01:47 PM CDT on Tuesday, October 4, 2005

By YOLANDA WALKER / WFAA-TV

WFAA-TV

Tiffany Moore's dog Cuda (inset) was shot and killed after he got loose in the neighborhood.

Fort Worth police are investigating a shooting late last week that left a dog dead and its owner upset.

Tiffany Moore, who lives in the Handley-Meadowbrook neighborhood off of Loop 820, lost her dog Cuda when he was shot and killed last Friday morning.

"He was just a really friendly dog," Moore said.

But neighbors said the Chow/yellow Lab mix got out of her garage and went on a tear around the neighborhood.

One nearby resident said she confronted the dog in her backyard.

He was lunging at the fence, all teeth bared," the unidentifed neighbor said. "When I tried to shoo him away, he wouldn't go."

Moore said the eight-year-old Cuda has health problems, and she doubts he could be that ferocious.

"My animal can't even jump an inch off the ground," she said.

Debbie Mosley said the dog tried to attack her cats, and that's when she made a spur-of-the-moment decision: she got in her car, followed Cuda and shot him in the stomach.

"It's the absolute last thing I would have ever wanted to do," Mosley said. "Being a responsible handgun carrier, I wouldn't ever do that unless I felt it was a situation that needed to be remedied right then."

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Mosley said she's an avid animal lover, but after losing a cat to a white dog in the neighborhood, she feared Cuda would hurt someone.

"I have witnessed the violence of the dogs on one than more occasion, going back three years," she said, adding that she has filed numerous complaints.

However, Moore said it's unfair to target every dog in the neighborhood.

"There are large white dogs all in the neighborhood ... you don't shoot the animals," she said. "I cannot believe that someone would just take matters into their own hands like that."

Fort Worth police are investigating the case, and said they plan to take it to the district attorney's office. If the district attorney accepts it, it would be an animal cruelty charge.

E-mail: ywalker@wfaa.com