By Nick Mendillo
The film Good Boy was released on October 3, 2025. Marketed as “a horror film that follows the perspective of the dog,” it immediately intrigued me. I’ve always believed all things are better with dogs—especially horror—and knowing the dog wouldn’t die (as confirmed by director Ben Leonberg) made it irresistible.
The premise is deceptively simple: Indy, the canine protagonist, experiences the threats and eerie surroundings of a haunted house. On its surface, this seems unremarkable. Gimmicky, even. Many viewers were skeptical, and some still refused to see it; even the possibility of a dog in distress is enough to deter audiences.
This is not a film review, but for the record, Good Boy is wonderful. Indy deserves an Oscar nod.
Watching it made me wonder about America’s relationship with dogs. Some people hate them. I hate cats. No big deal. I have a dog—an eight-year-old Maltese-Shih Tzu named Josie. I would die for her. I’ve ended relationships with partners who’ve yelled at her. She’s a perfect animal, and she is my child.
Why would I say that? Because dogs are the best. They improve humanity in ways we cannot quantify; they embody eternal, unconditional love. That type of love makes people say strange things, and it also justifies the existence of websites like Does the Dog Die? (a site that posts trigger warnings for viewers), and the metaphorical/comforting anagram of dog and God.
In horror, dogs often occupy a special symbolic space. They are, by nature, guardians and
their suffering often signals a disturbance in the natural order. To see a dog in horror—on screen or on the page—is to experience an added layer of dread, wondering whether this symbol of purity will survive.
When a loyal companion suffers, we feel human loss more acutely. When that companion turns monstrous, it externalizes human fears and is a betrayal of nature itself.
***
Stephen King, a.k.a the Master of Horror, has been known to write a book or two featuring our furry friends. He uses dogs as mirrors of moral intuition and vessels for both comfort and terror.
Frisky (The Eyes of the Dragon), Oy (The Dark Tower), Kojak (The Stand), Cujo (Cujo), and Laurie (the short story “Laurie”) are examples of dogs being used as moral litmus tests within King’s worlds of horror and fantasy.
***
Frisky – The Eyes of the Dragon
Published in 1984 by Philtrum Press, The Eyes of the Dragon isn’t a traditional horror—it’s a fairy tale fantasy written for King’s daughter, Naomi. But even here, King uses the human-dog bond to deepen character and theme.
In the kingdom of Delain, the evil wizard Randall Flagg—an antagonist in many of King’s stories—murders King Roland, frames Roland’s son Peter, and manipulates Roland’s other son, Thomas, into tyranny. Peter must attempt to clear his name and stop Flagg.
What’s truly fascinating is how in Chapter 84, King’s narrator briefly shifts to the perspective of Frisky, a dog. Following Frisky’s keen sense of smell, the narrator portrays the scenery the way Frisky smells it, using colors to describe landscapes and materials. While in no way does this literary strategy evoke fear for the readers, it does provide a decent example of King using dogs to further plot development and craft a compelling narrative.
***
Oy – The Dark Tower
In The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, fans of the epic series would become all too familiar with the character introduction of Oy. Oy is a hybrid fox-dog-racoon animal, also known as a billy-bumbler, that befriends the destined partnership of Roland, Eddie, Jake, and Susan and joins their group, known in the novels as the ka-tet. From that point until book seven, readers can’t help but adore the billy-bumbler.
While not a dog in the strict biological sense, Oy fulfills the symbolic and emotional role of one. He embodies loyalty, innocence, and the fragile humanity that persists even amid the desolation of King’s multiverse. He is integral toward the success and forward motion of the narrative, fighting for his ka-tet, tracking scents, and speaking in adorable monosyllabic bursts.
His speech, half-mimicry, half-sentence, makes him a liminal creature, bridging the gap between beast and man. In the bleak moral landscape of The Dark Tower series, where survival often supersedes compassion, Oy’s love for Jake provides much needed emotional grounding. Oy crystallizes King’s notion that goodness in a cruel world must come from beings who love without any rational justification. The fate of the animal is cosmically meaningful; even in worlds consumed by horror, love can remain—small and stubborn, but enduring.
