An un­marked grave dec­o­rat­ed with a cross, an­gels and flow­ers, lo­cat­ed deep in the for­est of Erin, be­came the sub­ject of a po­lice in­quiry yes­ter­day. The of­fi­cers ini­ti­tal­ly thought the grave con­tained hu­man re­mains. How­ev­er, it was lat­er re­port­ed to be the bur­ial site of a dog named Snoopy, owned by Richard Shep­pard, man­ag­er of a promi­nent oil drilling com­pa­ny. In an in­ter­view, Shep­pard said he buried the cock­er spaniel af­ter it suc­cumbed to tick fever over the Christ­mas week­end.

Shep­pard's teenage daugh­ters Lisa, Sta­cy, and Sale­na were dev­as­tat­ed by the death and asked that their pet be giv­en a prop­er bur­ial. Shep­pard said he did not want to bury the an­i­mal close to their home at Del­hi Road, Fyz­abad, so he buried it in a forest­ed area at Well Num­ber 15, lo­cat­ed off Cara­pal Ex­ten­sion Road, Erin. On Sat­ur­day, at his griev­ing daugh­ters' re­quests, Shep­pard took down two an­gels from his Christ­mas tree and re­turned to the site, where he said a prayer and placed flow­ers on the grave. Say­ing he nev­er ex­pect­ed to at­tract po­lice, Shep­pard ex­plained: "That dog was part of our fam­i­ly...He was over a year old and when he died it was a great loss to all of us."

Show­ing off a pic­ture of Snoopy on his cel­lu­lar phone, Shep­pard said he was sur­prised that se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel from the oil drilling site did not in­form the po­lice it was his dog's grave. He said when he spoke to the po­lice they seemed sat­is­fied. Po­lice did not dig up the grave, but left the site hours lat­er af­ter in­ter­view­ing Shep­pard.