Bane: Killed by a Concealed-Carrier

I never planned to write a blog. Then again, I never planned to watch my dog get shot to death, either, and more than anything, I don't want the horrible way he died to have been in vain.

At approximately 9:30pm on Saturday, May 17th 2025 at WVRC Emergency Veterinary Hospital in Kenosha, WI, my eight year old lab went to sleep for the last time. He suffered a broken jaw and two gunshots at close range - one in his leg, fracturing the bone in half, and one in the side-body, perforating his lungs.

I hadn’t meant to adopt Bane. I wasn't in the market for a Lab - I wanted a Huskie or a Retriever. But, he was the last of his litter and had been living at a foster home, and when the shelter worker put his sleepy little body in my arms, it was surprisingly easy to say, "OK."

I woke up late on the morning of the day he died, having just returned home from four consuming days and nights in Omaha for an annual work conference. I was in no hurry to get up, for a change, and Bane lay beside me in bed - unusually patient for his breakfast and seeming to enjoy the extra snuggles. He stretched out under my arm and pressed the soft top of his head into the bottom of my chin. 

“Morning, my good boy.” His long, black tail slapped against the bedspread in response. I chuckled into the pillow and Bane rolled onto his back, sticking all four legs into the air for a belly-scratch. 

I’d only bought the house, deep in the north-Chicago suburbs, eight months prior. My realtor and friend had let me drag him to nearly thirty showings in search of the perfect home for me and yard for my very active animal. 

I kissed the bow of Bane’s jaw and scratched gently up and down his deep, hunting dog’s chest. In another moment he’d hop up, satisfied that I was awake enough to start the day and, most importantly, to feed him. I laughed and threw back the covers. Step one in our morning routine - let Bane out to pee. Then, start the coffee maker, portion the dog food, turn off the exterior house lights, and let Bane back inside to eat - everything according to its normal routine.

“You’re just the sweetest boy,” I told him for the dozenth time by mid-afternoon. Bane dropped his frisbee at my feet and allowed me to scratch his slightly-too-large ears as he waited patiently for me to throw the toy. His once completely onyx coat had begun to show flecks of white and a distinct mustache had formed around his snout. “So handsome,” I said. The habitual words rolled off my tongue with ease. “I’m starting to sound like a broken record.” I sighed and shook my head. At forty, I was three years out of my last serious relationship and content in the peaceful life that I was building for Bane and I.

By 6:30pm, it was still daylight but the sun was sinking heavily into the west. I was running low on energy following a full day of laundry, grocery shopping, and yard-work. I glanced through the patio doors at the unruly looking trim. I imagined the just-assembled weed-whacker sitting on its charger in the garage and thought, Just one more thing. Then I’ll be done. I kicked on flip-flops. 

“Bane-boy, you wanna come?” He was off his dog bed before I’d finished the sentence, scrambling across the hard-wood floor. I chuckled at his eagerness - even at just joining me in the garage. I shut the door behind us. 

I was complacent - arrogant, even, about the need for a leash. Bane had been an exemplary off-leash dog for years. It never occurred to me that leashes are as much for a dog's protection as they are for other people's. It didn't occur to me that someone would use lethal force against him, either. It's the kind of thing that happens to "other people."

“Oh wow - what a good dog,” strangers would say as they passed us in the park or on a hiking trail - Bane paying them no attention as he followed his nose here and there. I’d give a sharp whistle and he’d come bolting to my side. “Ours would never behave like that,” they'd gush. 

I was inside the closed garage fiddling with the weed-whacker as Bane sniffed around my car. The machine was fresh out of the box. I just want to get it working, I thought. Doing the actual trim is a project for another day. I squeezed the trigger and it came to life with a snap! "Yes," I grinned - delighted to have put it together correctly. I released the trigger and the motor died, again. “It’s so hard to tell if this is right,” I said to no one, inspecting the line length with inexperienced eyes. Maybe I’ll just take it outside for a quick test… I glanced out the garage window. It was still sunny, but wouldn’t be for much longer. Two minutes, I thought. Then, we’ll be done. I hit the overhead door opener without thinking - too distracted by the tool and too complacent about being in our own garage, on our own property, to put Bane in a sit-stay that would’ve taken seconds.

