strange combination of power, sensitivity, history, humor and presence that makes these hounds unlike anything else I have ever known.

I want people to experience that.

I want them to learn the history, hear the legends, laugh at the stories, meet the hounds and fall a little bit in love with them.

That is what I want EHA to become.

Not simply a website. Not simply a collection of stories about Irish Wolfhounds.

A place.

Someday, I hope Emerald Hounds Abound exists far beyond a screen. I imagine land and hounds and people coming through the gates—people learning, laughing, sharing stories and experiencing these incredible dogs for themselves. People who already love Wolfhounds finding others who understand exactly why, and people who have never met one discovering something they didn't know they had been looking for.

The more I imagine it, the more I realize that I don't simply want to share these stories. I want to create a place where all of those things can come together—the hounds, their history, the stories, and the people drawn to them.

I don't know of a place quite like the one I can already see so clearly in my mind.

Perhaps the place I am looking for doesn't exist yet.

Perhaps I have to build it.

A place where the stories can lead people to the hounds, where the hounds can lead people to wonder, and where wonder might lead people to one another.

I don't know exactly what Emerald Hounds Abound will become. I suspect Clover and Hooligan will have considerable input, whether I ask for it or not.

The stories have already taken me farther than I ever expected to go.

Now I want to see where they can take us—and who might find their way here along with me.

Welcome to Emerald Hounds Abound.

Come walk with us. Come sit with us. Come Howl with us. Take your place in the Pack.