Free The Last Dog on Earth by Daniel Ehrenhaft

Redmont for the past twenty years. I have an impeccable reputation.
    You may have heard public service announcements on the radio recently, telling you to contact the police or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention if your dog appears listless or ill. Everyone knows this is because of the strange disease that's been killing our dogs.
    But here's what you may not know: The CDC is an arm of the federal government. Once you hand your dog over to them, they will take it to a “quarantine center” and you will never see your pet again. What's more, the CDC will require you to
move out of your house
for forty-eight hours while agents “decontaminate” it. And if you have other pets, they will take those animals, too.
    Who knows what these people are
really
doingwith our pets? Who knows what they're
really
doing in our houses?
    You are not obligated to hand over your dog to a stranger just because that stranger claims to have authority.
    Don't let them scare you. Allow your dog to die with dignity—and stand up for your right to live your life free of government interference. I am setting up a training program to instruct people on how to shoot their dogs in the most painless way possible. Lessons start at $45.00 an hour.
    To contact me for lessons or dog training, please call (503) 555-8764 or e-mail me at [email protected] .

C HAPTER
EIGHT
    In less than a week, Jack started getting the hang of peeing and pooping outside the house. Logan couldn't believe it. Sure, she still slipped up every so often (she actually seemed to enjoy going on the floor in Mom and Robert's bathroom, which was sort of comical)— but at the end of day five, it was official: She'd only had one accident.
    The bacon bit–LMSCG combo was really paying off. Maybe
he
should write a book about training dogs. It was weird; he felt more proud of himself than he had in a long time—as if he'd just invented the coolest machine ever, like an ultrapowerful miniaturizing ray that would shrink Robert down to the size of a plastic soldier so Logan could flush him down the toilet.
    And all he'd done was housebreak a wild mutt. Or come close, anyway. He probably could have trained her completely, too, if Robert hadn't been around.
    Robert just didn't understand the “ignore bad behavior” part of dog training. Whenever he came home from work, he would follow Logan and Jack from room to room, waiting for Jack to mess up. It was the same old script every single night. The house was starting to feel like the set of a bad TV show.
    Robert:
That dog better not be going into my bathroom.
    Logan:
If she does, just ignore her.
    Robert:
Ignore her? That's easy for you to say. It's not
your
bathroom.
    Logan:
Yeah, but I'm the one who has to clean it up.
    Robert:
Look! There she goes! I knew it! Bad girl! Bad!
    Logan:
Shhh. All you have to do is pick her up and take her outside.
    Robert:
While she's taking a leak? Are you out of your mind? Bad girl!
    Logan:
If you keep talking to her like that, she's going to develop a neurotic habit and pee in here even more. If you want her to stop, pick her up and take her outside—
    Robert:
Bad girl! No! Bad! Do something, Logan! Do something!
    The funniest part (or unfunniest, depending on how you looked at it) was that Jack would usually start barking at Robert at this point. Sometimes Jack would bark so viciously that Robert would get a little nervous. Then Robert would start in on Logan again, and Jack would just bark even more loudly. And all the stupidity would have been so easy to avoid—that is, if Robert had bothered trying to learn anything about dogs.
    The only reason Jack barked at Robert was to
protect
Logan. Jack thought of Logan as her master. The pack leader. So if Robert yelled at Logan, he was threatening the whole pack order. Logan wasn't just making this stuff up. He'd read it in all those books. He was the one who spent the most time with her; he was the one who disciplined her; he was the one who fed