LAKE STEVENS — It was nearly midnight Friday night when Larry MacDonald heard a "squealing sound" coming from his backyard.
He grabbed a flashlight and looked out to see his 5-year-old dog, Chase, "standing there, trying to climb up the steps to the porch."
The dog looked him in the eye and MacDonald could immediately see an arrow producing from the canine’s skull.
He speculates that somebody walked up his driveway on his 2 1/2-acre property near Highway 92 and shot the dog in the head at close range.
He called 911 for help and grabbed his gun, thinking that he would have to put Case down. But the animal, a mixed breed of pit bull, German shepherd and malamute, kept looking at him.
One eye was covered with blood. The other was alert.
"I said, ‘Grab the keys and lets go,’ " MacDonald said, and hustled to his car with his wife and the wounded dog.
Chase was admitted into Animal Emergency Clinic on Rucker Avenue in Everett, and remained there Saturday night.
His condition is guarded, veterinarian Dr. Nancy Hotter said Saturday night.
Her technician, a hunter, believes somebody used a compound hunting bow at close range. Hotter held the dog’s head and the technician, a big man, used all of his 6-foot, 6-inch frame to lift her weight and the dog’s off a table before the arrow came loose, the veterinarian said.
She estimated it penetrated six inches. It cracked the skull but she doesn’t know how much brain damage was done, or if Chase will ever walk again.
"If the arrow had gone through the abdomen it would have gone straight through," Hotter said. "It was deeply embedded. Somebody needs to be arrested. This is so sadistic."
She said Chase "is a really nice dog."
The animal was comforted by MacDonald’s presence, he said. He spent Saturday, his 41st birthday, at the emergency animal hospital with his wounded dog.
He said he doesn’t have any ongoing disputes with neighbors, and Chase has been well behaved. That’s why he thinks it was a random attack.
MacDonald thinks that somebody got a new bow for Christmas and went on a hunting trip in his yard. The depth of penetration, the arrow’s angle and the fact that an old arrow was used also leads him to believe the animal was shot a close range.
"I have a feeling they got their first hunt in," he said.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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