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Exclusive: Family Wants Justice After Pet Dog Shot Dead In Their Backyard

LANCASTER (CBSLA.com) — A Lancaster man whose dog was shot dead is accusing the L.A. County Sheriff's Department of not taking the case seriously enough.

Rick Bryant said he was heartbroken to find his pet dog "Mylo," who'd been a part of his family for 13 years, bloodied and lifeless in their backyard.

"Immediately, I could see blood on him and I thought, did he get in a fight? Was there another dog?" Vryant said.

His sadness turned to anger when he realized that it wasn't an animal fight. Bryant's wife told him she'd heard a gunshot around 4 a.m. that morning.

The couple called sheriff's deputies, who all but confirmed that their dog had been shot.

Bryant said that if someone could kill his dog back where his kids plan and family relaxes then he needed answers.

He asked sheriff's deputies to look into the shooting but what he was told boiled his blood: "She had told me a detective would be assigned and someone would contact me sometime next week."

"It's about my family and how unsettling that is," said Bryant, who was upset that deputies delayed on following up on the report.

He decided to take the issue online and he posted a graphic picture of Mylo's bloody body, and the sheriff's department response, on his Facebook profile.

By late Wednesday afternoon, the post had been shared more than 4,000 times and generated dozens of comments.

"My family deserves better than this. And for something like this to happen, and for it just to be listed as animal cruelty, is wrong. There's more to it than just my dog being shot," the Lancaster father said.

Bryant said the Lancaster Sheriff's Office heard the social media outrage and contacted the family to apologize. They said they've assigned a detective to the case and they're taking the investigation seriously.

The family has sent Mylo's body to Lancaster Animal Control for a necropsy to determine exactly what killed him.

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