You're suppose to cut the red line and leave the most area inside the red line as possible to get a bigger payout. As for ASDF your suppose to press them as prompted at the bottom, and if you press them too late e.g. pressing one that isn't actively shown on screen it'll make the dog angrier.
We tried a fair bit of play testing and couldn't re-create ending up with $0 as long as we traced the outline of the red triangle at least once during a game session, but if you run into the issue again try taking a screen capture or record your game so we might be able to see if its a bug we need to fix.
Thank you for the feedback, I hope I've properly explained it enough you might be able to give it another try. We're going to keep working on it to make it a little more forgiving and try to make it more clear exactly how to play.