Dogs make feature writer Ray Canin nervous. Reluctantly, he accepts an assignment to write about a homeless ex-con -- Rhino Holloran -- and his prize pug. He finds Holloran at his shack in the middle of a dry Phoenix river bottom. But Canin never files the story. Instead, he's implicated in the murder of the very man he set out to interview. But the victim's sister is not interested in the real killer. She wants Canin to find the pug, missing since...