Bags of ashes are all that's left of Ellen Barkley's beloved pets -- Rottweiler Jager and German shepherd Luke.
"I won't be the same; I can't even begin to tell you the kind of loss I feel, empty and broken," Barkley said.
This past weekend, her dogs went through a hole in the fence of her backyard in Brentwood and, despite an all-out search, could not be found.
On Sunday, Barkley learned they had been beaten with a shovel, then burned and buried after attacking a man's chickens and turkeys a few miles away.
Randy Christ says his son Jonathan had nurtured the birds and was trying to protect them from the dogs.
"The dogs charged him and he just defended himself," Christ said. "The dogs are murderers, in my eyes, for destroying all those birds."
"What happened to them was wrong; they didn't deserve it and for this man to have done this, so unconscionable," Barkley said.
But what was done to Jager and Luke isn't necessarily a crime. State law says a person may kill a dog if the dog is found in the act of killing, wounding or persistently pursuing livestock or poultry.
Barkley and her family are trying to change the law.
"Under no circumstances should you be able to brutally murder two animals," Barkley said.
"It's totally their fault those dogs were out," Christ said. "They should have had them under control all the time."
Officials with Brentwood's Animal Care and Control are investigating what happened to Jaeger and Luke and say if the dogs suffered unduly it could be a case of animal cruelty, a felony, but at this point there is no evidence.
