Literary Las Vegas: Elizabeth Parker

Buddy was a mischievous golden retriever no one wanted. He'd made his way from owner to owner and was at an animal shelter with numbered days when Elizabeth and Michael Parker took him in. His quirky antics inspired Elizabeth Parker's first book, "Finally Home: Lessons on Life From a Free-Spirited Dog."

"From stealing and hiding footwear, to opening secured purses and knapsacks only to rummage through them and pick out a prized item, to breaking into the neighbor's houses, not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR times with three different neighbors in two different states, he definitely gave us a run for our money," Parker wrote.

Shortly after the book was published, Buddy was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer.

"I was lucky enough to have him sign a few of the first printed copies and still have his little smudge of a footprint that I will treasure forever," Parker wrote on her website, elizabethparkerbooks.com.

Parker picked up her pen again in an effort to preserve Buddy's legacy and share the next chapter in "Final Journey: Buddys' Book."

"I felt it needed to be written if for nothing else but to make people aware of the severity of both canine cancer and canine grief," she wrote. "Many times those grieving the loss of a pet feel helplessly alone, and I wanted to express exactly how I felt on that loss."

But that loss wasn't the end for the Parkers. While browsing the web, they found information on another golden retriever in need of a home. As luck would have it, his name was Buddy.

Parker's most recent book "My Dog Does That!" is an upbeat humor book about the crazy things dogs do.

"I had a lot of fun writing this one, as it does not focus on life or death, but purely the funny, ironic, weird, nutty, bizarre, embarrassing, frustrating, eerie, adorable, lovable (and many other) behaviors that all dogs exhibit every once in a while," she wrote.

Excerpt from "Final Journey: Buddys' Book"

In Buddy's last moments, I put a fortune cookie in my lips and passed it to him, which he grabbed ever so gently with his mouth, as he always did. I read him his last fortune, which said "You will do well to take a vacation traveling to the west." We smiled at that, hoping that he was indeed only going on vacation and would come back to watch over us when he was done.

The doctor asked us if we were ready and we slowly nodded. We would never be ready to lose him. It still did not seem real that Buddy was actually leaving us. It felt like we were going through the motions, but it was not really going to happen. It all happened so quickly.

Buddy seemed to be the only calm one in the room. He rested his beautiful face on Michael's lap as we cradled and hugged him. The needle went into Buddy's left arm and within seconds, our sweet angel had moved on from this world into another.