I began to encounter real-life stories of dogs protecting their wounded or dying or dead handler... or dogs refusing to leave the bodies of the people they were bonded to, sitting in cemeteries for days or sometimes weeks. You find these stories endlessly.

My family was all police and hard hats at the refineries; they didn't know what to think about me. So I became a closet writer.

At Lackland Air Force Base, they make an effort to retrain military dogs that suffer from PTSD. It's a lengthy, long process. The treatment is much the same as it would be for people, but it's a difficult road back.

I admire people who re-create themselves. And it seems to me that what gives us all the opportunity to be heroic in our own lives is that we work to heal ourselves and be better than we were yesterday.

My books come to me in images, and sometimes the image is at the beginning of the book, and sometimes it's simply a flash somewhere in the middle.

When dogs fulfill their roles they are ecstatically happy.

L.A.'s magic has let me see every level of the dream.