Woman, 64, Leaves Husband With Life-Threatening Injuries After He Reveals He Put Down Their Dogs

A Norwich woman stabbed her husband three times and left him with life-threatening injuries after he had their pet dachshunds put down without her knowing. I think it’s safe to say she’s a dog person?

Claire Bridger, 66, attacked estranged husband Keith Bridger, with whom she had been in a relationship for almost 40 years, with a kitchen knife in the driveway of his new home.

The pair had taken a rescue dog in 2020, just before the start of the COVID lockdown, and another around a year later.

However, the couple split up after Keith suddenly announced he was leaving her as they ate breakfast with their two daughters in April last year. Casual.

He then moved into his own place on the other side of Norwich, while the dogs stayed Claire.

The dogs were said to be “quite noisy” and “quite bitey” and have “behavioural issues” – but she handed them over to Keith to look after when she went away to London with her sister and niece for a week.

However, even after the trip to London, Claire signed herself off work and stayed with relatives for several more weeks because she was still struggling mentally with the breakdown of her marriage.

Claire eventually returned to the family house to return two bags of her daughters’ possessions to them, but when she found they weren’t around, she went to her husband’s home and found him in the driveway after returning from a motorbike ride.

This is where things took a serious turn.

Claire asked her husband whether he could pay for their next mediation session and after he agreed, she started to reverse out of the drive before realising she could not hear the dogs.

She told Norwich Crown Court: “I just suddenly thought I couldn’t hear the dogs barking. I shouted out ‘Where are the dogs?’ He didn’t answer me. He was taking his helmet off and I beeped my horn and shouted it again.”

After shouting a third time, she told jurors: “He turned round facing me in the car and he said ‘You know where the dogs are. The vets wrote to you’.

“I said I had a text from the vets and he said ‘You know what happened to the dogs. The dogs are dead. I had them put down’.”

She added: “It was like an explosion in my head. I could see my feet getting out of the car and that was it.

“I don’t know what happened to me. I would never have intentionally tried to hurt Keith, let alone try to kill him.”

She told the court she got out of the car but then blacked out and cannot remember stabbing Keith. The next thing she remembers is someone on her back trying to restrain her.

She claims there was kitchen knife in her car because it was slightly bent and had been in a bag of rubbish she was taking to the tip.

Meanwhile, Keith told the trial his wife became “hysterical” after he told her what happened to the dogs.

He said: “She was screaming, ‘You killed my dogs, you killed my dogs.'”

He said she had pulled the car up towards him before getting out with a knife in her right hand.

“The next thing I knew the knife went in me.”

He said he was stabbed “in the left side of my chest, just below and to the left of my nipple”.

He said he received a second stab wound “below my rib cage” and another “just under my armpit”.

Fortunately, his neighbours came to his aid and called 999 before Claire was later arrested at the scene. He was taken to hospital with a punctured lung.

Keith Bridger admitted that he had not told his wife that the dogs had been put down but insisted he believed she already knew that he had done so after he unsuccessfully tried to rehome them.

He claimed he felt he had “only one option” because the dogs were aggressive, had behavioral issues, and were not allowed at his new one-bedroom accommodation. Claire argued he knew the rescue charity would have taken them back and believed he had them put down out of spite.

Why are the vets putting down two healthy dogs, anyway?

In the end, a jury unanimously cleared Bridger of attempted murder after just over two hours of deliberation. Her defense team argued she suffered from “temporary amnesia” triggered by a combination of extreme emotional distress and alcohol consumption.

However, she had already admitted to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. She was remanded in custody and is scheduled to be sentenced on March 20, 2026.

For the dog owner who held a driver at gunpoint and forced him to dig a grave after he accidentally hit his dog with his car, click HERE.