After a while I started to think of that as an image of something that went a lot deeper than the dead dog, which is you can't bring back anything to life.
“There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.”
“Once I have a hook I think has potential - enough to spin out more than a hundred thousand words, then I start turning my attention to characters. Who are these people? Why did this thing happen to them? But the hook always comes first.”