A small Missouri town will pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man whose 13-pound blind and deaf shih tzu dog was shot and killed by a police officer. It is one of the largest settlements of its kind, an animal rights group says.

Nicholas Hunter filed a lawsuit last year against the City of Sturgeon, Missouri, and former Sturgeon police officer Myron Woodson, alleging his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when Woodson killed his dog Teddy shortly after finding it wandering in a neighbor's yard on May 19, 2024.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), an animal rights advocacy group, provided a grant to help cover costs for the lawsuit and announced the settlement last Friday in a press release.

"Mr. Hunter is relieved this matter is concluded but nothing can ever bring his Teddy back," Hunter's attorneys, Daniel J. Kolde and Eric C. Crinnian, said in the release. "Teddy was a good dog who did not deserve this. We hope that other departments will learn from this and train their officers better in the future so events like this don't happen again. We also are grateful to the ALDF for their support and efforts to bring light to tragedies like Teddy and encourage better training and more responsible police behavior towards beloved family pets."

Teddy's shooting was a particularly egregious example of a common phenomena: police needlessly shooting family dogs. (There have been so many cases over the years that we have a "puppycide" tag for stories on the Reason website.) No one knows exactly how many dogs police shoot around the country, but every year, there are more cases of wanton killings that, besides terrorizing owners, generate huge lawsuits, viral outrage, and sometimes result in officers being fired or facing trial, such as in the case of a New Orleans officer who shot and killed a puppy.