A Chilliwack, B.C., family is furious after their six-year-old pit bull was shot and killed by police who came onto their property unannounced to perform a training exercise with a police dog.

Brian Hacker said his dog, Fendi, had gone out into the yard Tuesday morning to relieve herself when two police dog handlers and a police dog came onto the family's property without advance notice.

The pit bull and the police dog engaged each other, he said, and moments later, Fendi was shot.

"They can't break up a dog fight?" he told CTV News. "We're not wrong here on any level."

Hacker's wife, Jennifer Gorcak, told ctvbc.ca that she was folding laundry in the bedroom when she heard the commotion and went outside.

"My husband was two doors down from where the dog limped to her death. He was on his knees screaming, 'They killed Fendi!'" she recalled.

"They should not have been in my yard unannounced," she said.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Peter Thiessen told ctvbc.ca Tuesday night that the training exercise was being performed by an Abbotsford police officer connected to the Lower Mainland Regional District Police Dog Service and a Chilliwack RCMP officer.

He said that the two officers were training a police dog to track a suspect through a residential area.

When they entered the property, the police dog came under attack by the pit bull, Thiessen said.

Thiessen said the police dog was bitten in the throat.

He said the officers attempted to separate the dogs but were unable to. They feared that the police dog's life was in danger, and a decision was made to shoot the pit bull.

One shot was fired, he said.

Thiessen said this wasn't the first time police dog handlers had used the area for training and that residents had consented to the exercises in the past.

He confirmed that residents were not given prior notice of Tuesday's exercise. He said he didn't know why the notice didn't go out.

That'll form part of the investigation, he said.