Wyoming man offering $1,500 reward for information on dog

PIERRE — Months after his beloved Chesapeake Bay Retriever was found dead in Hughes County, Mac Mackaben had given up hunting, was getting ready to sell his guns and had sworn off South Dakota.

Now, the 60-year old Wyoming man is back doing some of the things he loves and searching for the person who killed his treasured dog and friend, Little Kit Carson, near the beginning of August about 400 yards away from Christensen Farms.

“I don’t want to see somebody do this to somebody else,” he said. “It hurt me so bad. I got somebody to watch my dogs. I took 10 weeks off just to travel. This dog was my hunting partner. I made money with him, but the main thing is he was my friend.”

Mackaben is offering $1,500 for information leading to the conviction of the person who shot Little Kit, a purebred trained for retrieval and the rescue of avalanche victims.

Mackaben, who spends time in parts of the west for hunting, fly fishing and back country skiing, said he was staying with a friend near Spring Creek with his trained dogs when he let them out to run to Lake Oahe. He said he whistled for the dogs to return and all did except Little Kit, a dog bred to be happy and with facial features Mackaben prefers, he said.

“My stud dog or my best friend dog or the best dog anybody’s ever seen, he didn’t come,” Mackaben said. “He’s never once in his life wandered. I started looking around and I said, ‘If I shoot a gun, he’ll come running.’

“I shot a gun and nothing. Then, one of the neighbors came over and said they saw the dog and they yelled at it and it turned around like it was going to come back. I thought it’d be right around, maybe doing something. I was worried more about the snakes.”

After putting up posters and contacting pilots to look for Little Kit, Mackaben said he received a phone call about Little Kit’s whereabouts.

“Somebody called and they found the dog on the dead-end road to Christensen farms,” he said. “You can see the tire tracks coming right over there to put the gun out the window and shoot him. Somebody just wanted to kill some

thing — to kill a dog. Why would anybody kill a dog?”

Mackaben said the dog had never wandered before and might have been following a smell from the hog farm.

The more than 100-pound dog was different than the hundreds of dogs Mackaben’s raised. He said he was once offered $55,000 for the dog and it was the offspring of a beloved dog someone stole from Mackaben’s kennel. He said Little Kit was set to grace dog food bags of a company that sponsors Mackaben.

“I got fantastic dogs,” he said. “But I’ve only had two that were remarkable. I wouldn’t have sold him for $100,000.”

Little Kit was seven years old, at his prime, according to Mackaben who said Little Kit’s puppies are like their father but do not have his colored coat that made him ideal for hunting pheasants in the prairie.

“He had the same heart and soul I have,” Mackaben said. “Why does that special one come along and everything lines up?”

At one point, Mackaben said he vowed to never return to South Dakota or go hunting again. He said he’s changed his mind with the help of friends and family.

“You can’t judge everybody by one person,” he said. “It did affect me. What got me through was my friends and my one son. He said, ‘If you died, wouldn’t you want someone to take the dog out hunting.’ I said, ‘Sure, because he loves it’. He said, ‘The dog would want the same thing.’ Dogs bring happiness to you, but they also bring such pain.”

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Mackaben at 208-841-7600 or the Hughes County Sheriff.

“We have looked into it extensively,” said Hughes County Sheriff Mike Leidholt.

“We’ve basically run out of leads. We’re willing to look more into it if his reward offer brings any more information in.”