Puppy Love: Finding Love in All the Wrong Places.

By Martha R. Fehl

In the foothills between rivers and roads like Possum Holler and Howdy Lane are fields dotted with farm pastures and houses and barns of diligent labors scratching out an income.
What could a young preteen girl possibly want when she is surrounded by the love of family and friends and nature’s bountiful beauty on a 200 acres farm in the Midwest?
Pati’s discussion’s with her father seems useless and leaves her frustrated and discouraged. To her it seems an impossible dream to own a riding horse which would take her into unknown territory. He suggests she learn to appreciate her life and think of others instead of herself.
Challenged by her options, she and her best friend discover enticing information in a cedar chest in the haunted attic trunk and are challenged by their discover.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: May 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781489715807

Martha R. Fehl

Farmers have good days, better days and sometimes bad days, but their love of the land and harvest keeps them cemented to their families because they work together. The basic underlying principle is one of reality. I am fortunate to experience all of this through the eyes of my parents and siblings as one of four children. My education includes: B. A. Religious Education, an M.A. Literature background and a M.A. From the University of Cincinnati, Ohio majoring in Law Related Education which included teaching for fifteen years in elementary and twelve as a substitute for K-12. Also, I have taught in Summer Schools, Youth Camps, Daily Vacation Bible Schools and served as a Cub Scout Leader and a field editor for Taste of Home Magazine and have written material in humor, self-help, nature, nonfiction and poetry in 200+ magazines and newspapers. A former student of mine in fourth grade chose this project for 4H. As she continued the project, she had since adopted fifteen plus dogs that would be matched as a donor and returned to the Guide Dog Company to serve as a forerunner for the less fortunate. Her duty was to socialize them in the activity in adjusting to the obstacles of life for a year and then resume the adopting another one in succession. After ten years they may be retired to the original person that donated their time to the student’s family in the beginning and that often included a family farm.

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Copyright © 2019 Martha R. Fehl.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-1581-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-1580-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018905302

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 5/10/2019

Contents

CHAPTER I

Year - 1966

Life on an Ohio Farm

CHAPTER II

Place of the Bear

CHAPTER III

Puppy – Fehl

CHAPTER IV

The Journey Begins

CHAPTER V

Training Begins

CHAPTER VI

School Daze

Serena visits school

CHAPTER VII

Christmas

CHAPTER VIII

The Attic

Patience and Cara discover an old cedar chest

CHAPTER VIV

Panic at the Pines

An attack of wild dogs

CHAPTER VII

Mission accomplished

Serena has mastered all the skills

CHAPTER IX

Return to Sender

CHAPTER I

Year - 1966

Life on an Ohio Farm

T he clouds in the sky above the Ohio farm house feathered into circles like floating Islands, while outside, silver maple trees coiled their leaves into waffle-cone shapes from the sudden burst of wind. In the fields beyond, red clover alfalfa was hip-high.

Inside the house, Patience, (Pati), dangled her legs over the velvet cushion atop the window seat in the living room. Three generations of the Endsleys’ had lived in this towering two-story farmhouse with the widow’s walk on the top floor and bubble-glass window-panes arched in clusters of curled white paint on the north side.

She thought about a dazzling summer day six weeks before when her brother was riding his tractor cutting the alfalfa hay in the bottom pasture when winds came swiftly and somehow her dog, a black and white border collie she called Lady had escaped from her pen and ran to greet him when a sharp pointed blade severed her pet’s legs. Her friend and running mate with eyes the color of a midnight sky was no longer here.

A soft cushioned mound under the spreading maple tree behind the barn held her silent form; but the pain still foot-printed her thoughts.

Her dad suggested a puppy from the pound nearby, but she was too wounded to check yet and anyway, she longed for a horse so she could skim the fields and valleys and be in her own world, but her father said farm prices were low and she would have to wait.

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Finding the buried treasure that Grandpa used to talk about sometimes would give me enough money to buy a horse. Her voice whispered into the four corners of the living room’s vaulted ceilings. One that would be all mine, she said, looking around her old house and feeling aged too. That’s probably not going to happen, she sighed, unless, my dad has an attitude adjustment.

Suddenly, a spiked light followed by pelting hail forced her back to reality. Rain pecked at the glass of the bay window and tears pocked the corners of her willow-green eyes.

She picked up the little blue book from her lap and wrote: August 22,