Local family worried after their dog is shot

By Candice Nelson
WSLS10 Reporter
Published: August 4, 2008

Moose is a nine-month-old yellow lab. Still sniffing around, he’s hobbling on three legs.

“Moose, come here,” Nancy Ritter, his owner, yells out.

She doesn’t want him to wander too far away. On Saturday, Ritter says Moose came back from the woods with his back leg in a lot of pain.

“My husband was out playing frisbee with my granddaughter. And they turned around and he was gone. They figured he might go down to the river sometimes. So it was about ten minutes and he was gonna go look for him and he came walking down the hill and [Moose] had been shot,” Ritter said.

She thinks it’s from a .22 bullet. Moose will have surgery at Virginia Tech, where Ritter says a plate will be inserted in Moose’s leg.  Ritter is worried about Moose because he’s so young.

“I don’t know if that leg will ever be the same,” she said.

But that doesn’t stop the dog from trying to go back up into the woods. Ritter wants to make sure it doesn’t happen to Moose or any other family’s pet. She filed a police report.

Sheriff Jim Davis with the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office says it is a case they’re investigating.

But Ritter is also worried about her family, thinking somebody instead of a family pet could get shot.
   
“I’m hoping we can find some way to stop it so we don’t have this concern anymore,” she said.