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An Oklahoma teenager has admitted he shot and killed a pit bull with a bow and arrow and posted a photo of its corpse on Facebook, but says the dog appeared aggressive.

Caisen Green, 18, who had fled his hometown with his mother after outrage over the Facebook post led to threats, was interviewed Tuesday  night by Cherokee County Undersheriff Jason Chennault.

Chennault said he will add Green’s statement to his report and deliver it to the District Attorney’s Office today. Prosecutors will then decide whether Green will be charged, the Tahlequah Daily Press reported.

Green told sheriff’s officials that the dog was one of two that wandered onto his family’s property as he was practicing with his bow and arrow.

“The pit and a smaller, non-pit bulldog came into the yard,” said Chennault. “The pit bulldog looked diseased.” Green told Chennault that when he tried to scare the dogs away the pit bull growled and began to move toward him. He said the dog ran about 30 yards after he shot him with an arrow.

Green posted a Facebook photo of the dead pit bull with the message, “For all you Pit lovers out there, here’s what happens when one shows up around my house.”

Lou Hays, who volunteers with the Humane Society of Cherokee County said Green bragged about killing when he was contacted about the post, and didn’t indicate that the animal was causing any trouble .

Hays said HSCC would push for Green to be prosecuted and receive community service at the local shelter.

Green’s post was removed after calls, emails and faxes flooded into Cherokee County authorities over the weekend, many of them demanding he be arrested and expelled from school, some of them making threats.

Chennault said his meeting with Green and his attorney had to be set up at an “undisclosed location” because of the threats made toward Green and his family.

While taking photos of adoptable dogs at a California shelter, Maria Sanchez snapped a shot of a sad-looking man who lacked the money he needed to get his dog back.

Dave Thomas said he had been arrested for failure to appear in court for two traffic violations. Upon his arrest, his dog, a 2-year-old pit bull mix named Buzz Lightyear, was placed in the San Bernardino City Animal Shelter.

Thomas, upon his release, went to pick up Buzz, but was told he needed to pay $400 in shelter fees first. He had $6 in his pocket.

Shelter staff did let him visit Buzz, at which point, after giving his dog some water, Thomas took a seat outside the cage and cried. That’s about when Sanchez, a dog lover and photographer, happened by and took his photo.

“He sat down next to him and started weeping,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez posted the picture on her Facebook page and soon complete strangers were pledging money to help, KABC in Los Angeles reported.

Sanchez, initially, was unable to pass along the good news, or the donations, because she hadn’t gotten Thomas’ contact information. She posted flyers in the community, urging him to contact her.

On Monday night, KABC tracked Thomas down and put him in touch with Sanchez.

“Everything is taken care of,” she told him over the phone.

“God bless you darling,” he told Sanchez.

The two had planned to meet at the shelter yesterday and get Buzz out, but the shelter declined to release the dog until he was neutered.

While Thomas maintains he was charged only with not appearing in court for traffic-related offenses, police say he was suspected of possessing drugs and was charged with a felony.

Thomas said he had marijuana when he was arrested, but he showed reporters paperwork on Tuesday indicating he’s a medical marijuana patient, the Redlands Daily Facts reported.

It also reported that $2,000 had been raised, and that Thomas, since all the publicity, had received both a job offer and a marriage proposal.

Meanwhile, praise keeps pouring in for the efforts Sanchez made on her Facebook page:

“Dear Ms. Sanchez, I have worked very hard over the last 47 years to keep humans and their dogs together. When I read stories like that of Dave and Buzz and the horrible position they were put in needlessly I just want to give up on humans all together. Then someone like you comes out of the blue and manages to see what is truly important. That Buzz and Dave needed to be together no matter how hard the system tried to foil this end. Yes you are an Angel. Not only did you orchestrate the miracle of reuniting two beings that should have never been separated you actually “SAW” through your Angel’s eyes the miracle that needed to be. In this you reunite my faith with human beings once again. This gives me hope. A gift that seems to be pretty spare these days. Thank you.”

