LOS ANGELES (AP) — One of the dogs that killed Diane Whipple was "a big clown" and not a fierce predator, the woman who raised him testified Wednesday in the trial of the couple who kept the 120-pound animal in their San Francisco apartment.

Janet Coumbs, under defense cross-examination, said Bane was her beloved dog for two years and she cried when he and a similar dog, Hera, were taken away by Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel, the attorney couple who are on trial in Whipple's death.

"Did you consider Bane to be part of your family?" asked attorney Nedra Ruiz, who represents Knoller.

"Yes," said Coumbs, who also asserted she never feared him.

"He was a big clown," Coumbs said. "He would get up and jump and dance for people. ... It was a loving relationship. We would go down to the pond and play."

She said the dog had his own pet, a cat named Chewy Chewbaca.

"It was Bane's cat."

"Did Bane ever kill a cat?" the attorney asked.

"No," Coumbs said.

Coumbs was called as the first witness late Tuesday after opening statements in which the prosecutor said he will show that Knoller and Noel had plenty of warning – some 30 incidents – about the dangers of their big presa canario dogs.

The defense attorney sought to establish through cross-examination that Knoller was unaware of any danger.

But Coumbs acknowledged that as Bane grew large she had to take measures to fence him and Hera, a female, into her yard on a farm in Hayfork.

"They destroyed the doghouses," she said. "We had a doghouse for Bane and he ate it. He chewed it all up."

Returning from church on one Mother's Day, "I had a wonderful surprise," Coumbs laughed. "The dogs had broken in and they ransacked my house."

Asked how the dogs reacted when she returned, she said with another laugh: "They were just there like, 'Hey, Mom, look at us.'"

After that, she said, she put reinforced doors on the house.

Knoller, 46, who was walking Bane when he and Hera attacked Whipple, 33, on Jan. 26, 2001, in a hallway of their apartment building, is charged with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and having a mischievous animal that killed a human being.

Noel, 60, faces the latter two charges. He was not home during the attack.

Coumbs said that when Knoller and Noel picked up the dogs in 2000, she never told them that Bane liked to jump on her.

"Did you cry when Bane left?" asked Ruiz.

"Yes, I did," Coumbs said.

Coumbs testified Tuesday under prosecution questioning that she was recruited by Pelican Bay State Prison inmate Paul Schneider to raise presa canarios. She said Schneider told her he was a fine artist and wanted to draw pictures of the dogs.

The prosecution contends that Schneider and another inmate who are members of the prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood conspired to raise a breed of killer dogs.

Coumbs said Tuesday that she once sent a photo of Bane and the cat to Schneider, who became angry and said, "Don't make wusses out of the dogs."

Coumbs testified she had a falling out with Schneider before the dogs were transferred to Noel and Knoller, and that there was a lawsuit over costs of raising the dogs and damage to her property.

The trial over the death of Whipple, a college lacrosse coach, was moved to Los Angeles because of extensive publicity in San Francisco.