Allan Zullo wrote this guest post to explain his inspiration for his books Bad Pets and Miracle Pets—turns out they both have the same inspiration! Read on to find out all about both sides of Allan’s dog Sparky!

As a lifelong animal lover, I’ve always had four-legged pets, from Skipper the pound puppy (who was born before I was) to Kaya the calico (who recently died at age 19). But none of my pets could compare with Sparky the beagle. As it turned out, he was aptly named because he sparked the ideas for my two most recent animal books, Bad Pets and Miracle Pets. You see, Sparky was both a bad pet and a miracle pet.

When my girls, Allison and Sasha, were in grade school in West Palm Beach, Florida, I suggested the family get a beagle because my favorite childhood pet was a beagle. From a litter of cute puppies, the girls chose a frisky, happy-go-lucky male whose tail wagged nonstop and tongue licked any cheek within reaching distance. We took him home and named him Sparky.

He proved to be a remarkably friendly, loyal, smart dog who loved playing with the kids and dogs in the neighborhood. Put him on a leash and he’d tow you on your in-line skates. Toss him a ball or a stick, he’d bring it back to you. Dive in the ocean, and he’d paddle out to you. Give him a bone, you were a friend for life. Leave your back door open, and he’d make himself at home, any home.

He seemed like the perfect dog—until he morphed into a canine delinquent.

Sparky was a roamer who refused to be confined in our house or yard. There were times when, left at home alone, he busted through floor-to-ceiling window screens and chewed and scratched a gaping hole in the garage door. He once tore up the family room carpet in a misguided effort to escape.

The fenced-in backyard couldn’t contain him. He repeatedly dug his way to freedom or used a low-hanging branch as a springboard to jump over the fence. A chain? He yanked it out of the ground. Electronic collar? Didn’t faze him.

Nope. When he wanted to roam, he roamed. He often went house to house, barking and howling, until the neighbors let out his pals Rocky, Spot, Kelly, Schotzie, Daisy, and Tinkerbell. Sometimes he dug a hole under a neighbor’s fence to spring his four-legged buddy. Whenever his girlfriend Daisy, a lovely beagle, wasn’t allowed outside, Sparky resorted to civil disobedience. He lay in the middle of the street and refused to budge, forcing cars to drive around him, until Daisy came out.

With Sparky leading the way, the dogs occasionally trotted across Flagler Drive to the bike path along the Intracoastal Waterway. Sparky liked to jump off the seawall at low tide and onto a sandbar, looking for stinky dead fish to roll around in. The bigger dogs joined him; the little ones knew better.

When the tide began to rise and the sandbar disappeared, the big dogs jumped back onto land and went home. Sparky yelped and howled, hoping a Good Samaritan would rescue him, which was often the case. The thing is, with some effort, that darn beagle could get out by himself.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew Sparky. He was called “the Mayor of Flagler Drive” because he patrolled a small section of the bike path daily, making sure kids were safe from his archenemies: adult in-line skaters and little old ladies. I have no idea why he loathed grown-up skaters because he loved racing alongside kid skaters. Whenever he spotted an adult skating toward him, Sparky hid behind a bench and then gave chase, snarling and nipping at the heels of the terrified skater.

He developed a deep grudge against women with white hair after our sweet elderly neighbor Mrs. Barkley accidentally slammed a sliding glass door on his tail. Associating anyone who looked like her as a danger, Sparky would stand in front of the kids along the bike path and bark and growl at little old ladies as they shuffled past him. I was afraid he’d cause a heart attack.

In fact, Sparky almost did trigger one. Despite our best efforts, we could never curb the dog’s addiction to chasing any truck that rumbled down our quiet street. One day, he was sunning himself in our front yard when a paramedics’ truck drove by. Naturally, Sparky bolted after it. As the vehicle turned onto Flagler Drive, Sparky followed it—and plowed right into the left front tire of a car driven by an elderly man. The car skidded to a stop while Sparky lay motionless in the middle of the road. Thinking he had just killed a dog, the old man began experiencing chest pains. The paramedics, who had witnessed the accident from their side mirrors, rushed over to the stricken driver and began treating him with oxygen. Once they determined that he was having a panic attack, they calmed him down. Then they turned their attention to Sparky, who, luckily, wasn’t seriously hurt. He had been briefly knocked out but was otherwise in decent shape, except that his nose was skinned up and he was walleyed (his eyes were looking in opposite directions).

That incident was one of many when I thought for sure Sparky was heading to Doggy Heaven. As much as he was a mischievous dog, he was also a miracle pet. In the span of three years, he survived a breathtaking string of perilous ordeals. He was hit by a car twice; tangled with a poison toad; leaped out of the window of my wife’s car, which was traveling 35 mph (he saw a cat that he wanted to chase); and was stung by a swarm of yellow jackets. Incredibly, he never spent more than one night at the vet’s for any of those life-threatening episodes.

So years later when Scholastic’s Editorial Director Roy Wandelmaier and I were kicking around book ideas about animals, I couldn’t help but think of Sparky. Quicker than a dog can dig up a bone, memories of that canine rascal spawned the concept for Bad Pets. In my research, I discovered the animal kingdom is full of scoundrels and goofballs just as naughty, if not more so, than that exasperating beagle of mine.

After the success of Bad Pets, it was only natural that I write another Sparky-inspired book: Miracle Pets, a celebration of animals like him that survived what appeared to be hopeless and fatal predicaments.

If it hadn’t been for that troublemaking, death-defying canine, those two books might never have been written.

You can find Miracle Pets on Arrow September, and look out for Bad Pets coming to Book Clubs this winter!

Tags: animals, Authors, Chapter Books, dogs, Pets, Reluctant Readers