(Photo: Maria Sanchez / Facebook)

(You can find an update on this story here.)

An Oklahoma high school student who posted a photo on Facebook of a pit bull shot dead with an arrow has been forced to flee his home after receiving death  threats.

The image shows a dark-colored pit bull dead in a field with a pink arrow sticking out from his side.

“For all you Pit lovers out there. Here’s what happens when one shows up around my house,” read the post on the Facebook page of Caisen Green, 18.

Cherokee County Undersheriff Jason Chennault said the picture on the Sequoyah High School student’s Facebook page, came to his attention Saturday morning.

Chennault said that when he went to speak with Green he was told by his father that both Caisen and his mother had left the county due to death threats the teenager received.

“I understand people don’t want to see animals hurt,” Chennault said. “But death threats are not going to help the situation.”

Chennault said he planned to continue investigating.

But even if Green did kill the dog it might not necessarily be a crime, he noted.

“It’s a gray area,” Chennault told the Muskogee Phoenix. “If the dog is threatening livestock or your well-being, you can do what you have to do stop it. I’m going to do my best to get everything done this week, and we’ll forward the report to the District Attorney’s Office.”

Facebook users and others outraged by the post began sharing and writing about it shortly after it was posted, with many urging an investigation take place.

Lu Hayes, a volunteer with the Cherokee County Humane Society, said she first saw the picture last Thursday, and began sending it to different animal advocacy groups.

“A girl sent the picture to me, saying she wanted to report animal cruelty,” Hayes said.

“I started messaging (Green) and at first he acted like it wasn’t a big deal, like, ‘So what.’

“But I guess as it started getting spread around, and more people became aware of it, he changed his tune.”

Hayes said she’d like to see the district attorney’s office prosecute Green, who took the offending picture off his Facebook page after anger over it mounted.

(Photos: Caisen Green’s Facebook page)

(An update to this story can be found here.)

The canine nose got a vote of confidence Tuesday from the U.S. Supreme Court.

The unanimous decision stemmed from a case in Florida in which defense attorneys questioned a drug-sniffing dog’s credentials and reliability, and whether his alert was just cause to search a truck police had stopped.

The court ruled that, in the case of trained and certified dogs, it is — or as Justice Elena Kagan put it: “The sniff is up to snuff.”

Kagan said a dog’s “satisfactory performance” in a certification or training program provided sufficient reason for an officer to trust its alert, even though errors “may abound” when dogs get put to the test in the field.

The justices said that training records had established the reliability of Aldo, a German shepherd, in sniffing out contraband, and that Florida’s Supreme Court erred in suppressing evidence he found in Clayton Harris’ pickup truck — namely, methamphetamine ingredients.

The ruling, Reuters reports, gives law enforcement greater authority to use dogs to uncover illegal drugs.

“The question – similar to every inquiry into probable cause – is whether all the facts surrounding a dog’s alert, viewed through the lens of common sense, would make a reasonably prudent person think that a search would reveal contraband or evidence of a crime,”  Kagan wrote for the court. “A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test.”

The Harris case is one of two the court is considering about the validity of evidence obtained by drug-sniffing dogs. The second — which the high court has heard, but not decided —  involves a police dog named Franky, who alerted while standing on a home’s doorstep, prompting a search that led to the discovery of marijuana growing inside.

In the case decided Tuesday, defense lawyers for Harris challenged the search by Aldo, a police dog in Liberty County, Florida. The officer handling Aldo — because Harris appeared nervous and declined to approve a search of his vehicle — allowed the dog a “free air sniff.”

Based in part on Aldo’s reaction, a full search was conducted.

Harris’ lawyers challenged the search, questioning Aldo’s certification and whether he was reliable in sniffing out drugs.

Florida’s Supreme Court concluded that the state had not sufficiently established how well-trained Aldo was, and it ruled the evidence of the methamphetamine ingredients should not have been admitted.

Kagan wrote that the officer reasonably believed there was contraband inside the truck based on Aldo’s training, and that defense attorneys failed to show that Aldo was unreliable.