I Am Legend

In the book, they're not so much 'zombies' but vampires that have to be burned to be killed. In the book he doesn't have a dog at all. Instead he finds a stray dog that appears to be impervious to the vampiric disease. He tames it by giving it a bowl of food each day. Then one day he puts the bowl of food out and he finds the dog dead. The vampire he is attracted to is a women who he thinks is a survivor. She tells him she takes pills for a virus she has, but in actual fact they are pills that prevent the vampire signs from coming out. Her and some more vampires then raid his house in the night and mortally wound him. He is jailed in one of the vampire's houses and the women gives him some cyanide so he can avoid the execution he had been told he was going to have. Also in the book, his wife catches the disease (we are told this in the form of flashbacks) so he kills her, sews a cloth onto her face and buries her. But she resurrects and comes back to kill Robert, so he throws her into the 'burning pit' (where all the zombies are burnt to prevent them from living again).