D.L. Page

Hello, fellow animal lovers.

There are two reasons I assumed you love animals (and not just "when it's cold enough," as Ace Ventura joked).

Reason 1) If you're reading this bio, you got here from one of the books in my Kate McMartin triology, and Kate is an animal rights activist, so I figure you share her concerns to some degree.

Reason 2) Everyone cares about animals. At least some animals. Puppies, for example.

The problem for Kate is, people don't care enough about animals. They go into denial because they don't want to think about what happens in factory farms, dog-fighting arenas, and other living hells for animals.

Which leads me to the bio. When I was a kid there was an anthology TV series called "The Great Adventure." One of the episodes was about the founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I remember crying like a baby as he described what happened to animals in circuses and slaughterhouses back when no one seemed to care at all about animals.

After that I became a hormonal teenager, and I went into apathy and/or denial about animals for many years on into adulthdood. I ate meat without caring where it came from or how it got there, and didn't think about the many ways animals were abused besides factory farming.

Every so often something broke thorugh the wall. I was aghast to discover how cosmetics were tested on animals -- there are a bazillion kinds; can we please stop rubbing them in rabbits' eyes?

Eventually I couldn't deny the evidence. Factory farming is an abomination, whether it's for meat or fur.

A few years ago I decided to eat only "happy meat," as my friends mockingly called it. Meat that was humanely raised, on a farm, not in a factory. Does it cost more? Yes. So eat less.

I still have no problem with eating animals that are humanely raised and painlessly slaughtered. If a cow has had a happy life and doesn't know what's coming, where's the harm in killing it? (Kate might not agree with that.)

Also, I have decided that animals most likely have some degree of consciousness -- at least the higher mammals like dogs.

We don't understand how consciousness arises from the brains in our own skulls. Since dogs have brains, shouldn't we assume that some kind of consciousness arises in theirs as well?

Dogs may not have language, but they may think in images, or smells. When they appear to show emotions, why not assume they are actually feeling emotions? Doesn't that make more sense than assuming they don't feel emotions? We feel emotions -- how does that happen?

At the very least animals can suffer and deserve not to suffer at our hands. There have been philosophers who said animals can't feel pain. That dancing bear, which is dancing because there's a red-hot steel plate under the dirt, is only an automaton acting like it's in pain. The bear can't really feel it. Or so they said. It's obviously self-comforting B.S., like plenty of other stuff people believe or don't believe despite evidence or lack thereof.

I keep wandering off the bio path and going into a rant. Sorry about that. I must be channeling Kate, which is how I wrote the books -- let her take over my brain and go with it.

One more biographical note: the books are dedicated to various dogs in my life.

Shawn was a Chesapeake Bay Retriever we got when I was a kid. This dog was amazing. You could throw a big hunk of concrete in a river and he happily dove in and brought it back to you. He sure looked happy -- why would he fake it? Unfortunately he had been abused, and one day he bit me pretty bad, and my dad shot him. That was my dad's way with a dog: when it was dangerous, or old and suffering, put down the animal. We used to joke that when my grandmother -- his mother -- got too old, he'd take her to mall and blow her brains out. (Maybe he should have; Grams died slowly from Alzheimer's and was unhappy at the end.)

Mike was one of my dad's hunting dogs. We lived near Cleveland, and it got cold in the winter. Dad built a decent house for Mike, and put straw in it, but Mike was an English Pointer, a short-haired dog, and Mike got cold out there. He would shiver. On the coldest days we'd bring him in, but he always ended up back outside. I wish I had stood up more for Mike and made sure he could stay inside. (Now I occasionally donate to PETA specifically to provide a doghouse for a dog that doesn't even have that.)

Beau was the family dog for me, my spouse, and our kids. He was a Catahoula Leopard Dog, and what a wonderful companion. I regret that when we trained him, we used a shock collar. There must be a better way. Overall Beau had a good life, with plenty of affection (both ways), and if he could talk I hope he would say that overall he was glad to be alive and we treated him well except for the damn collar.

I guess I should add one more thing in this day and age of morons doing stuff they read about in books. These are works of fiction, not advice. I am not encouraging you to do what the various psychos do in these stories. My goal is to give you a good read, and if I raise your awareness of what happens to animals, and if you change your own behavior, so much the better. But please do not try to change others' behavior, certainly not with violence.