They had already decided how it would end.
Four handlers injured.
A facility rattled into chaos.
An 87-pound Belgian Malinois in an isolation run, labeled “unmanageable.”
The euthanasia paperwork was complete.
All that was missing was a signature and the kind of silence that follows.
So when Mara Ellison walked toward the far kennel, people laughed.
Not loudly.
Not cruelly.
Worse than that—confidently.
