From my latest book, Mission: Stand Down:

…During his early days in Konigstan, Jay had toyed with the idea of adopting a dog. Konigstan was not a particularly dog-friendly environment and stray dogs were often shot on sight or killed in very inhumane ways. One morning, Winston had spent an entire car ride complaining about how his daughter wanted a pet dog, but religious leaders claimed that dog ownership was                       , or forbidden                       . Winston, a doting father, had explained to his tearful daughter that dog walking had been prohibited, and it would not be fair to keep a dog cooped up in their small apartment. He had told Jay about a rare dog shelter just outside of Furstville and on one exceptionally long day of waiting for Headquarters to acknowledge Jay’s existence, Jay had asked Winston to take him to the shelter.
Pulling up outside of the desolate building that housed the shelter, Jay had recalled a dark memory from his childhood. One afternoon, woken from a drunken slumber, Uncle                        had become enraged by the persistent barking of a neighborhood stray. Jay watched in horror as his uncle produced a switchblade, and trapping the dog under his legs, had begun slicing the dog’s flesh as it screamed in pain and tried to wriggle free of                        grasp. At five years old, Jay watched in shock as                        left the dog, still alive but cut in pieces, to die a slow death in the dirt outside of their house. The dog had been one of Jay’s favorites, and he had often smuggled table scraps out to the dog…