Whether or not he intended it, the comment made by barrister Tim Hunter in defence of his client went to the very heart of the court case.

‘I dread to think how I would react if someone put my dog down,’ he told the jury assembled at Norwich Crown Court earlier this year. ‘I don’t know what you make of someone who reacted in the way Claire reacted.’

The ‘Claire’ he referred to is Claire Bridger, a 64-year-old school nurse and mother of two who – until last summer – had no criminal convictions and was a much-loved member of her local community in the Norfolk village of Taverham.

That all changed last July, when Claire learned that her estranged husband, Keith, had euthanised the couple’s two dachshunds, Violet and Dorothy – ‘my girls’, as she referred to them in court.

The revelation triggered an astonishing and terrifying reaction from Claire.

In the seconds after he broke the news to her, she lunged at Keith with a kitchen knife, stabbing him twice in the chest and abdomen and screaming: ‘You’ve killed my dogs’.

While Keith, 63, survived the attack, the injuries his wife of 30 years had inflicted were life-threatening and he was left with a punctured lung.

Had Claire intended to kill him, driven to fury by the news of the fate of her beloved rescue dogs? Was it, as her defence barrister put it, ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’?

For, as a source who knows the family told the Daily Mail this week: ‘Claire adored the two dogs more than I can describe.’

That was the question facing a jury in January after Claire was charged with attempted murder. Following a week-long trial, she was acquitted after less than three hours of deliberation.

But having previously pleaded guilty to wounding with intent, yesterday she learned that she would return to HMP Peterborough, the prison where she has been on remand since her arrest last year, after she was sentenced to three years behind bars for the offence.

Sentencing her at Norwich Crown Court, Judge Katharine Moore said she accepted that Bridger had no intention of using the kitchen knife that night.

This is undoubtedly a tragic turn of events for everyone involved, causing a painful schism in the Bridger family as Claire’s two adult daughters, one a model and the other a midwife, no longer have any contact with her.

‘No one who knows Claire can really believe what has happened,’ the source told the Daily Mail. ‘If you put the clock back a year, it would be impossible to imagine any of this.

‘Now Claire is behind bars, estranged from her daughters.’

The source insisted that the incident was entirely out of character for Claire. ‘It felt like the prosecution was trying to paint Claire as a problem drinker, but she’s absolutely not. She’s a social drinker like most of us.’

There has also been disappointment among those who know her that the lower charge of GBH, which Claire pleaded guilty to from the start, was not accepted.

Keith Bridger told the court he had suffered ‘unrelenting pain’ as a result of his injuries, but the psychological injuries were worse.

In an impact statement, he said he’d lost weight following the attack and suffered from tremors in his hands which made doing simple tasks, like doing up a button, difficult. He said: ‘I experience flashbacks and nightmares... I wake up in a cold sweat and panic.’

Claire knew what she had done was very wrong, a source said.

‘She accepted responsibility immediately and while she always accepted she would be punished, this court case and [the subsequent] media interest, attracted a huge online backlash.’

Certainly, this once ordinary family has now found itself being discussed worldwide online, commentators split between horror that anyone could threaten a human life over a dog and sympathy for Claire’s anguish.

Raised in the Midlands, the youngest of six, Claire moved to London in her early 20s to work in the hospitality industry and became lead housekeeper, latterly at the Savoy, also working in Bermuda. She was in her late 20s when she met Keith through a mutual friend, and the couple married in 1995.

‘He was affable enough and although the family didn’t bond closely with him, he was Claire’s choice and she loved him a great deal,’ the source added.

The arrival of their daughters came shortly after they married. Claire went on to train as a nurse, working first as an auxiliary nurse and then as a school health visitor overseeing eye and ear checks for reception-aged children. ‘Everyone loves her,’ someone who worked alongside her told the Daily Mail this week. ‘People still ask about her. They cannot believe what has happened.’

But behind this outwardly contented family picture, however, there were financial pressures.

At one point Keith was offered the opportunity to buy a franchise of the high-end Danish electronics company Bang & Olufsen, and to help pay for it the Bridgers made the decision to sell their home in Surbiton, south-west London, and relocate to Norfolk.

But the business did not work out and the franchise was terminated which left Claire ‘as the sole breadwinner for quite a long time’, the source explained.

The court heard that one of Claire’s siblings stepped in to support them financially. But throughout this very unsettling time, they remained unconditionally loyal to each other.

In 2010, the couple moved to Taverham, on the outskirts of Norwich, purchasing a rundown bungalow with financial help from a family member.

‘Claire was advised not to take out any additional debt against the house and to finance any improvements in cash, and it was suggested that the house was put in Claire’s name only, but Claire did not wish to emasculate Keith, so included his name on the deeds,’ a family friend told the Daily Mail. Unfortunately there was more financial woe when, having paid a builder in full, ‘the builder then ran off with the funds, leaving the house in a state... and of course they had no money to do it up’.

The family friend added: ‘They effectively lived in a building site for quite a long time, and Claire in particular found it a real struggle.’

With the help of further loans, the couple finally managed to restore the house to a liveable condition, and when in 2020, shortly before the start of the Covid lockdown, they decided to take on a rescue dog – a dachshund called Violet – those who knew them hoped it might be the start of a more contented chapter. Violet was joined 18 months later by Dorothy, another rescue dachshund.

