HARWOOD, Md. — It's a recording that now haunts dog owner Shannon Smith Wood.
"No, that's not a dog. That's not a dog. I don't think so either. He's not walking like a dog," two people can be heard saying in cell phone video obtained by WMAR-2 News.
"Over and over I hear it. Every time I want to calm down and not be upset, I hear the voices in the video," Wood told WMAR-2 News.
"Hey, there's a coyote out here," a person behind the camera can be heard saying. "Pop, where the shottie at, man? We'll drop it, man." A person on the phone can be heard telling the speaker in the video not to grab a shotgun, before people laugh in the background.
Wood received the video from a mutual friend, while she was frantically searching for her dog Maisie. She got out of the house on Easter Sunday while the family had company over at their home in Harwood. They posted flyers all over social media, and even hired a drone operator to search the heavily wooded area.
On Monday, Wood saw the video and immediately felt relief - it was only taken about a mile from her house.
"All I was thinking is, 'oh my god, great, they saw her, so we're gonna get her,' Wood recalled.
They rushed over, but the neighbors who recorded the video said Maisie was chased off by a coyote. So they kept searching.
"Tuesday night, about 11:45, I got a phone call from my daughter and she just said, are you driving? I said 'no.' She's like, 'Mom, I don't know how to tell you, but they shot and killed Maisie. The guy in the video just called me and said that his dad shot her.'"
According to Wood, they told her daughter the dog's body was "gone."
Wood described Maisie as a friendly dog, who was never aggressive.
"If anything, if they would have called her over she would have came up and licked them, that's what she would have done," Wood said.
Even if it was a coyote - you need a regular hunting license and a special furbearer permit to hunt them in Maryland, according to the state's Department of Natural Resources.
"You don't shoot something that you don't know what it is," Wood said. "I mean, how do you do that? I'll never understand this, never."
Anne Arundel County Police are investigating this incident. Maisie's owners want to see the people responsible for this get charged.