***
Kojak – The Stand
Amid a world consumed by plague and evil, the golden retriever Kojak in King’s novel The Stand is a symbol of uncorrupted loyalty and resilience. Like Oy, he is more than a mere companion animal. Through him the world sees qualities like love and innocence persist despite being nearly extinguished.
King portrays Kojak as a vehicle that embodies purity in contrast to the human corruption prevalent after the spread of the superflu known as Captain Trips, which killed 99.4% of the population. Kojak is able to reunite with his owner Glen despite the superflu and the new lawless world. His survival alone carries symbolic weight; the endurance of a dog suggests that nature itself may be more moral than humankind.
At the heart of The Stand is the spiritual struggle between the forces of good (Mother Abigail) and the forces of evil (Randall Flagg). Kojak’s alignment with Mother Abigail makes him a symbol of faith that persists without conscious reason or reward and asks the question: Can love and loyalty survive humanity’s fall? King, via Kojak, says barely.
***
Cujo – Cujo
In 1981, King transforms an ordinary Saint Bernard into one of his most disturbing antagonists, weaponizing the familiarity of a beloved household pet to expose the fragility of domestic safety. The story is about a dog named Cujo who gets infected with rabies, a fairly uncommon situation—only 60 to 70 dogs get infected with rabies in the US each year. By making the dog the central figure of terror, King subverts the traditional horror paradigm, showing that evil can come from the mundane.
Horror can emerge not only from monsters or demons, but also from the collapse of trust in what we love most. In this case, horror is the corruption of innocence when Cujo—a victim of disease and bad luck—descends from loyal companion to rabid killer. That sort of moral ambiguity deepens the horror. Cujo is not malevolent, but inevitable, as the result of his accidental infection. He is chaos infecting the familiar reality.
Using a dog as an antagonist also brings to light the notion that the villains can exist in the real world. Dogs aren’t supernatural, nor is disease. Horror becomes primal within Cujo. King’s decision to make Cujo the monster redefines horror through empathy. We fear the rabid dog, but concurrently feel sorrow.
***
Laurie – “Laurie”
King’s 2018 short story “Laurie” represents a striking counterpoint to his reputation as the Master of Horror. The story is about Lloyd Sunderland, a widower, who’s been gifted a puppy by his sister as a means to reclaim some semblance of a life post-loss. In King’s works like Cujo or The Dark Tower, dogs occupy liminal spaces between innocence and violence—the area separating love from fear. In “Laurie,” however, the titular Border collie-Mudi mix is not only the source of horror but also its antidote.
“Laurie” reclaims the redemptive side of the relationship between devotion and danger. The dog becomes a living manifestation of healing, grounding her owner in daily routine and reawakening his sense of purpose. The monster is not the dog, but mortality itself—old age, isolation, and the void left by the passing of Lloyd’s wife. Laurie’s companionship pushes back against that existential dread, offering love as a means of survival.
However, King’s horror sensibility still lingers beneath the story’s warmth. A sudden eruption of violence occurs between Lloyd, Laurie, and a vicious animal, reminding the reader that horror is never far away. Even with the love of a puppy nearby, the natural world can still create the possibility of loss. Without spoiling the ending, I encourage you to read it (and all the other King works mentioned), and maybe cuddle your dog while you do.
***
Across his work, Stephen King uses dogs to illuminate the emotional core of horror. They are the genre’s quiet heartbeats, living symbols of trust, loyalty, and moral clarity in worlds bent toward ruin. When the dogs in King’s stories die, we grieve not just for them, but for the parts of ourselves that still believe in goodness. When they survive, their survival feels miraculous—a testament to love’s stubborn endurance. King understands that dogs make horror more human. Their devotion makes the prospect of any loss even more terrifying. In Cujo, he shows how innocence can rot, in “Laurie,” he shows how it can heal. Horror is not just about what terrifies us but what we stand to protect, those fragile and furry embodiments of hope. I can think of nothing scarier than facing the dark world without my Josie curled up beside me.
