Kasey drew the first page for The Good Boy Report in October of 2018 as a part of Inktober, a challenge artists do for fun in October, where they draw something in ink each day of the month. "I was doing a journal comic each day, but I quickly realized that being unemployed and stuck at home at the time, I didn't have a ton of stuff to write and draw about that wasn't sad-sack-y," she told Bored Panda.
"So I drew a page that was just about four dogs I'd spotted that day, giving them captions and trying to focus on their personalities. I posted it on the Facebook group Dogspotting Society, which I'm a huge fan of, and it took off! I make sure each page follows the rules of dogspotting (they're all dogs I've never met before and was not expecting to see), and I post them there as well as on Instagram every Friday."
And Kasey doesn't need to go around the city to meet dogs. There are plenty right in her neighborhood. "I'm lucky to live in a corner of Los Angeles that is a mixture of city and suburban, so it's open and laid-back enough that people are casually walking around with their dogs, but densely-populated enough that it's rarely the same neighborhood dogs over and over," she said. "It is always fun to go out of town and get to see fresh new dogs, though! If I go somewhere interesting, like Hawaii or New York, I usually indicate the Special Location on the specific pages. I try to go to Tokyo each year, and I swear that city has some of the most ridiculously cute and well-styled dogs in the world. My Japan Edition pages are some of my favorites."
When Kasey is deciding whether or not to include a particular dog in the series, she checks if their encounter falls under the rules of Dogspotting first. "That means if I've already drawn the dog before, if they're a dog I know, or if they were in a dog-centric location (i.e. a dog beach, shelter, vet clinic), I don't draw them," Kasey explained, adding that it keeps the creative process more fun and spontaneous, as well as ups the challenge.
"After that, it basically comes down to which dogs I see that have the strongest personalities, which ones I can come up with the best/funniest caption for, and also which ones suit the page the best. I try to consider the pages as full pieces more than just the individual panels, so I think about each one having a "punchline" of sorts. When I write it all out, it seems like so much mental work for silly dog comics, but it's mostly all subconscious!"
At the moment, Kasey doesn't have any pets of her own; her apartment doesn't allow that. And she has never actually had a dog. "I always grew up with cats. I think that might be why I've kept going with this webcomic for almost two years though, because I'm a huge dog lover who doesn't get to spend any time with dogs. Any time I cross paths with one, it feels special!"
