The True Story of Patches (for adults-even some children)

Previously published in Gentle Reader (Wales). Revised Edition: LukivPress (Victoria, BC), 2022. An excerpt If Patches (our springer spaniel) had been a human driving along a desert highway that boasted one roadside tree, he'd have-through genetics?-crashed into it. Was his breath also a matter of genetics? I mean, the day we adopted him, we discovered that his breath contained all the (DNA-induced?) evils of rotting fish-although we somehow didn't notice that until after we'd taken him home. You might wonder why we chose him over his also-wiggly brothers and sisters. Well, only he resembled his mother: white with brown patches. And she looked so serene and charismatic. "Won't he follow suit?" I thought. The author Dan Lukiv, published in 19 countries, is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). As a creative writer, he apprenticed with Canada's Professor Robert Harlow (recipient of the George Woodcock Achievement award for an outstanding literary career), the USA's Paul Bagdon (Spur Award finalist for Best Original Paperback), and England's D. M. Thomas (recipient of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature, Orwell Prize [biography], Los Angeles Fiction Prize, and Cholmondeley award for poetry). He attended The University of British Columbia (creative writing department), the acclaimed Humber School for Writers (poetry writing program), and Writer's Digest University (novel writing program).