The Last Dog on Earth by Daniel Ehrenhaft Read Free Book Online

walk in and shoot them, even if they aren't moving. Maybe that sounds harsh, but I've seen what happens when you don't act fast. Like the last case I had. It was at my friend John Bitterman's house. He had two female sheepdogs, Morgan and Oakley. They were both dead by the time I got there.
    There was blood everywhere. Bitterman had a huge gash behind his left knee where he'd been mauled. He told me what happened.
    Both dogs had been sick for a while—the samesymptoms as all the other dogs. Bitterman thought it might be rabies. But Morgan and Oakley had been vaccinated. So that was out. He took them to his vet, but the vet couldn't figure out what was wrong.
    Then they stopped eating and started sleeping all the time. That was when he gave me a call.
    The very same day, before I got there, Morgan attacked Oakley. The dogs had never so much as growled at each other. They were littermates, peas in a pod. But Morgan chewed off half of Oakley's tail before suddenly dropping dead. And Oakley didn't move an inch while Morgan was doing it. That was the creepy part. She didn't even open her eyes.
    Bitterman figured she had to be dead, too, until a couple of minutes later, when she snapped out of it and chased him through the house, howling. He said her tail was a dripping, bloody stump. He managed to get into the upstairs bathroom and slam the door in her face, but not before Oakley bit the back of his leg. She threw her body against the door over and over. Bitterman said probably thirty times in all. After that, she died.
    What I'm trying to say here is, if you want a story, you've got it. I'm happy to help you. The cops sure don't seem to know what they're doing.
    Sincerely,
Rudy Stagg

C HAPTER
FIVE
    “Well, that's all the dogs we have, sweetheart. They're all such darlings, I'm sure it's hard to choose. Would you like to take another look?”
    Logan shrugged.
    Coming to the shelter wasn't turning out to be such a great idea. For one thing, it reeked. There were rows and rows of cages—probably thirty in all—and the dogs didn't just live in them; they went to the bathroom inside them, too. (Quite a bit, it seemed.) The dogs wouldn't shut up, either. Logan had never heard more barking, yowling, and whining in his entire life. The actual shelter part of the building didn't have any windows, so the racket and the stink got trapped inside. The whole place was lit by buzzing fluorescent tubes, the kind that made everybody look as if they hadn't slept in years.
    But the worst part of all was this woman—Ms. Dougherty, the one who was in charge. She was a chubby, annoying, all-smiles type who insisted on calling everybody “sweetheart” and who talked to the caged-up animals in one of those idiotic baby voices:
“Oh, yesh. You're shuch a precioush li'l baby girl. Yesh, you are.”
Whenever she opened her mouth, Logan felt like barfing.
    He glanced at the cages again. “You really don't have any other dogs?” he asked. All the dogs here were too … well, for lack of a better word,
cute.
Most of them were puppies, all fuzzy and cuddly.Weren't animal shelters supposed to house the dregs of doggy society? The ugliest of the ugly? The exact opposite of Otis?
    Ms. Dougherty looked surprised. “No. I'm afraid we—”
    A sudden commotion erupted behind the double doors at the far end of the room. Logan could hear shouting, mixed with a highpitched bark. A moment later the doors burst open and a stocky man barreled out, clutching his arm. “Get that needle into her before she bites one of you, too,” he called over his shoulder. He glanced at Ms. Dougherty and shook his head. “I don't think this one is worth saving, Ruth.”
    “Do you have a dog back there?” Logan asked.“Another dog?”
    Ms. Dougherty's smile had vanished. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “The dogcatchers found a wild dog out on Route Seventy-eight, in the Cascades. She's in the examination room. But the problem is that—”
    “A wild dog?” Logan