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Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

Animals are near and dear to my heart, and I've devoted my life to trying to improve their lives.

I guess my writing has changed as my life has.

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

Whatever I'm writing comes organically out of my life.

I hate writing. There are a million other things I'd rather be doing. I write because I have to. Because if I feel so strongly about what is happening to animals, and I don't do anything to help them, who will?

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.

When you write about animals, of course, you are really writing about the people who love and live with them. Animals mirror and reveal us. Dogs in particular are often reflections of us, and what we need them to be.

I just don't think I've had the desire yet to write a vicious animal - like a dog-gone-bad or anything - where I do feel that I need a balance of all types of humans.

My wife and my three kids and my grandchildren are my life, but my horses and my dogs are everything else.