Dirty Dogs!

In "The Little Sisters of Eluria", Roland comes upon a starving dog with a white cross shape on its chest.

The so-called Jesus Dog is enjoying a snack ... the remains of a young man named James Norman. More specifically (and more disgustingly), the cur is trying to chew through the guy's cowboy boot and ... well, you know. Yuck, right? "Loved of family, loved of GOD" he might have been, but James Norman wound up stewing slowly but surely in an Elurian watering trough just the same.

I'm reading "Black House" (King and Peter Straub) at the moment, and even a longtime King reader like me can still be surprised. The description of another slat-sided canine (twinner to the Jesus-dog, perhaps?) gnawing away on a human foot still encased in its shoe--this time a child's size five sneaker--is eerily reminiscent.

Are these sorts of similarities unconscious on King's part, or is the mirror depiction of the feet of poor James Norman and little Irma Freneau purely coincidental?