A dog was killed trying to save his owner from a train

I was reading a story recently about a family that had a farm Ozark mountains. They had gone off to a meeting and left one family member home with the dogs. This woman had been outside in the garden when they left, but had planned to come in to watch tv, till they got home.

When the family arrived back home, their front door was standing wide open, but the relative was no where to be found. As they searched the yard they discovered her body torn-up with long scratches and big open wounds.

Since nothing else had been disturbed the father in shock, thought his dogs had done it, and preceeded to shoot two of his big dogs dead. When the police arrived and then the medical examiner, who told him not to shoot anymore dogs as it had been a cougar that had killed the woman. I guess it caused him grief for years because the police filed the report as the woman being killed by a dog attack.

A year or so later, off the record the game commission quietly admitted to importing cougars from California, for a so called restocking effort. Up until this time they had refused to admit there were any cougars in the area.

The family now lives in terror of stepping outside their door without a gun in their hands, as the game commission threated legal action if any of these so called non-existent cougars were killed. The father had reasoned the dogs had gotten out of the house and chased the cougar away though it had been to late to save the relatives life.