Giving evidence, Keith, now working as a car dealer, subsequently described Violet as ‘quite noisy’, and both dogs had behavioural issues, yet both Claire and Keith seemed to adore them.

‘They’re actually lovely little dogs, and there was never any outward indication from Keith that he was anything but happy to have them,’ the source close to the family explained. The court heard the charity the dogs came from had said it would take them back if necessary.

In any case, the court heard that what had seemed like a period of relative calm for the family was shattered in April last year when, over a family breakfast, Keith stated that he wanted to end the relationship and would be leaving with immediate effect.

‘Claire was absolutely devastated and completely blindsided,’ the source who knows the family told the Daily Mail.

‘She said she had absolutely no inkling that anything was going to happen until Keith stood up in the house and declared the marriage was over and that he was leaving.

‘After making the announcement, he returned home in his work van to collect his belongings and posted his keys through the letterbox.’

Claire’s bafflement at the sudden end of her marriage was compounded by the realisation that her daughters no longer wanted anything to do with her.

‘She spoke to them in the weeks afterwards, but it became clear they did not want contact,’ the source explained. ‘It left her absolutely heartbroken. She has no comprehension at all about why this has happened.’

As Norwich Crown Court heard, she was subsequently signed off work and prescribed anti-anxiety medication as she struggled to cope with the sudden breakdown of her marriage.

With Claire remaining in the family home, the decision was taken that she would initially have care of the dogs, although as she worked full time she hoped her estranged husband would help out with them – something he agreed to do.

So in May 2025, when she went to stay with her sister, she left the dogs in the care of both Keith and her daughters.

Giving evidence in her defence, Claire related how, while she was away, one of her daughters phoned her, urging her to come home as otherwise they would have to put the dogs down due to difficulties looking after them.

‘I thought it was nonsense,’ Claire told the jury. ‘I thought that they would never put the dogs down, no matter what. There was no need. I thought it was a demand to make me come home.’

When she agreed to transfer the ownership of the dogs to one of her daughters, she believed it was in order for them to be able to have their inoculations while she was away.

In his own evidence, meanwhile, Keith described how his landlord had refused permission for him to keep the dogs permanently, while attempts to rehome them had proved unsuccessful.

Which brings us to the terrible events of July 17, by which time Claire had returned to the family home, which she had started to clear out in preparation for putting it on the market. On that day, the dachshunds were at the one-bedroom bungalow her husband was renting a few miles away.

Claire had a double gin and tonic with supper and chatted on the phone with a friend for an hour before making the decision to drop off two bags of her daughter’s possessions at her nearby home.

Notably, she left with a knife in her blue VW Golf estate, which she claimed was a kitchen object that had been in a bag of rubbish she was taking to the tip.

When her daughter was not in, however, she decided to drive to her estranged husband’s home, contravening an agreement they had made not to contact each other in person without 48 hours’ warning.

She arrived to find her husband on the driveway in his motorbike jacket and helmet, having just returned from a trip to the seaside.

In an exchange initially described to the court as ‘civil’, she told Keith that she could not afford their next mediation session, which he then agreed to pay for.

Perhaps that might have been that, if not for the fact that Claire realised she could not hear the dogs and asked after their whereabouts. ‘I just suddenly thought I couldn’t hear the dogs barking,’ she told the court. ‘I shouted out, “Where are the dogs?”’

Her husband then told her that ‘you know where the dogs are. The vets wrote to you. The dogs are dead. I had them put down.’

What followed was what Claire described as ‘like an explosion in my head’. ‘I could see my feet getting out of the car and that was it,’ she said.

Emerging from the car holding the knife – which she told the court she’d put on the passenger seat after it had fallen out of the rubbish bag – she plunged it into her husband’s chest and the left side of his stomach as he battled to fight her off.

Video footage recorded by a neighbour shows her then trying to bite Keith through his motorbike jacket, shouting: ‘You’ve killed my dogs, you bastard, you’ve ruined my life.’

‘She looked completely mad and intoxicated,’ a female neighbour testified.

A male neighbour then wrestled the knife from Claire, who, her clothing covered in blood, returned to her car, where she was subsequently arrested by police. Bodycam footage recorded by one officer shows her saying that she ‘just saw red’ when she learned her dogs were dead.

A medical expert who carried out a psychiatric assessment stated that ‘a combination of alcohol and extreme emotional arousal’ during the incident could have caused amnesia.

Giving evidence, Claire too insisted she could not remember a thing about what happened, although she accepted she was responsible for assaulting her husband with a knife and had ‘intended to do him really serious harm’.

Whatever the truth, there is of course no justification for the violence inflicted that day: ‘No one is suggesting that she was justified in what she did because her dogs were put down,’ as her barrister Tim Hunter put it.

Indeed not. While Keith is understood to have recovered from his physical injuries, he still suffers from PTSD. Contacted by the Daily Mail at his home earlier this year, he declined to talk, and sat separately alongside his daughters in court, away from Claire’s extended family.

The outcome, meanwhile, is undeniable: a family shattered, and a mother who led a previously blameless life facing a further stint behind bars. It is quite a price to pay, even for the most passionate of dog lovers.

As the source who knows the family put it this week, it is ‘an incredibly sad state of affairs’. A sentiment with which no one, surely, can argue.

Additional reporting by Stephanie Condron