Courtesy Bock family

Bernese Mountain Dogs, Argus and Fiona, were allegedly shot and killed by Gabriel Pilotti after they wandered onto his property in Chester Springs, Pa.

A Chester County, Pa., man will now be charged for shooting and killing his neighbor's two beloved dogs.

Courtesy Chester County D.A.'s Office

Police say 72-year-old Gabriel Pilotti shot and killed his neighbor's two dogs.

"These are dogs that slept with the kids in their rooms," said Bill Bock, who had to break the news about the family pets to his children.

"A lot of tears," said Bock.

Argus and Fiona, Bernese Mountain dogs, escaped from their fenced yard Feb. 13 in West Vincent Township, Chester County in Pennsylvania. They wound up inside Gabriel Pilotti's yard, where he keeps sheep.

Previous story from NBCPhiladelphia.com: Man shoots, kills neighbor's dogs

Pilotti, 72, shot and killed both dogs, according to police. Investigators say he told them he was afraid the dogs would hurt his sheep.

"I asked him why he would shoot two dogs," said Bock. "And he said, 'I shoot first.'"

The shootings caused tension in the community because initially Pilotti was not charged. Prosecutors said his actions were justified because of a Pennsylvania law that states you can kill a dog if it's caught in the act of pursuing a domesticated animal.

West Vincent police went back to investigate some more, however, and determined that the dogs were not chasing or pursuing Pilotti's sheep when he shot them.

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According to District Attorney Tom Hogan, Pilotti shot the first dog in the head, then reloaded his shotgun and killed the second dog as it was running away from Pilotti.

"There was no justification for the killing of these two dogs," Hogan said. "Our sympathies go out to the family and children who lost their beloved pets."

Pilotti is charged with cruelty to animals and recklessly endangering another person because police say there was a house in the line of fire when Pilotti was shooting. Police say Pilotti "expressed remorse for his conduct."

Original video story from NBCPhiladelphia.com:

Forget Lassie.

A homeless man outside Olympia, Wash., is thanking his dog, Buddy, for heroics that may well have saved his life.

On Wednesday afternoon, the man – whose identity is not being released by police – tucked a note into his dog’s harness with a hastily written plea for help. Since early that morning he had been unable to move, lying on the floor of the makeshift home he had constructed in the woods near Tumwater.

“This was his last-ditch effort. He thought he was going to die,” said Detective Jen Kolb of the Tumwater Police Department.

Luckily, a woman who frequently walked her dog through the woods recognized Buddy and noticed the note. The word “HELP” was scribbled in large font, with the plea: “Send help. No joke. Cannot walk.”

The woman quickly dialed 911, but what was missing from the SOS was the man’s name or any indication of where he was. But on the other side of the scrap paper were directions to the Washington state Department of Social and Health Services, which frequently works with the area’s homeless.

Police scoured the woods, known to have a large homeless population, looking for make-shift shelters where the injured man may have been. After a short search, the man was found and transported to a hospital in Olympia where he was treated and released.

“This was his best friend, and the one he relied on when he needed someone the most,” said Kolb. “It’s one of those heartwarming stories that kind of remind you of Lassie."

The man is recovering with friends, while Buddy has been taken in by animal services.

A dog fight ended with a hail of bullets in a Philadelphia suburb, leaving residents shocked and looking for answers.

The incident started on Friday at around noon when a stray dog got into a pickup truck at a red light in Chester, Pa., and began fighting with another pooch, NBCPhiladelphia.com reported.

Cops were called when the dogs couldn't be separated, and when they arrived, witnesses were stunned at the reaction. One officer shot at the dogs five times with a pistol, then another fired one blast from a shotgun. Both dogs were killed.

And this all went down right in front of Chester High School.

Tehran Freeman, a dog owner himself who lives down the block from the shooting, captured the incident on video with his cell phone and was outraged at the handling of the situation.

"I don't care how bad they try to make Chester seem, this is not a war zone, you don't do things like that," he told NBCPhiladelphia.com. 

"I thought them as the police should be held to a higher standard and would have some type of procedure for breaking it up than actually pulling out your pistols in front of the high school."

Freeman told NBCNews.com that the bigger, more aggressive dog seemed to be a pit bull and had a leash, but the other smaller dog didn't. It was unclear who the owners were.

He said when he saw the police the "last thing that I thought would happen" is that they would open fire with their guns.

"It wasn't secure at all, I know bullets can ricochet and anything else -- you're trying to shoot two animals in the back of a metal vehicle, that bullet can go anywhere."

Chester police told NBCPhiladelphia.com that the incident was under investigation and at the time the animal control officer in the city was unavailable. 

Freeman added that some of the cops involved seemed as upset as anyone. 

"One of the officers actually looked very, very shaken up about it," he said. 

Updated at 10:10 p.m. ET: A necropsy indicates that the carcasses of animals dumped near a public park were those of adult foxes, not puppies.  

