Anne Dunn wrote a story called “Red Dog” a few years ago for the PageTurners series of books for beginning adult readers. I don’t know why she’s not getting any royalties from the movie. Apparently someone else wrote the same story for a different audience.
Anyway, both books are based on the true-to-life story of a dog who travelled the highways of Western Australia for many years. This dog would hitch a ride quite regularly. This is one of my favourite PageTurners stories, and i’ve heard the movie is good too.