PERU — Police are seeking information about a young dog that was shot in the head and dumped over an embankment on Route 108.
The body was discovered by a group of people Monday, who waved down Mexico police Lt. Dan Carrier as he was on his way home from work, Animal Control Officer Sue Milligan said.
“We’re really looking for some help here in trying to figure out who owns the dog, and what could’ve possibly happened,” Milligan said.
Milligan said she is working with Cpl. George Cayer of the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office and Angela Young of the Maine Animal Welfare office to determine what happened to the dog.
She described the dog as an American bulldog mix, and said he looked like he was healthy.
“Once I get the full pathology report, I’ll be able to determine what the status of the dog was before he died, but his nails weren’t 10 miles long, his coat was nice and shiny, and he had a good amount of weight on him,” she said. “He didn’t appear to be neglected.”
The dog weighed about 55 pounds, was about 2 years old and was primarily black with white toes and feet and with distinctive markings around his head and neck.
Milligan said she’s assuming the dog is a mix “because he was kind of lanky, and not really short, stocky or muscular the way you’d expect from this type of breed.”
The photographs of the dog were too graphic to publish on social media, Milligan said. She turned to an artist who drew sketches of the animal using “some distinct markings that were on his head and neck.”
She said she put the drawings on a flier, included some details and contact information, and filed the flier on the Maine Lost Dog Recovery Facebook page. “They have a pretty wide reach across the state, so I figured that would be a good start.”
Milligan said she looked into Maine statutes and discovered that it’s “not illegal to kill your dog, as long as you do it properly and it’s instantaneous.”
“That, in and of itself, is not really a law violation, but we really need to know what happened, and why it happened in this way,” she said.
Milligan said anyone with information regarding the dog or its owner, is asked to call her at 357-6796, Cayer at 743-9554, or Young at 287-3846.
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