CLINTON, Utah — Amy Gebs' dogs just got back from an unexpected trip to the animal hospital.
“Never thought in my mind any time in my life that we'd spend $20,000 on a vet bill," she said.
Willow, 2, had her spleen removed and about two feet of intestine and Charlie, 13, had about two or three inches of intestine removed. There were moments when she didn’t think Willow and Charlie would make it.
The vet found pellet gun bullets inside each dog, Gebs said.
“They were there for about five days," she said. "They had the drain tubes in for all those days. They weren't eating.”
On Monday March 21st, Gebs' husband accidentally left a gate open, and doorbell camera footage caught the two dogs heading up the street around 6:30 p.m.
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One of her employees was driving around the stop sign on the corner of 1500 N 3100 W in Clinton and noticed the dogs sitting on the corner. He brought them back to their owners 20 minutes later, and that's when they noticed something was wrong.
"When I came home, I didn't quite realize that they were shot," said Gebs. "And [Willow] was tramping blood through. So I was looking at her feet to make sure that they were fine, I just thought maybe she stepped in something.”
Gebs still doesn’t know who shot her dogs or why; the only information she was able to provide Clinton Police officers was her hearing of kids being arrested recently in Syracuse for possessing a pellet gun, but it could've been anyone, she said.
“I don't really know," said Gebs. "I like to think that no one would do something like that. Unless they were like in someone's yard causing damage, but at that point, I think they would have been dirty. And someone would have said, 'Yeah, I did it. They were in my yard.'”
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“It does a lot more damage than what you would think it does," she said. "And it broke our hearts to watch our dogs go through that.”
The Utah Humane Society has noticed dogs being shot in more rural places recently.
“Unfortunately, Utah does not have a lot of great laws to protect our animals," said Guinn Shuster, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications. "And this is something that we are continually working with here at the humane society.”
Even if her generally well-behaved dogs were causing trouble, that still doesn’t justify what was done to them, said Gebs.
