A Lino Lakes family is looking for authorities to press charges after someone shot and killed the family dog with a bow and arrow.

About 9 p.m. March 21, Rhonda Neuberger let her dog Wally, a 3-year-old beagle mix, out to run in the yard. While finishing laundry inside the house, Neuberger heard a yelp from outside.

"What we saw when we all went out was Wally trying to walk toward our back steps and the arrow was sticking right through him," she said Friday.

Neuberger's husband, Edwin, removed the arrow, which punctured his lungs and broke several ribs, and applied pressure to the wound while the police were called.

In an attempt to save Wally's life, the family swaddled the dog in blankets and rushed him to a veterinarian -- but it was too late.

"We pulled up and he died as we opened the door," Rhonda Neuberger said.

"We've got a lot of family that cried along with us that night," she said. "You know, Wally was family."

A path of blood and dog prints led police to a house across the street, the police report stated, where officers eventually arrested a 21-year-old man. He was released three days later.

Any charges are pending the conclusion of a police investigation, Assistant Anoka County Attorney Bryan Lindberg said Friday.

According to the police report, when questioned about his whereabouts, the man first told police he had been sleeping in the house and hadn't shot anything, but later said he was hunting fox out of his back window.

When officers told him it was a dog that had been shot, the report stated, the man immediately replied, "Was it [the] Neubergers' dog?"

Police retrieved a hunting bow from the downstairs bedroom of the house and took the man into custody.

An unidentified man who answered the phone at the residence Friday declined to comment.

Mitch Anderson is a University of Minnesota student reporter on assignment for the Star Tribune.