When I was in my late teens my sister had a 175 lb Great Dane. He was a fantastic dog. He was out on his tie-down one night to do his business in the yard and broke his tie-off rope. He would usually wander a little when that happened but not too far. He was gone for about an hour when my brother-in-law got a call from one of the other police officers on the department. The police had been called by a neighbor who had seen two guys using her hose to wash blood off of her driveway and they tracked the blood trail. They found the Dane in a carport of a home about 4 blocks away and recognized the Dane as my BIL's. The dog had been shot with an arrow.
My brother-in-law called me and I met him in the neighborhood. The dog wouldn't let anyone near him until we got there. We took him to the vet, but he had lost a lot of blood, never pulled out of the shock to the body and died the next morning.
The police were able to track back the blood trail and determine where the dog was shot. That along with the description of the guys from the lady nailed the two guys. They finally confessed they had been drinking and saw a fawn colored animal in the dark behind the houses in the edge of the woods. They thought it was a deer and shot at it with a hunting bow. The two were charged with with animal cruelty and attempting to take a deer out of season. They ended up pleading guilty and just had to pay fines and lose hunting license privileges.
