Meet the Real Penny and Rio

Penny and Rio were two lovable dogs who brought my family great joy in their long and happy lifetime. Great family pets, they were very much like the characters in my book.
	Penny was always into everything and liked to sniff around the yard for new smells. She also loved to dig! One time, shortly after we moved, Penny dug 24 holes in two days. It took a lot of dirt to fill in all those holes, let me tell you. Penny actually did dig out our flower planter and sit in it. I believe that she was solving a mystery. Maybe she was…See the picture below…
She used to lie in the planter with her head poking out and just watch the world from there. We really did have a doggie door, too. Penny used to love to run through it to get from the garage to the outside. (We didn’t put them in the garage as punishment, though – that part I made up). Finally, if you left the gate open, Penny would go all over the neighborhood meeting other dogs and people. We would find her at the other side of the street some times. I never did know if she got out of the fence by herself or not. She might have, she was smart enough.
	Rio, on the other hand, really was lazy and slept a lot. She loved to eat! If the gate was open, Penny would run away, but we’d always find Rio just lying on the front lawn, as if to say “I’m not leaving these people. They are nice and they feed me well.” When we first got Rio, she didn’t dig holes at all, but Penny must have “talked” to her, because a couple of years later, Rio would dig and Penny would lie on the ground and watch her.
Penny and Rio were wonderful pets. We rescued them both from the Norfolk, VA SPCA. What a great day it was when they joined our family. Both Penny and Rio are now deceased, but they each lived to be 13 years old and had wonderful and happy lives.
	I’d like to think their spirits live on in our two new dogs, Hannah and Lily. I can see some of Penny and Rio in them. Hannah and Lily are both rescue dogs. We look forward to having them for a long time in our lives. Watch for new books in the series, I bet Hannah and Lily both make an appearance.