The inspiration for the book, Faith, the Ugly Dog, was my rescue dog Faith, an eight-year-old Jack Russell Terrier with the canine autoimmune skin disease, pemphigus. The disease left Faith with no hair on her head, tail and ankles.
I met Faith at an adoption event at PetSmart when I was working part-time as a doggy daycare specialist (in between a ten year career as a marketing specialist in commercial real estate and starting my own business). She was dressed in a dirty, blue fleece vest and was very ugly. I asked the volunteer why she was so ugly and he said, “She has a skin disease, no one wants her and she will be euthanized next week if she is not adopted soon.” I asked him her name and he told me it was Faith. Well, the rest is history. She was my dog for nearly five years. Her ugly appearance and kind heart inspired me to write this children’s book in hopes that Faith might share the message that it doesn’t matter if you are ugly on the outside as long as you are pretty on the inside.
I know what its like to be ugly much like the main character in my children’s book “Faith, the Ugly Dog”. Diagnosed with breast cancer in September 2012, I underwent a bilateral mastectomy, lost my hair, eyebrows and eyelashes from chemotherapy treatments and gained more than 30 pounds. I was ugly on the outside. I am grateful to have found comfort in words from the book that I myself had written: “I am pretty on the inside. I’m kind, caring, brave and sweet.” My hope is that others, primarily children, might find comfort in my book’s message just as I did.
I am now cancer free and once again, “pretty” on the outside. However, I am forever grateful that my cancer “journey” provided me with a reason to work on being better on the inside. I’m kinder, more caring, more brave and am a sweeter person than I was previously. I can also thank my sweet, ugly Faith for teaching me that important lesson.
