Welcome to the personal home page of

Chris W. Glaze.

Julianne was a pretty little Kindergartener who had lots of friends at school and her ballet class, but at home there were no children that lived on her street that she could play with. She had pets. 5 caterpillar/chrysalides’ that would be butterflies in about four weeks, a goldfish named Marbles, and a little five pound dog named Missy.  You can’t play with goldfish or butterflies and Missy was much too old to do more than lay around.   Julianne played with her Mom and Dad, but they were too busy to play a lot of times. Then one day Julianne got the best playmate a child could have.

 Her Uncle Kevin was being deployed with his military unit and his dog Sandy came to stay at her house.  Uncle Kevin warned her that Sandy always was running away, but when Sandy came to live at her house. Julianne fell in love with Sandy right away. Sandy couldn’t wait for Julianne to get home from school every day.  Sometimes Julianne’s Mommy would bring Sandy with her to go pick up Julianne in the afternoon.  They both loved that.

After school, Julianne would always have a snack, which she usually shared with Sandy. Then they would go out and romp around in the back yard, Sandy had a red ball that she always carried with her. Julianne would throw the ball as far as she could and Sandy would go running after it, then, she would bring it back to Julianne as fast as she could so that she could throw it again. They had hours of fun every day playing with the ball.

One day, it rained.  It rained and rained and Julianne thought it would never stop. Mommy told her that even if it did stop, it would be too muddy for her and Sandy to go outside. “What a bummer!”

Julianne stared at Sandy with her mouth open wide. “Did you say that?” she asked.

“I sure did. You mean you could hear me?” Sandy replied.

“Mommy, Mommy! Come here! Fast! Sandy can talk!” Julianne called out loudly.

Mommy walked into Julianne’s playroom where Julianne, Sandy and the TV were. “Julianne, you know dogs can’t talk. It’s fun to pretend, but you don’t need to shout for me when you know you’re just pretending” she said.

“But she really can talk!  I heard her” declared Julianne

Mommy felt Julianne’s forehead to see if she had a fever but there wasn’t any. She looked straight into Julianne’s eyes and said, “okay, it’s nice to pretend, but you know the difference between real and pretend. Sandy is a dog. Dogs don’t talk. Either you really heard the TV or you imagined it, but, either way it’s not real.  Now I think you should come help me make dinner for awhile.”

After Mommy left the room, Sandy crept up to Julianne. “Humans can’t understand me.  You are the only one who I can talk to Julianne. It’s a secret that only you and I know.”

“Okay, I’m the only one in the whole world that can talk to you.  Maybe it is because I love you so much,” sighed Julianne. “I guess I will go help Mommy for a while.” She was so happy to find out  that she was special. She could do something no one else could do.  She could talk and listen to her dog!

Chapter 1

Julianne got out of bed and started getting dressed for school.  Sandy ran in shouting “Good Morning!  Hurry up so we can play before breakfast.”  Julianne got dressed in 10 minutes. This, of course, shocked her parents who were used to waiting 30 to 45 minutes every morning for sleepyhead to get up and ready.  But they didn’t know about Julianne’s special ability to understand ‘dog talk’.

“What’s for breakfast today?” she asked as she walked into the kitchen.

“Would you like pancakes or oatmeal?” Daddy asked.

“Umm, pancakes.” She mumbled.

“Good choice,” said Sandy. “I love all those leftover pancakes you don’t eat. Your Mommy never eats all of hers either. But go easy on the syrup. I’m starting to put some extra pounds on.”

Just then, Mommy walked into the kitchen. As always, she stood at the refrigerator reading the calendar and checking for any messages stuck on.

This is where the story ended... or at least this is all that she put on paper. Christie was always making up bedtime stories for Julianne, and we talked about putting them on paper. This is a bit of "saved" bedtime story...

Jeff Glaze