A Life Spent Teaching, Caring & Telling Stories
Before Rhonda J. Hunt ever wrote about nine dachshunds, she spent decades writing, teaching, responding, caring, and finding ways to make difficult things a little easier for someone else to understand.
In many ways, Elliott and The Entourage are simply the newest chapter of a much longer story.
More Than Four Decades of Service
Rhonda’s professional life has been rooted in emergency services and education for more than four decades.
She served as a firefighter for nine years, became a paramedic in 1994, worked as a flight paramedic, and has taught emergency medical professionals since 1997. She holds a master’s degree in education and, although retired from university teaching, continues educating future EMS professionals.
Writing became another extension of that work.
For more than two decades, Rhonda has authored emergency medical textbooks and educational materials used to help train healthcare professionals, including her longstanding work with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and Jones & Bartlett Learning.
The Subject Changed. The Purpose Didn't.
Medical textbooks and children’s books may seem worlds apart.
For Rhonda, they really aren’t.
Both begin with the same question:
How do you take something important and help someone understand it?
For years, that meant making complex medical concepts meaningful to students and emergency professionals.
Today, it also means helping children understand ideas such as empathy, courage, resilience, self-acceptance, kindness, and belonging.
It Started When Rhonda Was Two Days Old
Dachshunds entered Rhonda’s life almost as early as she did.
When her parents brought her home from the hospital at approximately two days old, a dachshund was already there waiting.
They have been part of her life ever since.
Rhonda has loved many animals over the years—from dogs to squirrels, rabbits, sugar gliders, snakes, and geckos—but the dachshund has always held a special place in her heart.
Today, that lifelong love looks a lot like nine sets of very short legs racing through a Middle Georgia home.
Before the Books, There Were the Bathroom Meetings
Elliott and The Entourage weren’t created as a publishing concept.
Rhonda simply began sharing the dogs.
Their personalities and adventures found an audience among fellow dachshund lovers online. Then one of the pack’s recurring rituals—the now-familiar Bathroom Meetings—caught people’s attention.
Followers wanted more.
Eventually, the dogs needed a page of their own.
Elliott and The Entourage officially launched on June 13, 2024.
What followed was more meaningful than a growing follower count. People who began as names on a screen became familiar faces, friends, and in some cases close personal friends across the world.
The audience became the EATE family.
The Stories Were Requested. The Mission Came Later.
Followers had been asking Rhonda to turn the real adventures of the dogs into books.
Then she realized the pack had something more important to offer than cute stories.
Every dog was different.
Those differences could help a child understand their own.
The books became stories about real emotions hidden inside playful adventures—feeling different, feeling afraid, struggling with something others find easy, missing someone, being misunderstood, or wondering whether you truly fit in.
The circumstances may be different.
The feeling isn’t.
“If Elliott and The Entourage can help even one child truly believe that they are special, loved, and not alone, then these stories have done exactly what I hoped they would do.”
When Rhonda Isn't Writing...
There is still plenty happening.
Rhonda and Matt take all nine members of The Entourage camping—nobody gets left behind. Evenings often include walks and front-yard zoomies, and pool days are always popular, particularly with Elena, the family’s resident little fish.
Rhonda is also an enthusiastic reader and enjoys crocheting, knitting, cross-stitch, logic problems, and spending time with family and close friends. She is even working beyond children’s literature, with a thriller novel currently among her writing interests.