The door had barely opened more than a foot by the time Bane’s robust guard-dog bark reminded me he was there. Before I could react, he’d already slipped under the door.

“Bane!” I shouted, dropping the whacker and ducking to chase after him as his black legs and tail disappeared from sight - blind to who or what he’d gone, so suddenly, after.

I would've understood a lawsuit for any injuries from the couple walking by. I would've expected an off-leash citation. I made a simple mistake, not checking my dog before opening the door. I would’ve paid for it. Instead, my neighbor’s wife walked away with a couple of bruises while Bane suffered for two hours, afraid and in pain, before I was able to have him euthanized. I ducked under the door in time to see Bane rushing the sidewalk with hackles raised.

“Bane!” I called him again as a man shouted with arms waving above his head. “Come!” 

Bane turned away from the couple and raced back toward me, across the yard. I breathed a momentary sigh of relief to see him coming, and leaned over - clapping my hands and encouraging him to continue his return to the top of the driveway.

From the sidewalk, the man continued to holler his outrage. Then, just like that, Bane changed course, again - drawn by the stranger's shouts. In a flash, he was back down at the sidewalk, barking and lunging - warning the people to KEEP AWAY from his house. 

“Bane! COME!” I called, again, hurrying down the driveway as Bane placed tentative jaws around the woman’s denim-clad leg. The fireworks of muzzle flare flashed before the Pop! Pop! sound of shots-fired reached my ears. I stopped short - halfway down my driveway, and inhaled a sharp gasp.

Fifteen feet away from me, Bane reeled - jumping backward onto two legs and wailing a throaty noise not unlike that of a sea lion, his left front leg swinging wildly and unnaturally in the air, making it clear that the only thing keeping it in one piece was skin. 

This is the scene I can’t unsee. This is the moment - the sound that I can’t erase from my memory. Five more seconds, and I would’ve had my hands on his collar… 

My good guard-dog, my companion, caught himself on three legs and began running wildly in half-circles, his broken limb flopping here and there as he careened up the driveway toward me; past me; away from pain that wouldn’t stop chasing him as fat droplets whizzed through the air and landed in a trail of blood behind him. 

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” The words came out of my mouth in breathless disbelief as I hurried to follow him up the sidewalk, toward the porch. “Bane, come here! Come here, baby!” I called after him, completely freaked out and desperate for him to stop running. To my great relief, Bane came to me, loping a few more dizzying, panicked circles, before coming to a stop at my side on the concrete stoop. “Oh my God.” I couldn’t stop repeating the words. Bane panted beside me, his broken leg suspended in the air as the man continued to yell from the sidewalk. 

“I had to protect my wife!” he said. She stood, silently, beside him with both hands clamped over her mouth in horror. 

“I get it,” I croaked, reedling in shock and automatically defaulting to self-blame. “Are you OK?” I called down toward the street. 

“Yes, I’m fine,” the blonde woman said, briefly removing her hands from her face. 

With Bane stationary, I noted a slick of blood matting the fur on his right side-body and a coaster-sized pool of blood forming as drops fell to the concrete. “I don’t know what to do,” I shouted to them, suddenly finding myself frozen and uncertain whether Bane was physically capable of even following me into the house. “I think I need to take him to the emergency vet, but I don’t want to leave him out here with you guys while I get my keys.”

The woman said nothing, just continued to stand and stare in horror. Her husband slid a phone from his pocket and said, “Well, I have to do what I have to do.”  

The callousness in his voice unfroze me just enough. “Go ahead and call the police,” I muttered, my throat closing with emotion as I surveyed the swirling droplets of my dog’s blood splattered around us. You already shot my dog - what else could the cops possibly do? I turned toward the front door and punched in the code to unlock it. It took five attempts for my fingers to punch the code in correctly. To my great relief, Bane pivoted and followed me inside. 

