A Starke county couple was shocked when a neighbor shot their pet dog this week. Especially because the woman, who admits to shooting it, runs a dog grooming company.

The dog's owners say Peyton, their 6-year-old Siberian-Husky mix, is a ‘hundred pound teddy bear.’

Peyton is expected to survive.

They say he roams around the neighborhood regularly, playing with children, and never even bothers any of the chickens, ducks or other 4-H animals at a nearby neighbor’s house.

So they don't understand why a woman living just down the road, felt like shooting at their dog was her best option.

Dan and Rebecca Norman’s new German Sheppard, Chloe, was there when their other dog was shot Tuesday.

“The first thing she does is go right to Peyton’s house and she'll go inside and sniff around and she'll sit by the door and look at me like, 'where's my buddy?'” said Rebecca Norman.

You can see a mark on Chloe’s back where the Normans think the buckshot must have singed her, then left some more serious marks on Peyton.

“One of the bones in his leg was just shattered, and he's got pins and rods in there. He'll be in there a week, they said, recuperating,” Dan Norman said.

Norman and his wife are traveling back and forth between the pet hospital in Fort Wayne to check on Peyton, who may undergo yet another surgery. They’re concerned about potential tissue damage.

They found it troubling that the person who admitted to shooting their dog seemed unapologetic.

“She made it very clear that that was her property, and she didn't like having stray dogs around,” Dan Norman said.

The woman is Linda Siroky, who runs a dog grooming business about a mile away.

She didn't want to speak on camera, but says she is sorry that “the only dogs she ever shot,” belonged to the Normans.

She says she'd had problems with strays other than the Norman’s dogs on her land near her animals; and that authorities recently told her if the dogs were a problem, and she didn’t know who they belonged to, she should shoot them.

She said she was concerned about the safety of her own animals, after seeing stray dogs gut a deer near where he horses are kept.

But the Normans wonder how their friendly dogs, who were wearing tags and collars, could have appeared to be strays.

“Thankfully he still has his leg and he will recuperate, but its going to be a long process and an expensive one too,” Dan Norman said.

The Normans hope the prosecutor's office will press charges, and possibly award them some money to pay their dog's medical bills.

They estimate they’ve already spent around $3,000 on Peyton’s recovery.

The prosecutor’s office says they've given the case back to police for now for further investigation.

Siroky says she and her husband both went after the dogs with guns after seeing them come on her property. She says her husband fired a warning shot, and the dogs started running away, toward her.

She says she felt somewhat threatened, and shot at the dogs. She said things were happening too quickly to tell if they were wearing collars, or who they may belong to, before she shot.

Siroky says she does not think she should have to pay the dog’s medical bills, because they were on her property almost a mile away.

According to the police report, she told Dan Norman “she kept all her animals in pens, and he should too.”

She says she did not originally apologize because she felt threatened on the phone when Norman “yelled” at her for shooting his dog.