HOUSTON – A couple living in a quiet lakeside Woodlands neighborhood is searching for answers as to who and why someone would shoot and kill their dog.
"He was only 10 months old so he was still a puppy," said Louisa Anchondo, one of the dog's owners. "He was my best friend."
Anchondo and her boyfriend Barry Carr are both Army veterans and served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. They called their silver Lab, "Wyatt."
On Friday afternoon, Carr was playing with Wyatt when he stepped inside their home on White Perch Lake Drive for 10 minutes to get a drink of water.
During that time, Wyatt had run away. Carr suspected he didn't close the outside gate to his home properly.
A neighbor found the puppy bloody and limping down the street.
"We tracked the blood so it was only a few houses away," Anchondo said.
Initially, the couple thought Wyatt had been attacked by another dog, but the X-Rays told a darker story.
"He didn't just get bit by a dog at all, he got shot with a shotgun," Anchondo said.
After 40 minutes of CPR at the vet hospital, doctors weren't able to save Wyatt.
"To think that somebody in my own neighborhood, a few houses away around here would have shot him, it's just the worst feeling in the world," Anchondo said.
The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office said this case is still under investigation. Anchondo and Carr are hoping someone can be found criminally responsible for the shooting but it all comes down to what the dog was doing when he was shot.