Today my guest author is Deb Kastner, and she shares about one of her passions--service dogs--as well as about her book. Plus, she's offering a giveaway to one lucky winner--read on through to find out how to enter and what you can win.

About Deb:

Deb is a Publishers Weekly bestseller who loves real animals and writing about them. She has two dogs, two cats and a midlife crisis horse named Moscato. She is a three-grandchild spoiling Granny and pursues live music (The Texas Tenors and The High Kings) whenever she can.

Connect online:

https://www.debkastnerbook.com

https://www.facebook.com/debkastnerbooks

https://www.twitter.com/debkastner

https://www.instagram.com/debkastner

https://www.tiktok.com/@debkastner

About A Reason to Stay (Rocky Mountain Family #5) (K9 Companions #9)

Caring for a little boy…
 
Brings him more than he ever imagined.
 
Tied down with family and work responsibilities, Sharpe Winslow has always wondered about the world outside his small Colorado town. When newcomer Emma Fitzpatrick finds herself unsure about caring for the brother she never knew about, Sharpe and his rescue pup, Baloo, step in and take the boy under their wing. Sharpe knows he shouldn’t get close to Emma or Aidan. But maybe they’ll give him a reason to stay…

Excerpt

Chapter One

Up until this moment, Emma Fitzpatrick had surprisingly been enjoying her day at the Colorado mountain country Harvest Festival, much more than she’d expected, since country anything wasn’t her cup of tea in the least. The local park was covered in hues of glittering reds and golds from the aspen trees and muted evergreen from lodgepole pines. Country music boomed from a local band playing on a platform that had been erected in the middle of the town park. The entire town—the entire state, for that matter—had gone from green to gold in the blink of an eye, and Emma couldn’t fail to be moved by God’s natural beauty.

Whispering Pines, Colorado, was a great deal different than Chicago, where she’d been born and raised, and even more so LA, where she currently lived.

Her grandmother had asked her and her younger brother Aidan to accompany her to the town’s annual Harvest Festival on the first Saturday in October. Thanks to her father’s estrangement from his mother, Emma hadn’t been allowed any contact with Nan growing up. And it was especially important to her to spend time with her now. Nan had said she wanted to meet up with friends, but due to her fading vision, she couldn’t drive herself, and there was no rideshare service or a taxi in such a small town.

Emma couldn’t very well say no to her adorably begging Nan, so here they were at the fair—although her feisty eighty-year-old nan had long since deserted her for the company of a beaming man around Nan’s age.

Friends, indeed.

Nan and the handsome old gentleman had their heads together and looked as if they were high schoolers on their first date, smiling and laughing loud enough for those nearby to hear.

Emma would have rolled her eyes if it wasn’t so cute.

SERVICE DOGS -- and their role in our lives

Today is my book birthday for #5 in my Rocky Mountain Family series, and I’m currently finishing up book six this week. I’d love to share with you where the series idea came from and what I’ve done with it.

I first became interested in the many ways service dogs help individuals when my teenage granddaughter experienced some really awful trauma. I already knew how much dogs could help with anxiety, and they didn’t even need to be trained to do so. My dogs always know what I need, when I’m happy or sad or even angry and frustrated, and they know just what to do to reach me when I’m experiencing various emotions.

We got my granddaughter an emotional support dog who has helped her a ton in handling her PTSD and anxiety. I was so amazed by the results that I started looking into other types of service dogs. Of course, I already knew about police and military K9s, but I soon discovered there was so much more!

The dogs in my Rocky Mountain Family series have such jobs as helping an autistic boy, a little girl with epilepsy, an ex-marine with PTSD and balance issues, an avalanche recue dog, a therapy dog who visits homeless shelters and hospitals and a dog who sits up in the stand in the courtroom to sooth the anxiety of a young woman while she points out the man who hurt her.

And I could truly write another whole series on all the wonderful things service dogs can do!

GIVEAWAY: Autographed copy of A Reason to Stay and Dare to Dream swag.

Do you like reading about animals in books? Let me know below, and I’ll randomly draw from all comments for an autographed book and some Dare to Dream swag to one US commenter!  Please make sure to cleverly disguise your email address so you don't get phished. For example: donna AT livebytheword DOT com