It is about a Jack Russell Terrier dog named Wishbone who daydreams about being the lead character of stories from classic literature.

Wishbone was conceived by Rick Duffield after brainstorming with his staff about "making a show for kids that was told from a dog's point of view".

[4] After filming a seven-minute pilot which captured Wishbone's character and suggested the show's format, he presented it to PBS.

[5] For the literary scenes, the producers created a repertory company of local stage actors, dubbed The Wishbone Players.

Duffield told author Michael Brody that PBS halted production because the show did not have "merchandising potential".

In 2004, HIT Entertainment released four episodes on individual DVDs: "Hot Diggety Dawg", "The Impawssible Dream", "The Hunchdog of Notre Dame", and "Paw Prints of Thieves".

This show garnered particular praise for refusing to bowdlerize many of the sadder or more unpleasant aspects of the source works, which usually enjoyed a fairly faithful retelling in the fantasy sequences.

[citation needed] The TV movie Wishbone's Dog Days of the West was aired on PBS stations on March 13, 1998 and released to video on June 9, 1998.

Altogether, more than fifty books have featured Wishbone, which continued to be published even after the TV series ended production.