MADRAS – The last six weeks haven’t been easy for Bruce the dog. After being shot by a Madras police officer and injured so badly that he can’t eat a bone, he was then held by a local veterinary clinic as the city and a resident argued over who had to pay the bill.

Things are finally beginning to look up.

Bruce came home Monday after the city and Elizabeth Holquin came to an agreement on how to cover the roughly $2,200 bill for her son’s dog.

Holquin had told the city council she didn’t have the money to liberate the 8-year-old dog. And she wanted to know why she should pay up when a city police officer shot the animal, a Rottweiler and German shepherd mix.

In the end, the city forked out $700 and Holquin agreed to make $25 monthly payments until the bill is paid off. Officer Tanner Stanfill said shooting the dog was his only option. He believes he was acting in self-defense.

”I’m an animal lover,” he said in a telephone interview. ”But I am not going to be hurt or killed by somebody’s dangerous canine.”

Stanfill was in Holquin’s neighborhood in April on a complaint about an abandoned vehicle when he approached her house thinking he would find the car owner there.

The officer walked toward the house. All of a sudden he saw the dog running at him, he said.

”I’m running backward as fast as I can trying to get away from this dog and I can see this chain” attached to the dog, he recalled. ”It’s extraordinarily long.”

The dog was on ”full attack,” the officer said. ”It’s gaining ground on me and I’m not going to get away from it.” Stanfill said he had no choice but to fire his .40-caliber pistol to stop the dog.

Because everything happened so fast, he said he didn’t have enough time to see if another option such as pepper spray or a Taser gun, which emits electrical pulses, would subdue the dog.

”I didn’t have the time to try something that might not work,” Stanfill said. ”As a police officer I have to make decisions in a split second, especially when my life is in danger.”

As far as Madras Police Chief Tom Adams is concerned, Stanfill did nothing wrong.

But Councilor Bob Sjolund wonders whether different precautions could have been taken.

”Whether I like the dog or not or thought it was a mean dog, it was behind a fence with a chain and a beware of dog sign,” he said in a phone interview.

”If the city was at fault, and at this point they were, they should pay for their mistake,” Sjolund said.

The city helped with the bill because it wanted to put an unfortunate thing behind it, Mayor Rick Allen said Tuesday.

”It’s a goodwill gesture to get the dog released,” he said in a phone interview. ”No one’s liable. No one did anything wrong.”

One thing Chief Adams wants to make clear is that this situation isn’t setting a new precedent.

”Officers doing their job are not liable for property damage when doing their job and acting appropriately,” he said in a phone conversation.

Holquin is happy the city is helping out, but wishes things had worked out differently.

”I was hoping they’d pay the whole bill,” she said.

The dog’s injury required several hours of surgery, Dr. Steve Nitschelm, one of the veterinarians who worked on Bruce, said in a phone discussion. ”A section of the bone was shot and shattered out.”

It will be at least several months before the dog’s jaw heals. Additional treatment is expected and will require more money, Nitschelm said.

The veterinarian said most pet owners pay immediately or make arrangements to cover the animal bill. But keeping an animal until payment is made is ”a standard option,” he said. ”It really is in some cases the only reasonable option we have.”

He noted that Bruce, who didn’t show any ”aggressive tendencies” at the clinic, needed to stay there after the initial surgery. Only more recently could the dog have come home to Holquin’s care, he said.

On Tuesday afternoon, Bruce walked slowly around Holquin’s yard, nuzzling a reporter but growling at a photographer. Holquin said the dog had never bitten someone before.

The ”Beware of Dog” signs scattered around the property just let people know there’s a dog around, she said. ”He’s like one of the family,” Holquin said. ”He’s close to our heart.”

Julia Lyon can be reached at 541-504-2336 or at jlyon@bendbulletin.com.