Salem, OR (KPTV) — A campus safety dog at Corban University is recovering after being shot near her owner’s home in rural Jefferson.
Khaleesi, a 2-year-old malamute, belongs to Campus Safety Director Mike Roth.
While she’s not a trained K-9, she does go out on patrol with campus safety officers and helps facilitate interactions with students and staff on the small campus in Salem.
And Khaleesi is lucky to still be able to do that.
“It’s amazing to me that she’s walking around,” Roth said.
Khaleesi was shot near the Roth’s home on Oct. 14.
Roth believes the dog got onto a neighbor’s property through a break in the fence. She was hit with a shotgun blast that sprayed at least 60 pellets into her body.
“My kids were home… they were the ones who heard the dog screaming, they heard the gunshot and then the dog came to the door,” Roth said. “They were the ones who picked her up and brought her inside.”
At the time, she was given only a 50 percent chance of survival.
Since then, her recovery has been slow, but steady.
“She had almost every organ in her body pierced,” Roth said. “So her lungs were hit, her liver, her kidneys, her colon.”
Based on his training and the spray of the pellets, Roth believes Khaleesi was shot from a distance of 30-40 yards.
Now, Khaleesi will have to live with the 60 or so pellets in her body. It was too dangerous for the veterinarian to remove them.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office is investigating, but so far no arrests have been made.
Roth said he wants whoever did it to come forward and take responsibility. At the very least, he wants the shooter to take care of the veterinarian bills which have added up to roughly $4,000.
But if he can press charges, he said he will.
“We don’t know who exactly it was. We just know there was a gunshot and the dog came from a property that was nearby,” he explained. “We specifically moved to the country to have that piece of mind and a safer environment for our kids, but when people are shooting shotguns and hitting your animals close to your house, it’s concerning.”
