Watch: Dogs, woods loom large in exclusive 'The Leftovers' clip

Who let the dogs out? The people who are taken from Earth in the Rapture-like experience in HBO's The Leftovers.

Canines ran wild — literally in the woods — during the first season of the show (out on Blu-ray and DVD Tuesday) based on Tom Perrotta's novel, and in this exclusive bonus clip, Perrota and executive producer Damon Lindelof discuss how the mysterious event that makes a good chunk of the world's population to disappear breaks the bond between man and man's best friend.

Perrotta admits that the ghost of 19th-century writer Nathaniel Hawthorne — of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables fame — hovers over Leftovers the book and the show:

"In a lot of Hawthorne stories, there’s the town and there’s the woods. The town is civilzed and everybody behaves well, and in the woods there’s all this satanic energy. People wander in the woods and they see things they can’t unsee."

The second season of The Leftovers debuts Sunday night on HBO, but you can check out the slightly creepy opening credits early here: