Family Searching for Second Dog, Answers after One Dog Comes Home with Gunshot Wound

WRIGHT, Minn. – A family in the small city of Wright is still searching for answers, and their lost dog, after their other dog came home with a gunshot wound.

At the end of January, Wright resident Arianah Whiting was training her family’s new puppy, named Echo, in the yard.

The Whiting family has two huskies, Jax and Piper. Arianah said she usually lets Jax and Piper out separately, without leashes. Other times, they would be outside together on a leash tied to a tree.

The Whiting family had just moved to their new house in Wright this past fall, and planned to put a fence around their yard when the weather warmed up in the summer.

Arianah said the night her dogs went missing, Piper was with her in the yard, along with the new puppy the family had adopted two weeks before. Jax was inside the house.

She said she believes Jax ran outside and took off with Piper as she was busy calling the new puppy to come back to the house. It was January 30th around 6 p.m., and it had already gotten dark outside.

Jax and Piper had run away before. Whiting said they usually returned home within an hour.

“I’ve never gotten this feeling of fear before, and I just couldn’t sleep,” Arianah Whiting said. “It was just horrible because, before I had my son, they were my babies, and we did everything with them.”

She said that she and her husband, who served in the military, adopted Jax and Piper a year apart while stationed down in Georgia.

“They do everything together, they’re like inseparable,” Whiting said.

The Whitings searched for their dogs for hours, with pits in their stomachs.

When Arianah’s husband searched in the early morning, he found Jax inside their dog house.

“He didn’t know he was injured…so [Jax] took a couple steps and collapsed,” Arianah said.

She said Jax suffered from a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

The Whitings rushed Jax to a veterinarian in Duluth where he had emergency surgery that cost more than $4,000. He survived.

After the surgery, the Whitings went back home and said that they found a trail of blood where they had found Jax.

“We started following it, and following patches of hair, and then following more blood,” Arianah said.

The Carlton County Sheriff’s Office visited the Whitings and took a report.

Investigators interviewed neighbors, but no one came forward and admitted to shooting the dog.

The Carlton County Sheriff did not respond to multiple requests for an on-camera interview about this case, and why cases like this can be hard to solve.

An investigator on the case told FOX21 via email that it’s hard to prove who may have shot the family’s dog because they can’t test the blood and dog hair found on the trail.

In a city where the population is less than 130 people, residents in Wright told FOX21 the same situation has happened to three of them.

Their dogs have been shot, including the city mayor’s dog, over the past fifteen years. The neighbors FOX21 spoke with did not file reports with law enforcement about the shootings.

Some of the residents’ dogs died from their gunshot wounds.

While Jax is recovering from his gunshot wound, Piper is still missing.

“I would like closure in the case,” Whiting said. “I think it’s important for anyone to have closure, and not have to worry about where she is or what’s happening to her, or anything like that, because the thing is we never saw her blood, so we don’t know, that’s the big thing for us is, we don’t know if she’s dead or alive. And if she is alive, she’s definitely not just running around because she would’ve came back home.”

In Minnesota, the state statute permits the shooting of a dog if it is threatening or attacking a person, livestock, or domesticated animals.

Whiting said their dogs are not the type to attack, and are very loving.

“We’ve reached out to everyone we could to get some justice, Arianah Whiting said. “We’re so hurt in this situation. They’re our babies, they’re not just like pets to us.”

The investigator who spoke with FOX21 via email said that the Carlton County Sheriff’s Office has interviewed all potential suspects, and no one has come forward with information.

They said the case is now closed.

If you have any information on the whereabouts of Piper, the dog that is still missing, or Jax, the dog that was shot, call the Whiting family at 218-460-6941.