I find these stories extremely disturbing. I can't imagine why anyone would think it's okay to shoot a dog unless they thought their life was in danger, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

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Leonard Smisek Jr, from Otsego, Minnesota has been charged with shooting his neighbor's puppy in the head with a shotgun. According to fox9.com the owner of the dog told deputies that he bred the 8 month old Border Collie named Willy himself and said it was valued at $5000.

Someone called authorities the night of February 27th and reported a dead dog on an Otsego street. The deputies reported that it appeared the dog had been shot in the head and was lying next to a bloody Pizza Hut box.

Deputies tracked down the owner, who had been searching for his puppy Willy, and identified the dead puppy as his.

Smisek lives across the street from the puppy's owner, who suspected it was Smisek who had killed his dog. Smisek left the dog on the street knowing the owner would find it because "[the owner] drives this road every day."

Deputies went to Smisek's house but no one answered the door. They suspected that Smisek was inside the house and came back with a search warrant. They found a pickup truck that had blood in the bed and tailgate, They also found large amounts of blood in the snow, a bloody wheelbarrow and shovel. Deputies also reported finding a spent shotgun shell near Smisek's front door.

The deputies wrote this in the charges: "The defendant stated that the dog came to back up on his property onto the porch and was growling at him, so he decided that he would shoot the dog with a shotgun. After shooting the dog, the defendant stated that he felt that the only reasonable thing to do was to put the dog on cardboard down the road from him in hopes that the owners or another neighbor would recognize the dog and the owners could deal with the dog. In his own statements, he had reason to believe that the dog was a neighbor’s dog."

R.I.P. Willy!

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