DNA testing to confirm the species will take several weeks, but the eye sockets and teeth suggest they are adult foxes, humane society shelter manager Cary Moran said late Monday afternoon.

Fox hunting is legal in Pennsylvania from October through February, according to the state game commission website.

Animal welfare investigators had sought clues in the skinning of 11 animals they believed were puppies -- their bodies were found stuffed in a bag left in a ditch in eastern Pennsylvania.

The gruesome discovery was made on Friday in Lower Macungie, about 20 miles from Lynn Township, where days earlier another animal carcass was found skinned and cooked, with its feet cut off, said Bruce Fritch, board president of the Lehigh County Humane Society, which is investigating the slayings.

"It's just heinous," Fritch said.

A black plastic sack containing the skinless puppy bodies was found by a woman walking her dog near a park in Lower Macungie.

The bodies were taken to a veterinary hospital, where experts attempted to determine the cause of death, he said.

Two pairs of thin latex gloves were found beside the animal and will be sent to a forensics lab.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Keith Srakocic / AP

The overlook platform where a boy fell into the exhibit home to African painted dogs is seen at the Pittsburgh Zoo on Nov. 5, 2012.

The fatal mauling of a toddler by African wild dogs at the Pittsburgh Zoo highlights an uncomfortable truth for all zoos: No exhibit is fail-proof.

Striking a balance between providing a safe and yet authentic experience is an evolving science on its own, with the ultimate goal being to protect both animals and visitors, said Doug Warmolts, Director of Animal Care at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. 

“Short of putting everything behind glass and solid barriers, it’s hard to make everything absolutely safe,” Warmolts said. “People’s expectations when they come to a zoo or aquarium are to have a meaningful experience where they have that connection with the animals, and it’s hard to do that if they’re looking through a chain-link fence.”

Gene J. Puskar / AP file

An African Painted Dog yawns at the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium in Pittsburgh as he lays in a pile of hay Thursday, March 12, 2009.

Maddock Derkosh, 2, fell into an African painted dog exhibit late Sunday morning at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium. The boy’s mother had put him on a wooden railing at the edge of a viewing deck to see the animals, officials said, and the boy fell into the exhibit. He initially landed on the netting below the deck but bounced several times before dropping about 11 feet into the dog’s enclosure.  

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Witnesses said at least three dogs surrounded quickly, attacking him at his head, neck and legs. An autopsy revealed Monday that the boy was killed by the animals, not by the fall.

The exhibit housing the wild dogs remained closed Tuesday pending an investigation by police, who said it was still too early to determine whether criminal charges will be brought against the zoo or the boy’s mother. The zoo opened for visitors Tuesday.

Accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums in September – the gold standard for zoos in the U.S. – the zoo met or exceeded all safety standards for animals and visitors, Mary Baker, the zoo’s president and CEO, said Monday.

Warmolts said exhibits at accredited zoos are designed by architecture, engineering and design firms that understand zoo animals’ behavior, from their abilities to jump, climb and dig to how to properly care and set standards for them in a zoo setting.

“We have to blend those together to create an exhibit that’s not only a suitable and enriching environment for the animals and a safe experience for people to feel immersed into that environment,” Warmolts said.

“We have fences and barriers and moats and signs and even zoo staff that can keep visitors at a certain distance from the animals. That’s why what happened is very rare. But we can’t always monitor them," he said.

In San Diego, officials said the incident in Pittsburgh is likely to prompt larger, industry-wide reassessments.

“The way humans interact with animals has changed drastically over the last hundred years, so certainly one of the things that zoos have had to be is highly adaptive, especially in these situations when tragic accidents happen,” Christina Simmons, a spokesperson for the San Diego Zoo, told NBC News.

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com 

In Chicago, officials at the Brookfield Zoo said Monday that the events at the Pittsburgh Zoo have so far not prompted the change of any of their practices or protocols.

"We have, like all other accredited institutions, procedures and policies that we follow in the event of an accident -- even a person having a heart attack -- and we also drill on those events too," said Bill Zeigler, the Brookfield Zoo's Senior Vice President of Collections and Animal Programs. 

Even with safety standards enforced, Wamolts said, the zoo industry is constantly dealing with "human error" by its visitors. 

"What happened is very rare," Warmolts said. "We’re always in the process of evaluating and reviewing and making adjustments as needed, and it’s an art to try and determine how to do that. What’s more common is people exhibiting inappropriate behavior. It’s just unfortunate."

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A medical examiner has ruled that a 2-year-old boy who tumbled into an African painted dog exhibit at a Pittsburgh zoo was killed by the animals and not by the fall, a zoo official said Monday.

"What we understand from the medical examiner's report, the child did not die from the fall. The child was mauled by the dogs," said Barbara Baker, CEO and president of the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium, WPIX-TV reported.

Officials say the child's mother had placed the boy on a wooden rail above the exhibit so he could get a better look at the animals. There is a net below the rail, but Baker says the boy bounced off it and into the enclosure.

