LAS VEGAS — A faint yelp. A "weird" stare. Fur soaked in blood.

A high school classmate of Darren Mack recounted Thursday the observations that rapidly convinced him his longtime friend had hurt his estranged wife while he and the couple's daughter sat oblivious nearby.

Testifying in Mack's murder trial, Dan Osborne, said he was watching television with the girl in Mack's home at the time his wife, Charla, was stabbed to death in the garage.

Mack, 46, has admitted killing his wife and then shooting their divorce judge, but his lawyers claim he was acting in self-defense in the first incident and was temporarily insane during the second.

Recalling the June 2006 morning at Mack's townhouse, Osborne said that it was 7-year-old Erika Mack who first noticed the faint barking of Osborne's mixed-breed dog, Rusty.

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He said that, when he went to investigate, the dog emerged from the garage, where the couple had gone to talk, with his head down and his tail between his legs. Mack came out behind him with a bath towel wrapped around his hand.

He did not say a word, Osborne recalled, but shot him a "weird, scared kinda look" and proceeded into his bedroom.

As he tried to make sense of what occurred, Osborne said, Erika Mack pointed out blood on Rusty's coat.

"His muzzle had blood on it. The chest area and then down toward the feet. And at that point I thought something has gone wrong here," he said.

Osborne said he was "freaked out," in part because Mack often complained bitterly about his soon-to-be ex-wife. He said he scooped up the girl and quickly left the residence.

He said Mack called him on his cellphone five minutes later and asked that he bring his daughter to meet him at a nearby Starbucks. Osborne said Mack and his daughter chatted privately and then he hugged and kissed her.

Osborne took the girl to her grandmother's and then phoned 911.

Through his attorneys, Mack has said he attacked his wife, 39, only after she pointed a pistol at him and pulled the trigger. The weapon misfired, the defense claims, and Mack later threw it in a dumpster.

Osborne said his friend never mentioned a fight and did not look disheveled or injured.

"Did he say, 'My wife just attacked me'?" asked Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas.

"No," Osborne replied.

The Reno, Nev., home where Darren Mack killed his wife.

In his opening statement Wednesday, a defense attorney said Mack and his wife fell to the floor wrestling over the gun and that Osborne's dog, who the lawyer described as a pit bull, ran toward the scuffle as if he might attack. The lawyer said this struck additional terror in Mack, who was already afraid of his wife.

But Osborne maintained that he had confined Rusty, whom he described as a bull mastiff-Labrador mix, to his car before entering Mack's home and said there was no way the dog could have gotten out on his own.

Osborne, one of the trial's most anticipated witnesses, said he still considered Mack, whom he has known for three decades, a "good friend."

With the defendant staring intently at the witness table, he described Mack's frequent rants against Washoe County Family Court Judge Chuck Weller. He said Mack had mentioned "getting rid of" the judge, prompting Osborne to tell him, "You really don't want to say something like that. It really scares the hell out of me."

On cross-examination, however, he acknowledged that he thought Mack was just "blowing off steam."

Jurors heard from seven additional witnesses Thursday, including a man Mack met in a support group for fathers who felt wronged by the family court system.

Garret Idle said he and Mack both felt terribly mistreated by Weller's handling of their divorces. When Idle heard that Weller had been shot, he called Mack, who told him he was too busy to talk.

Police witnesses testified that a search of Mack's home turned up papers concerning Weller and the divorce process, including an Internet map pinpointing the judge's home. A similar map was found for the home of Charla Mack's divorce attorney. The maps were printed four months before the judge's shooting.

Jurors also heard that, less than an hour after Mack killed his wife, he placed a phone call to the management of his gated community cancelling his weekly cleaning woman.

His lawyers have said he snapped "like a rubber band" after killing his wife and was suffering from a delusional disorder that prevented him from knowing right from wrong.

Mack, the eldest son of a wealthy Reno family in the pawn shop business, faces 20 years to life in prison if convicted of murder and attempted murder.