Blaize Clement | Why Pets Are In the Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series

The first time somebody asked why my Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series includes
pets, I was a little taken aback. I mean, Dixie Hemingway is a pet sitter, for
gosh sake, so there had to be pets. But when I thought about it, I realized it
had been my choice to make the pets equal in importance to the human
characters. Not with human characteristics or psychic abilities or super
strength, but just regular pets like regular people have. So I gave it some
thought, and finally came up with an answer.

Every culture has mythic tales of a golden age when humans and animals lived as
friends. In The Illiad, when a warrior was killed, his horse hung his head and
wept. In The Ramayana, an army of brave monkeys rescued Princess Sita from an
evil kidnapper. When the Buddha left his father's palace to seek enlightenment,
his horse wept too, when he had to return to the palace alone. And then there's
that serpent in the Garden of Eden who told Eve the truth about eating of the
tree of knowledge.