Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal cruelty and death, addiction, and death.

As the first-person narrator of Saving Shiloh, Marty Preston begins the story by placing it in the context of the series. Speaking as if to an audience that has already heard the preceding events in his story, he states that of all the things that have happened on his adventures with Shiloh, “this was the scariest” and enough to make his hands sweat (1). Marty briefly recalls how Shiloh came to be his dog: Marty took Shiloh from a local man named Judd Travers, who was addicted to alcohol and abused Shiloh. Marty then suggests that this story will further develop his complicated relationship with Judd.

Marty briefly describes the close-knit communities surrounding his hometown of Shiloh, West Virginia, noting that he named his dog after the town. The story begins one night during dinner as Marty and his younger sisters, Dara Lynn and Becky, discuss their plans for next year’s Halloween. Marty’s mother, Ma, tells her children that next year, they will not be trick-or-treating alone on the road even though they did so last year.