Couple devastated after dog killed
Pair was touring Weitchpec property with listing agent
Stacy Ramsey and Douglas Pietz are mourning the loss of their dog, Sophie, after she was shot and killed near Weitchpec last Thursday. The couple was visiting from Aptos in Santa Cruz County in search of a new home with plenty of acreage for their two dogs.
“I’m so sad,” Ramsey told the Times-Standard. “Even though it happened four or five days ago, it’s just really hard to process … we’re devastated.”
Ramsey, Pietz and his father Daniel Pietz were visiting the 43-acre property with a listing agent, who wished to remain anonymous, with their two dogs Sophie and Basil. According to Ramsey, the agent had let her dog off-leash, so they followed suit. They returned to their vehicles after touring the property when two shots rang out.
“I literally had the door open and my mouth open, ready to call the dogs back,” Ramsey said. “All three of them were near the neighbor’s driveway, they had disappeared behind a line of
trees that sort of acted as a natural fence. They had just run past the trees and the first shot fired and all of us froze.”
Two of the dogs came running back when they heard a second shot. Ramsey and Pietz ran to the neighbor’s driveway to find Sophie lying dead on the ground. She said the neighbor stood with his gun in his hands “and he said, ‘F—k you, come get your dog.’ “
“He had shot her in the neck. I guess her death was quick but I can’t help but feel like I let her down,” Ramsey said through tears. “I would’ve expected Sophie to be the first dog back because she was so gun-shy. She was put up for adoption because she was a hunting dog, a Blue Coonhound mix, but she was afraid of guns. She died at the hands of what she was most afraid of.”
Ramsey said she collapsed on the ground beside her dog and wept.
“I feel like my soul left my body and I was just screaming and crying,” she said. “I didn’t say anything to him, I saw his face, I saw he had the rifle, I think, that he shot her with.”
A woman on the property, who Ramsey assumed to be the man’s wife or girlfriend, told them to get off the property and watched them leave with Sophie in Pietz’s arms.
Because they were so close to the property line, it remains unclear whether or not the dogs were actually on the seller’s property or the neighboring property.
“I think the way that the property lines are drawn is such that maybe his driveway used to be some sort of easement to access something else, but I know that he feels that they were on his property,” Ramsey said. “There was no livestock, I mean Sophie didn’t even have time to do anything wrong or appear threatening, you know? There was no barking from any of the dogs.”
According to Ramsey, their listing agent had never had an issue with the neighbor before.
“She had some story about him helping the seller dig out some of her old flower bulbs before she moved. She is an elderly woman who raised her family there. After her husband died she moved, I believe the property has been vacant for several years. I think he’s used to that being his mountain because he’s the only neighbor anywhere near,” Ramsey said. “I just wish things had been handled completely differently. I wish that I had known that he was fearful of outsiders buying that property.”
Ramsey and Pietz filed a report with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office shortly after the incident but said she “feels like no one cares and nothing can be done.”
Responding to the Times-Standard’s request for more information, Humboldt County Sheriff spokesperson Samantha Karges said she would reach out to the investigating deputy for more information but did not respond ahead of print deadline.
“The sick irony of this is that we were looking for more land so that Sophie could have the freedom to run around,” Ramsey said.
Ramsey said Sophie was a sweet dog who loved to lay in the sunshine and cuddle under blankets with only her nose and tail exposed.
“She would curl up in a ball and poke her tail out so she could still express herself from under the covers,” Ramsey said. “She was just a very sweet and silly dog. Everyone who knew her loved her.”