Ranching, Writing, and Cowdogs

ike many Texans, John Erickson has strong ties to the land that reared him. Despite short stints in Denver and Boston during his college years, the beloved Texas author has lived in the Panhandle most of his life. In fact,, self-published by Erickson in 1982 through his imprint, Maverick Books. Called “Confessions of a Cowdog,” the Hank story wasn’t even Erickson’s favorite of the bunch. But his former neighbors in his hometown of Perryton let him know otherwise. “I decided to read the Hank story for the Perryton Rotary Club, and they just fell out of their chairs laughing,” Erickson recalls. “After the program a guy came loping up and said, ‘You need to do more with that dog.’ If he hadn’t said that I don’t know that I would have ever recognized that Hank had star quality.”