In the Author Spotlight ...
Fred M. Haney, author of
My Doggie Says ...

 

Author Fred M. Haney's inspiration for his new book My Doggie Says ... began with a wildlife photography expedition in Yellowstone National Park. "I spent a week with my son, Brad, and Tom Murphy, one of the top outdoor photographers. Tom taught us some of the tricks of animal body language, as we worked at getting into good positions to photograph coyote, elk, and other animals." After that trip, Fred resolved to pay more attention to the body language of Jamie, his Golden Retriever.

Analytic by nature (his Ph.D. is in Computer Sciences, from Carnegie-Mellon University), Fred began to see patterns in Jamie’s messages. "I realized that I wasn’t always “hearing” Jamie’s messages, so I decided to start capturing her body language in photographs and learning how to interpret what she was 'saying,'" he explains. “If I’m having to work this hard to figure out some of Jamie’s communication, I bet there are lots of people who don’t even know their dog is ‘talking’ to them.”

Fred began carrying a camera whenever he was with Jamie, tried to capture images every time she communicated with her body language.  "Part of the challenge was to recognize when she was “saying” something and to get contemporaneous photos of her communications," he says. Once Fred had enough photos, he started writing short stories about the best images. "The writing took about two years, but I kept taking photos during that time, too," he says. 

Written with humor and warmth, My Doggie Says ... contains eighty-five full color photographs to illustrate some of Jamie’s special communications. The reader learns how to become a better pet “listener” and how to create a more nurturing relationship with a pet. Every dog lover sees his, or her, own pet, past or present, in Jamie. The book helps people to gain a better understanding of their pet and to build a more meaningful relationship with it.

Fred is a high-tech venture capitalist and angel investor. He has managed a large venture capital fund and served on the board of directors of thirty companies. He is presently the Chairman of two companies, and he is a co-founder of DRC, Inc., a super-computer co-processor company, and NovaDigm Therapeutics, a biotech company developing a vaccine for candida and staph infections.

He has been married to Barbara for forty-four years. They have a daughter, Karen, whose Golden Retriever, Ishka, was Jamie’s best doggie friend. They also have a son Brad, who's married to Karen and has two daughters – Lauren almost four years old and Amelia, almost two years old. Fred and Barbara are also the parents of Callie, a Golden Retriever (they lost Jamie in December, 2006). In addition to Callie, they have a black cat, Okie-Dokie, and a blue-fronted Amazon parrot, Tiki.  Okie-Dokie and Tiki both make appearances in My Doggie Says… 

When not working, Fred enjoys golf, traveling, and running with his dog for exercise. He has been interviewed on several radio programs and is scheduled to be on WYAM TV51, in Alabama, on April 17.  He has also been asked to do a talk and book signing at the Palos Verdes Peninsula Library this August. 

 

To purchase your copy of My Doggie Says ... , visit
http://www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/02018.htm

For more information My Doggie Says ... ,
please visit http://www.mydoggiesays.com or
read Fred's blog at www.mydoggiesays.wordpress.com

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