Full Body Wag

LISA GRAY FISHER has lived in Santa Fe since 1984. Prior to that, she worked as an editor at Houghton Mifflin in Boston. After returning to the Southwest, Lisa taught at Santa Fe Community College, then at Santa Fe Preparatory School, where she served as English Department Chair for twenty years. Fisher's poetry has been published in a number of journals, including the Christian Science Monitor, Mediphors, and War Literature & the Arts.

Among the many forms humanity takes are dog aficionados. Happiness is their common quest, but it's not always as easy to get as a good scratch. Full Body Wag follows two sets of characters whose lives ultimately intersect through devotion to the dog: a group of Santa Fe women, led by the dog-obsessed Ms. Sioux Ashe, who takes charge of a community college creative writing class over protests from their bewildered English instructor, and a scruffy pack of men who are filming an independent B-grade sci-fi horror movie in Cow Springs, Arizona.

The adventure begins after the mangiest member of the film crew, one-eyed Big Willie, makes of his deceased mutt a communion meal and is transformed from a grief-stricken sweat-hog into a charismatic healer on the canine circuit. Fluent in Dog and generous with his snack-laden beard, his unorthodox cures include therapeutic rabbits and Elvis love songs. When Willie's gift brings him and his sidekick screenwriter Gap into the sphere of Sioux and her dog-loving dilettante companions, Gap takes up his quixotic quest to win Dena, who was his senior prom date twenty years ago and remains his one great love.