Jordan hero dog dies for love and freedom

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

ZARGA, Jordan–A teaching of strict fundamentalist Islam is
that it is the duty of brothers to keep their sisters “pure” by
isolating them from contact with unrelated men prior to arranged
marriage. A three-year-old German shepherd named Big Joe recently
defeated that custom by carrying secret correspondence several blocks
back and forth between a man identified only as “Thamer” and a woman
whose identity news media concealed. Big Joe on January 11 carried
the man’s marriage proposal to the woman and fought off her brother
when he tried to intercept it, but the brother fatally beat him with
a large stone. The father of both the woman and her brother approved
of the marriage, perhaps in appreciation of what the loyalty,
bravery, and resourcefulness of Big Joe implied about him.