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LAS CRUCES – Sonny “Tex” Harold Gilligan, the man infamously shot by his dog Charlie in October 2018 while rabbit hunting in the desert of west Las Cruces, said he is fortunate to be alive.

Unfortunately, Charlie was not as lucky as his owner and died of a gunshot wound just weeks after accidentally shooting his owner, Gilligan said.

“Sadly, my dog Charlie got out and I guess a rancher shot him,” Gilligan told the Sun-News.

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Gilligan, 74, made headlines last year after Charlie — his 120-pound Rottweiler mix — accidentally triggered a shotgun in the backseat of a pickup truck.

“There’s a hole the size of my fist in my back,” Gilligan said. “It broke my scapula and went through my lung.”

Gilligan said he was in the hospital about two and a half weeks after he was shot. He returned home to his three dogs — Charlie, Cowboy and Scooter. A week later, Charlie and Cowboy were dead.

“(Charlie) got shot and so did Cowboy and that’s really sad,” Gilligan said. “Scooter is still here with me. Charlie would never mean to shoot me, he was such a gentle dog. Cowboy is the mean one, he would’ve shot me on purpose. He was a little catahoula dog, but he was a mean guy.”

Gilligan now has a new dog, a German shepherd/husky mix named Lady, who recently had a litter of puppies. He said he has plans to go rabbit-hunting again with his new pack.

“I will go back to hunting rabbits with my dogs but I won’t use a shotgun anymore,” Gilligan laughed. “The safety on those things is where the dog can actually knock the safety off and shoot it. … The safety is really easy to knock off. … That’s what Charlie did, he knocked the safety off and shot me.”

‘Died of a heart attack’

Gilligan said Charlie shooting him may not be the most shocking event in his life.

“I died of a heart attack in Prescott, Arizona,” Gilligan said, noting he’s a Vietnam veteran and the incident happened at a Veterans Administration clinic. “I died in their parking lot. They revived me at the hospital and put two heart stents in and I’ve had a couple heart attacks since then.”

Gilligan said was he was admitted to Hospice following the heart attack at the VA clinic, but recovered. Few people leave Hospice care alive.

“My son, Mark Gilligan, a registered nurse, drove up there and said, ‘My dad is kind of stubborn, he doesn’t want to die in the hospital,’ and he convinced them to let me out. That was in 2015,” Gilligan said.

Gilligan said he “died” again after being shot by Charlie and said doctors told him he shouldn’t be alive.

“I lost six units of blood. If you lose five, you’re dead. It’s a miracle,” Gilligan said.