KAPAHI — Someone shot Wendy Benton’s dog and left it for dead.
And that worries the Kapaa Elementary School teacher.
“Was it an ex-student or a weird neighbor?” she said.
She said she can’t help but let her imagination think of the worst from the traumatic experience. She plans to put up security cameras inside the fenced yard surrounded by hedges and trees with some distance between neighbors.
Benton returned to her home on Kaaouni Road around 5 p.m. on April 2. Her dog, Honi Lea, a 12-year-old Australian shepherd, was not waiting at the gate as usual.
Benton began thinking the aging dog was losing her pep when she looked across the yard. There lay Honi Lea with a bloodied leg.
“I couldn’t tell that it was a bullet wound right away and thought she may have climbed and fell,” Benton said.
A doctor’s daughter, Benton cleaned and dressed the wound that she believed was from a gunshot, and called police. She also called nearly every veterinary clinic on-island. She felt bad that Hono Lea had taken a bullet while being a good guard dog of her home.
“I was in shock and went to bed and showed up at the vet first thing Thursday morning,” she said. “Had I known Honi’s leg was shattered I would not have waited.”
Dr. David Haas at Lihue Veterinary Hospital, said the bullet doesn’t present a danger to the dog but will be recovered as evidence for KPD.
The bullet will help determine what kind of gun it came from.
From the X-ray, the shape entrance wound and the amount of damage, Haas said he is convinced it is a bullet from a small caliber gun or a high velocity pellet.
Haas said he wonders why somebody would do that to a dog.
“What is going on in someone’s mind for them to do something that horrible?” he said.
The healing process has a long way to go, but the dog should recover to normal use in about six months, Haas said.
Honi Lea has six pins drilled along the shattered leg with a brace that allows her to lay, sit and move about without much concern.
“I let the bullet remain because I thought it might disrupt and counteract what we just did to fix the leg.”
Honi Lea was at the vet for five days. Once the leg has healed, Haas will go in and take out bone fragments and the bullet.
The surgery and follow-up visits will run thousands of dollars. A holistic vet will also perform acupuncture to Honi Lea to deal with any nerve damage.
“She’s lucky,” Benton said. “This was a great surgery.”
Now Benton spends more time trying to figure out what happened. Her neighbor told her she heard what sounded like a gunshot earlier that day.
Another neighbor who came home at 1 p.m. didn’t hear a thing, so Benton expects it happened around noon.
Benton had been off-island for a week and Honi Lea was boarded during that time.
Someone may have been casing the residence and was startled when the dog was suddenly back, she said.
The house is in a rural area and its not uncommon for kids to make their way through trails around her yards. A kid without much care may have turned his pig hunting gun toward the dog as he walked by.
For the past 26 years Benton has been an art teacher at Kapaa Elementary School. She teaches 16 classes for around 500 students in grades 3, 4 and 5. After sharing her experience with the students, Benton said she was astounded at what she learned about their own experiences with guns. They are now embarking on a “take a bite out of crime” individual poster project for school and the community.
“The kids have amazing stories about crime and guns,” she said. “The stories just pouring out of them.”
As for Honi Lea, her birthday is May 5, Cinco de Mayo.
She’ll be treated to a piñata full of doggy treats with her other doggy friends in attendance.
“She knows she’s loved,” Benton said.
