From a story titled “Dog Verbs” from “The Writing Shed with Tommy Tomlinson”:

I’ve been telling people that I got the idea for my book DOGLAND* when I was sitting at home one night, watching a dog show, and wondered: Are those dogs happy?

*DOGLAND is the working title for the book. Not sure what the real title will be.

That story is true. But I found something not long ago that made me realize I was thinking about dogs even earlier than that.