Books
Annie Horkan
The Life of Tapa
Tapa was an amazing Blue Heeler dog, and my canine companion for seven years. She contracted Leptospirosis in March 2013, a deadly bacteria related to Lyme that comes from the urine of skunks, opossums, raccoons and other wildlife. It attacks the liver and kidneys with rapid aggression, and the chances of saving your dog depend on how fast it is diagnosed and treated. I was not able to save her from the damage to her kidneys though we put up a good fight for five months.When it became clear we were losing this battle, I chose to put her to sleep on August 9, 2013. It was the saddest day of my life.
I wrote this book primarily as a healing journey to help me cope with her loss. It was also an attempt to educate other dog owners about the dangers of Leptospirosis as it is yet a commonly known disease. In the book, I share my stories of life with Tapa, the unconditional love dogs bestow upon us, a dog’s purpose, the way of vets and the alternative of homeopathy, preventive care, dog food recipes and much more. The Life Of Tapa is both a soulful journey and a guide to happier and healthier dogs.
I hope it helps you as a dog owner to cope with a sick dog or the loss of your best friend as well as celebrate your current dog with deeper understanding. For our dogs bring us so many gifts to help us grow into a more loving and compassionate beings.
Shells From The Mountain
I wrote this book while living in New Mexico on a mountain top in a glass and steel house. The book was inspired by the creation of a mandala with shells I had collected from the beaches in Baja, Mexico. I journeyed around this mandala visually until one day, the words began to flow. The result is the sharing of my deepest insights and concerns regarding the domination and control of the patriarch, the suppression of the feminine, the destruction of nature and our environment and the challenges we now have before us. I weave the threads of my perspective into stories from my life’s adventures.
I believe every person on this planet has a story to be told, and every story is so important to be told. For we are each a fragment of the whole, and together our stories become the story of humanity. If the story we each tell does not reflect each one of us back to the creative source from which we came, then it is imperative we collectively begin to tell a new story. For ultimately, the legacy of the human species on planet Earth is our story.
We are all on this spiral journey around the mandala of life together.
Walk with the Earth
Humanity is a divinely inspired, multidimensional species with the internal capacity to transmit and receive earthly and cosmic wisdom bound within the natural, spiritual and universal laws governing all of creation. The truth and knowledge of these vital laws have been lost under the firmly entrenched reign of predatory authority whose deceptive tendencies have led to the loss of our internal sovereignty and external freedom. We stand at the crossroad of crisis whereupon we must correct the erroneous beliefs of our misallocated allegiance by which to restore harmony and order upon our suffering planet.
The guiding principles of natural law grant us the reconciling force with which to meet the opposing presence of manifested evil, and to return to our role as loving co-creators. Our mythic return to the beauty of the garden demands we awaken from our technological trance, remember the lost arts of ancient wisdom, heal our ancestral shadows, and steer our unified, imaginative destiny in vibrational alignment with the divine flow of creation. Our choice to walk with the Earth is our sacred mission of stewardship and the path to take our planet back.
The Ghost of Cleremont Farm
My parents bought a farm when I was three with a big, old house built before the Civil War. It was common for many of these old houses in this area of Virginia to be deemed “haunted” with ghosts of those who fought in this brutal war. Our house at Cleremont Farm was no exception.
My father had been a history major with an obsessive curiosity about the Civil War. Many a Sunday afternoon as children was spent with him touring Civil War battlefields and reading historical markers along the roads. It was not long before my father discovered a graveyard near our farm where Captain George Rust was buried, and who occupied our house with his family at the time of the war. With this discovery, we could now give a name to the apparent ghost who frequently made his unseen presence known.
In 1985, my step-sister and I collaborated on the creation of The Ghost Of Cleremont Farm. Now, thirty years later, we bring this story to life as a children’s book. We hope you and your children will enjoy reading about our ghost, Captain George Rust, and delight in the mysterious adventures of his ghostly presence at Cleremont Farm.
