Somebody shot, killed pet Sophie

By RALPH BARTHOLDT

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — It has been almost a week, and Sheila Suchodolski still tears up when she thinks about how her dog, Sophie, died.

And she still turns steely when talk turns to finding the people responsible for the shot that killed the yellow Lab in her driveway with a bullet through the lungs.

Suchodolski, of Spirit Lake, said she had let the two family dogs outside after feeding them around 7 p.m. Aug. 29 after she returned home.

“I let the dogs out and I sat down to supper,” Suchodolski said.

She didn’t hear a gunshot, or a car go by, but she did hear her dog whimper.

When she went outside to check, she found the yellow Lab dead at the end of her driveway.

“I had just let her out. It had been five minutes,” Suchodolski said. “And she was dead.”

Suchodolski, who works at Silverwood, called her husband, who was in Sandpoint, after dialing 911. His dog, an English setter bird dog, was OK, she said, although the setter was let outside at the same time.

She doesn’t know why anyone would randomly kill the Lab.

“I can kind of understand if she was chasing chickens or something,” Suchodolski said.

But Sophie stayed inside most of the time, and Suchodolski hadn’t received any complaints from neighbors in Spirit Lake about either dog.

“We all have dogs,” she said.

Deputies, she said, investigated and said the dog was shot with a small-caliber weapon that may have made a pop, but it probably wasn’t very loud.

Besides that, gunshots in her rural neighborhood are so commonplace, she said she probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Since posting the incident on Facebook over the weekend, Suchodolski said her feed has gotten an outpouring of comments, including many people who have added reward money to a cash pool.

“We’re over $2,000 now,” she said.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the dog’s death. Anyone with information may contact the Sheriff’s Office at 208-446-1300 and reference case number 18-38438.