"The child initially was caught by the netting. From witness accounts the child was so small that he bounced, then he bounced twice and then bounced into the exhibit," Baker said.

Gene J. Puskar / AP file

An African Painted Dog at the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium in Pittsburgh in 2009.

Baker fought back tears as she discussed the incident during a press conference at the zoo on Monday.

"The zoo feels terrible about this tragic accident that happened. It's your worst nightmare as a zoo professional," Baker said, according to WPIX-TV.

The animals attacked so quickly that by the time a veterinarian and other zoo staffers arrived, they determined it would have been futile to try to rescue the child, Baker said.

Boy falls into Pittsburgh zoo exhibit, mauled to death by African painted dogs

'Someone help!'
Authorities said that zoo staff and then police responded "within minutes." Visitors described that time as being filled with screams for help.

"The screams just kept coming and coming: 'Someone help! Someone has to do something',” Angela Cinti, a witness, told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday.  

Zookeepers called off some of the dogs, and seven of them immediately went to a back building. Three more eventually were drawn away from the child, but the last dog was aggressive and police had to shoot the animal.

"There were three dogs, one at his head, one on the left side of his neck and another one down by his leg, " Cinti told The Post-Gazette. ”A [zoo employee] got there and hopped over a fence with a rake and he was banging ... trying to distract the dogs, but they wouldn't move."

Experts said the death is highly unusual.

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Steve Feldman, a spokesman for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, told The Associated Press no one he's spoken to can recall any deaths of children at an accredited zoo over the last 40 years or more. Feldman said the Pittsburgh Zoo successfully completed its five-year review in September, which means it meets or exceeds all safety standards.

Authorities didn't release the name of the boy but relatives identified him as Maddock Derkosh, according to the Post-Gazette. Authorities said his mother is 34 years old and lives in Pleasant Hills, just outside Pittsburgh. The boy's father was identified by the Post-Gazette as Jason Derkosh, a building designer at the architectural firm L. Robert Kimball & Associates.

The zoo was immediately closed, and it was not clear when it will reopen, authorities said.

African painted dogs are about as big as medium-sized domestic dogs, and weight 37 to 80 pounds, according to the zoo. They have large, rounded ears and dark brown circles around their eyes and are considered endangered.

The attack happened in a 1.5 acre exhibit called the Painted Dog Bush Camp that's part of a larger open area where elephants, lions and other animals can be seen. Visitors walk onto a deck that is glassed on the sides, but open in front where the roughly four-foot railing is located.

In May, some of the dogs crawled under a fence and escaped into a part of the exhibit that's usually closed. The zoo was on lockdown for about an hour as a precaution and the animals were coaxed back in.

Fatal attacks
Past fatal attacks have prompted zoos around the nation to review safety features of their exhibits. In 2007 a tiger jumped over a wall at the San Francisco Zoo, killing one visitor and wounding two others. Authorities first said the wall was 18 feet high, but a review found it was just 12 ½ feet.

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In September a man jumped off an elevated viewing train at the Bronx Zoo in New York and was severely mauled by tigers.

Kraus said there was nothing to prevent visitors to the Pittsburgh Zoo's painted dog exhibit from jumping into the exhibit area.

Police and the Allegheny County medical examiner's office are investigating, and they haven't yet interviewed the mother or father, who are receiving grief counseling.

Baker said the zoo, which has never had a visitor death, will also investigate. She said no decision has been made yet on the future of the exhibit.

NBC News's Sevil Omer and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The Humane Society of North Texas is offering a $500 reward for information on who dumped 92 dogs along country roads in Denton County Monday and Tuesday nights.

Police in Flower Mound found 51 Maltese mixed-breed dogs late Monday night along a country road near Highway 377 and Stonecrest Road.

Then, late Tuesday night, 41 dogs -- mostly Cavalier King spaniels -- were found along a rural road near Sanger.

The Humane Society believes both cases are related -- probably the operators of a puppy mill who no longer want to breed the animals under a strict new state law.

"Unfortunately, there are a few of these really bad breeders who know they're not going to pass inspections and are trying to get out of the business fast," said Peggy Brown, coordinator of community outreach and education for the Humane Society.

The dogs rescued in Flower Mound are being housed in that city's animal shelter.

See original story, video on NBCDFW.com

All of the animals are filthy and may have lived under horrible conditions.

"Unfortunately, with a lot of these puppy mill dogs, their feet may have never touched the ground," Brown said. "They could have spent their whole lives in cages."

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Volunteers will bathe the animals in the next few days before putting them up for adoption.

"It's really heartbreaking," Brown said. "Hopefully, we can change their lot in life and give them a better future than their past has been."

Anyone interested in adopting the dogs can contact the Humane Society of North Texas in Fort Worth at 817-332-HSNT or the city animal shelter in Flower Mound at 972-874-6390.

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