Your book Shiloh and the movie

Comment:
I would like to start off by saying my 4th grade class and I recently read Shiloh and we loved it. I cried (in a good way) from all the unhappiness and love. What caused you to write such moody sections in Shiloh? Did you fall in love with Shiloh when you were writing the book and feel that he was truly live or was he just your imagination? My class and I think that Shiloh is a work of art! My favorite part is when it was so tense and you didn’t know if Judd would keep his deal.

Phyllis replied:

I found a dog like Shiloh in West Virginia when we were visiting friends, and I cried all the way back home again, wondering what would happen to it.  Then I immediately sat down and tried to figure out what could have been the history of that dog.  Three weeks later, I was overjoyed to hear from our friends that the dog was still hanging around, that they had adopted her (it was female) and named her Clover.