What fascinates me about animals is how much is it possible to learn to understand them, and yet even then, once you think you have learned, they do something that takes you completely by surprise. 

From the moment my German Shepherd, Tadhg (pron. ‘Tige’) came home to live with me and my two sons, he made it clear that he would look after and protect us all.

We had all escaped town life to live in the depths of Dorset in a ramshackle 1920s oak A-frame house, where it was so quiet and remote that if you heard a car half a mile away in the dark of night you knew you were being burgled.

In the dark of one night when Tadhg and I were alone in the house, he refused to settle.  He got up, paced, went to the garden door, then paced to the front door, then seemed to look at me as if I should do something.  When I let him outside into the garden, but he stood there in the middle of the lawn looking around in the night air, motionless, sniffing cautiously.  Then he turned and came rushing back inside in a hurry.

Not long after, he was sniffing at the front door and beginning to squeak. So I opened the front door, only to find that, in those brief seconds it took to open it, I immediately spotted a large, dark, thick-pawed, solid headed animal in driveway, only about 15-18’ away from us. It was a black panther.

We are so conditioned to seeing predators in cages or on TV, but it is a different thing altogether to see them wild, free and 15' away.  And there is something mindblowingly primal and unconscious within us that knew exactly within the briefest moments what level of threat it was, how I should react, what decision I should make, and what exactly I should do with my beloved canine soul mate and friend who I would protect with my life. Tadhg, I mean. 

I let him out.  Actually, I didn't have much choice.  He was out of the door before I could stop him.

Afterwards I couldn’t believe that I had let him go.  But that is the instinct.  Somewhere in our psyche, stored in our genes, is the mathematical equation: 

Big Cat = Big Threat = Survival Instinct = Chuck German Shepherd outside to defend you 

That was the same thought going through Tadhg's mind and, the moment the panther sensed one or both of us, it got up.  Panthers are, in reality, highly unlikely to attack or threaten humans and are much more likely to retreat than confront unless they are very hungry.  I could see it making its own split second decision and then as it made a leap that covered about 5-7’ in one stride and disappeared into the copse behind it. 

Tadhg bounded after it and, after some frantic scuttling, I heard a terrifying low growl.  It wasn’t a “Get lost this is my pad,” kind of growl.  It was quiet, low, “You come one hair’s breadth closer and you are going to die.”  

I have never heard that coming from any dog, and yet I have never heard a dog talk to a panther.  It was a sound I never hope to hear again in my life and, to this day, I still have no real conviction if it was the panther or the dog that spoke.

There was then a deathly silence and by now I was in tears. Tadhg was not much more than a year old and still my ‘puppy’ – all brawn and no fear, and he had just headed off in pursuit of an animal that could easily swipe him with one paw. I called to him, but there was no response.  I then screamed out to him. Another long silence. 

After an interminable wait, there was a rustle of leaves and Tadhg bounded back out of the copse and raced back into the house.

*        *        *

For the next 5 months that we lived in that house, Tadhg refused to go anywhere near that side of the driveway.  I tried to encourage him, telling him the panther had gone, but the most he would do was give the odd sniff in that direction and then hurry away in the other direction. 

I’ve heard this is typical of dogs that have confronted panthers or other big cats.  They don’t do it twice.  Rumours abound about the existence of such large cats in the UK and sceptics would suggest that dogs and their 'owners' are being confronted with large, local moggies. Tadhg and I have our own opinion about that.

But those times when dogs behave out of character – when they take you totally by surprise; these are times when instinct rules and you realise that you are not just dealing with a dog, but with an adapted wolf.  Perhaps we should all remember and respect that more often.

That night in Dorset, somewhere in my genes I recalled what it was to be a vulnerable, ‘wild’ human, totally reliant on the courage and resourcefulness of her wolf-dog to protect her against a wild animal. 

I at least had a front door to hide behind.  What on earth must it have been like for our ancestors?