Natural instinct

This evening it happened.  When we got the dog,I thought this might happen,but he got along so well with the chickens.  This evening his natural instincts kicked in.  I really don't blame Yooper, the chicken was in his domain. One yellow/orange chicken was in his dog house eating his dog food.  The chickens usually will go in there and eat his food but today one chicken was caught in the action.  Ross came onto the scene when it was too late.  The poor birds feathers were taken out and it was basically dead. Ross took it out back and put the poor bird out of it's misery.  
We were all in the babies' room when I carelessly said "we only have 4 chickens now."  Leanne burst into hysterics and sobbed, "wha wha wha happened to my chicken?" We told her Yooper got him and Ross told her that he had to put it down.  Leanne sobbed "you killed it! you killed my chicken! Why don't you just kill all of them!"  We had to explain to her that we had too and we didn't want to.  She seemed to understand and started to forgive her daddy but then she asked "what did you do with it?"  Ross then wished he could bury his head into the sand, but he told her the truth "I took it far into the woods and left it there.  It will be a good meal for a coyote."  Leanne did not respond well to this and stated "why didn't you bury it!"  Ross told her he was cold and he didn't know where his shovel was.  Leanne insisted he should have found a shovel and buried him.  I agree with Leanne.  I don't think Ross did anything wrong by placing him in the woods but I would have done a little burial so the kids could have said goodbye to their chicken.  Then she sobbed "was it the one with the yellow feathers with a little bit of white on them?"  Three out of the five chickens are orange/yellow and we can't tell one from the other.  Ross didn't know exactly which one it was.  I told her tomorrow she can go check.  I never knew she had a favorite.  She had seemed to finally calmed down and it was time for her and Alli to take a shower.  Of course, the hard question came there.  We had just talked about how God knew the  perfect timing for this chicken's death and how God is in control of everything.  Her big question was "is my chicken in heaven?"  I made Ross answer this one. His answer "Leanne, chickens don't have souls like you and I do.  God will have animals in heaven, but I don't know if your chicken will be there.  But God loves you and cares about you." Death is so hard for little ones to understand.  The other kids were not sad about the death of the chicken, instead they are looking forward to spring when they can get some new chickens. I feel so bad for that little faithful egg laying chicken.  I feel even worse for my tenderhearted little girl.