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Stephen King on Cujo

By Wesley Coburn

BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - MARCH 12: A St Bernard dog sits in its bench on the final day of the Crufts Dog Show at the NEC Arena on March 12, 2017 in Birmingham, England. First held in 1891, Crufts is said to be the largest show of its kind in the world, the annual four-day event, features thousands of dogs, with competitors travelling from countries across the globe to take part and vie for the coveted title of 'Best in Show'. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - MARCH 12: A St Bernard dog sits in its bench on the final day of the Crufts Dog Show at the NEC Arena on March 12, 2017 in Birmingham, England. First held in 1891, Crufts is said to be the largest show of its kind in the world, the annual four-day event, features thousands of dogs, with competitors travelling from countries across the globe to take part and vie for the coveted title of 'Best in Show'. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) /
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Cujo is maybe the scariest dog book ever written.

Author Stephen King has written around seventy books in his career, most of them horror, though there are some thrillers and a bit of science fiction thrown in there, too, along with nonfiction and short story collections.

One of the scariest is his tenth novel, Cujo, about a rabid St. Bernard (see our review here). It was published in 1981 and made into a film in 1983.

According to his website, the inspiration came from a night in the spring of 1977, when the mechanic King was taking his motorcycle to lived in the middle of nowhere and had a gigantic St. Bernard, who didn’t like the visitor at all.

His broken-down Pinto perhaps gave him the idea for the setting, as a main character spends much time trapped in a Pinto by the rabid Cujo, who was infected by a bat.

While Cujo does kill several people, it should be reminded that he was not a bad dog, but merely one suffering from a disease he couldn’t help.

The novel takes place in 1980 in Castle Rock, Maine, where many of King’s works are set.

“It’s not a bad book, I just wish I could remember more about writing it,” King stated in his 2000 nonfiction work On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. 

At that time in his life, King was in the middle of battling drug and alcohol addictions, which is why he can’t really recall writing that novel.

He returned to the theme of scary pets in his 1983 novel Pet Sematary, which was adapted into a 1989 film and its 1991 sequel. A remake of Pet Sematary will release sometime in 2019.

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