ARCHIVE 12/16/08: Who Let the Benoit Dogs Out? Probably Themselves

With other and more substantive discrepancies in the official explanations for what happened after Chris Benoit killed his wife and their son and himself, I think we can officially bury the question of why the Benoit’s German Shepherd guard dogs were not in the enclosed area near the backyard pool, as Chris’s final text messages had said.

Readers of this blog, including German Shepherd owners, have given me both yes and no answers to whether they thought the dogs could have cleared the pool area fence (see the item here in April, http://muchnick.net/babylon/2008/04/04/benoit-who-let-the-dogs-out/, including photo links). One canine expert answered yes, but not definitively, and other experts haven’t responded to direct inquiries.

But now I’ve gotten this:

German Shepherds are very athletic and versatile. I have personally seen a Shepherd clear a 6’ wood fence with little effort.  If you go to Google and click on Images then do a search for “Fence jumping Shepherds” or “fence jumping German shepherds” you’ll see a couple pictures of them in action.  This article shows Rin Tin Tin going over an 11’ 9” wall:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rintintin.com/images/original_and_fence_jumping.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.rintintin.com/story.htm&usg=__YCtoM6yUiwZJj83vhZW3XFtVj9o=&h=425&w=227&sz=13&hl=en&start=3&tbnid=q5XQnyt2e5Uq6M:&tbnh=126&tbnw=67&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfence%2Bjumping%2Bshepherds%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff

So … asked and answered. Happy Holidays.

Irv Muchnick