Where do I even take you? We lived in the last town before the Wisconsin border and were a good twenty minutes from anywhere likely to offer twenty-four hour emergency care. I googled “24 hour emergency vets near me.” The nearest looked to be in Kenosha - twenty-three minutes away.

Bane migrated on unsteady legs from the rug near the patio door, to underneath my desk, to my unrolled yoga mat, to his dog bed, and finally to the couch - panting like a freight-train all the while. Rose-tinted drips fell off his tongue and his eyes drifted in and out of focus. The severity of his injuries and the reality of what it meant hit me with a sudden, sinking punch. Even if we make it to the hospital… I dropped to my knees on the floor beside him and realized with certainty, He’s gonna die. I imagined Bane dying in the back seat of my CRV - not even surviving the drive - and a floodgate of tears shot-gunned out of me.    

Forty minutes later, the police had arrived and Bane was still panting pink-tinted plumes into my sofa. I got a good enough look at the tiny bullet wound to realize, It’s so small, it could take hours for him to bleed to death. 

“Can you help me get him into my car?” I asked the officer. “I don’t think I can do it myself without hurting him.” Having suffered gun-shot wounds to his left leg and right side-body, Bane was tender anywhere I tried to lift him. Using the couch-cover as a giant sling, the two of us carried him out to the garage. 

Twenty-three minutes later, the veterinary staff met me at the front doors of the Emergency Hospital with a gurney. My sister - my only family within ninety miles - hurried up the darkened sidewalk with eyes full of tears. My brother-in-law jumped into the backseat of my CRV to help me lift Bane - couch-cover and all - onto the rolling, metal table. 

“I can’t believe how well you’re handling this,” my sister said while we waited inside the exam room. “They’d hear me crying through the walls.” 

“Fifteen years of dealing with death and dying for a living,” I said, shakily filling out the release forms and letting go of one, audible exhale, after another - a habit I’d developed for keeping myself at least passably functional in a crisis. “Also, I’m single and I live alone. I have to be able to do things myself. I have to be able to tell them what happened.” In truth, everything that happened was so shocking and horrible that I couldn’t even remember Bane’s birthdate, as I completed the paperwork. 

When the veterinarian joined us, after evaluating his injuries, she explained that the fractures Bane sustained to his jaw and his leg were so severe that they would require amputation. His lungs had been perforated and he was expelling air into his chest cavity. “If you heard a wheezing sound, that’s why.” His shock level was four times the acceptable rate in what she described as "one of the worst gunshot cases [she’d] ever seen." “We can insert a tube into his chest," she said. "We can try to save him. But, he’ll have a very long, difficult recovery, if he survives at all.” She then estimated $15,000 - $20,000 in medical costs. 

I imagined my beautiful, active, vibrant dog reduced to a life of breathing machines, painful surgeries, debilitating infections, and feeding tubes. If he even survived, the months and years that followed would be filled with pain and suffering. A three-legged dog was one thing. But, a jaw amputation would leave him physically deformed and I couldn’t imagine how his quality of life would be diminished if every meal - if, every sip of water - required hand-feeding, or worse... 

“I know that the right thing is probably to euthanize,” I said to the vet. “I just don’t want him to be in any more pain than necessary.”

She nodded, as though confirming I’d made the right decision. Minutes later, Bane was wheeled into the exam room on the same gurney we’d lifted him onto from my car - still panting like a freight-train. 

“We gave him some medication for the pain,” one of the vet-techs explained. 

“Yea, you did.” I noted the nickel-sized, dilated pupils. Bane caught sight of me and tried to get up. I slid out of the plastic chair and kneeled on the tile floor beside him. “It’s OK, baby. I’m right here.” I put a hand on his head and the other on the thick, black fur of his neck. “I’m right here. It’s OK. You’re such a good boy. It’s all OK.” It was the kindest lie I ever told. I stroked his fur and reassured him. Fat tears rolled down my cheeks, but I managed to keep my voice steady. “It’s OK. You’re such a good boy. I’ve got you.” I stared onto his warm, brown eyes and didn’t move from that spot - holding him close, like I had since he was a puppy. 

