THE RESCUE DOG WHO RESCUED BACK
92 | July• 2019
a nappy. We were just cruising around
the garden, looking at flowers and all
that good stuff. Khan was with her.”
The family’s home was an old
Queenslander, a classically charm-
ing architectural style that’s ubiq-
uitous across northern Australia.
Queenslander houses are made
from timber, with a corrugated iron
roof and at least one large verandah.
They are usually single storey, but
raised up off the ground on ‘stumps’
- a clever trick that helps
to protect the building
from termites and other
pests, but mainly serves
to keep the house cool
via ventilation through
the airy, dark underfloor
void.
While some home-
owners choose to use
the underf loor space
as a carport or extra living area, for
Catherine and Alan it was handy ex-
tra storage. The entire perimeter was
decoratively screened with timber
palings, with a small gate for access.
As is often the wont of small chil-
dren, Charlotte soon tired of playing
in the expansive garden and instead
homed in on the padlock on the gate.
“She was flapping the padlock back
and forth and it was banging on the
gate,” Catherine recalls. She thought
Khan, who was naturally right next
to Charlotte, might be startled by the
jarring noise, but he seemed unfazed
by it. That was until, entirely without
warning, he became very fazed in-
deed.
“Khan suddenly started making
this noise from the depths of his
chest, this growl,” she says. “His
whole chest puffed up, his hair stood
up, and he lowered his head. He con-
tinued to make this guttural growl.”
As Catherine watched, Khan
seemed to double in size. For a terri-
fying moment, she was convinced her
early concerns about adopting Khan
were about to be proved
correct. “He kept trying
to nudge her. I was right
next to Charlotte – no
more than a metre away- and I thought,He’s go-
ing to kill her. His chest
was bigger than he was
long – he was a monster
of a dog,” she says.
Time seemed to slow
down as Catherine lunged desperate-
ly for her daughter. But Khan saw her
approach, and he got to Charlotte first.
“I went to grab Charlotte and he
saw me coming,” she recalls. “I don’t
know if he thought,This is one too
many people, or what he was think-
ing, but he grabbed her by the back
of the nappy and threw her over his
shoulder into the garden.”
Of all the outcomes Catherine’s
racing mind had envisioned in those
few seconds, Khan tossing Charlotte
like a rag doll was not one of them. “I
turned and looked and she was just
sitting there in a pile of mulch.”
Time seemed to
slow down as
Catherine lunged
desperately for
her daughter