Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-11223544-20140603175321/@comment-25020063-20140604023540

First off, I dig the premise.

It will read easier if you eliminate the... what are they... prepositional clauses? The useless ones like "slightly weirded out BY THIS TIME" and the like.

Show more, tell less. Don't say "Danny was puzzled by this message"... say something like "Danny raised his eyebrow as he pondered this message."

As far as your questions regarding the rest of it, you have to introduce us to the dog and the girlfriend if their deaths are supposed to mean anything. Maybe the dog isn't that important, but we need to meet the girlfriend asap and she needs a meaningful bond with the protagonist. You can use anxiety over her fate, a sudden gruesome discovery, or numerous other devices working off of that.