I didn’t tell him “goodbye” in those last moments together. All I kept thinking as I ran my hands gently across his fur was, Don’t let him be scared. Don’t let him die, scared. Then, Bane closed his eyes and went to sleep in my arms, one last time.

With my sister and brother-in-law's help, the next morning I buried Bane. I planted the Shasta Daisies I’d spent three months raising from seeds and the tiger lilies my grandmother had dug up from her own yard, around his headstone. I’d imagined planting those flowers in the yard at my new house, but when Bane died, it seemed like they'd really been meant for him. 

I brought Bane home with me at 8 weeks old and had him with me for all 8 years of his life. He was the best dog in every way. He loved to hike and chase geese. He loved eating avocados, playing frisbee, and collecting shoes. He was so smart, and he loved to "go" - pretty much anywhere, anytime. He was a terrific guard dog. I never felt safer than when I was with Bane. He gave the best dog kisses - all cold-nose and seal whiskers in the palm of my hand or against my leg. He loved to crawl under my arm in bed and be the little spoon. With his plushie toys, though, he was always the big spoon. He was SO happy. He didn't just wag his tail, he wagged his whole body. Sometimes I wondered how that tail didn't get broken from all the things it got whacked into. His enthusiasm for life made me literally chuckle, every single day. And, his excitement to see me walking through the front door made coming home feel like a genuine celebration, every single time. 

It would be easy for me to lean into the anger I feel - for me to hate the man who killed my dog. There is a snide part of me that thinks, Do you feel like a big man - shooting a domesticated animal, in a residential neighborhood, in broad daylight, surrounded by half-million dollar homes? But, I know that leaning into “hate” would only eat me up and I don’t want that. It won’t change what happened. It won’t even affect the way my neighbor feels about what happened. It would only serve as a temporary distraction from the pain - which is the thing I’m really feeling and trying to avoid. I’m angry, but as much at myself as anyone else. 

To my fellow off-leash friends, take extra care with the lives you've been charged with sheltering. Get a trainer. Use a leash. Get a low-voltage e-collar. Make good habits. And, make it a priority. I saw some warning signs; some grumpiness and increased complacency in following commands as Bane aged, but I told myself, “I have time to correct it.” I let eight years of mostly good behavior lull me into a false sense of security. I could have done a dozen things differently that would have affected the way this unfolded. You never know who's walking past you or what they're carrying.

To my fellow concealed-carriers, don't let deadly force be the only defense option you give yourself. Pepper spray or an air horn could have changed the outcome of this so easily and still kept everyone safe. Bane was outnumbered and outsized. This was not a "kill or be killed" situation. I was fifteen feet away and in another five seconds I would've had my hands on his collar. Bane was just doing his job. My neighbor made his choices and I made mine, and my dog ended up paying the price.

Aside from the horrific way he died, I have no regrets about the life I was able to give Bane. I wasn’t a perfect dog-mom, but I didn’t take the time I had with him for granted. We road-tripped cross-country together and hiked countless state parks. In my house, we had two cookie jars - both of them for the dog. I loved him very, very well. My certainty in that fact has been an incredible gift and comfort - especially now that he’s gone.

I want to make sense of the way that Bane died, but I can’t. There is a sad, tired, grief-stricken part of me who looks at the world and begins to tally all of the terrible things that happen; all of the cruelty and carelessness; all of the factors that can never be fully controlled. It would be easy for me to lay down with my grief and with the powerlessness this experience has made me feel and think, I couldn’t even keep my own dog safe. If I tell his story, will it even matter?

But, then I think, If I can spare one more person’s grief - one more dog's suffering - then the way Bane died doesn't have to be for nothing. That’s all I want. For the terrible way my best friend died and for the years of life he still had left to live, that were lost, not to have been for nothing.

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