AN ALASKAN HUSKY named Dakota appears in this photo provided by the Waterville Humane Society Thursday in Waterville. Gov. Paul LePage said he pardoned the dog from a death sentence levied at a court hearing last week, after it killed a neighbor’s small pug in May 2016 and later broke out of court-ordered confinement to bite the same neighbor’s Pekingnese, which survived. Dakota was ordered held at a shelter and has since been adopted. District Attorney Maeghan Maloney says her office is researching LePage’s pardoning power. LePage says the new owner didn’t know about the court hearing. Pet pardons aren’t unprecedented. In 1994, Democratic New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman saved a Japanese Akita that faced execution. — The Associated Press