Owner captured dumping sick dog in middle of the night in freezing conditions

Animal was left in freezing conditions for seven hours outside a rescue centre

Person dumping a sick dog in the freezing cold outside Richmond Animal Care and Control (Richmond Animal Care and Control)

A dog shelter in Richmond, Virginia, is looking for the person who dumped a dog outside their shelter before it was found “30 minutes from death”.

Richmond Animal Care and Control said the two-year-old dog, which was a boxer-pit breed, was close to death when they found him.

A security camera on the property captured the individual dumping the dog at the facility at 2.36am in freezing conditions and it wasn't found until 9.30am when staff arrived at the shelter. The dog was immediately driven to a veterinarian for urgent treatment.

Temperatures that night reached -7°C (or 19°F).

“The person (s) in this video footage knowingly left a very sick, emaciated dog in our parking lot in the freezing cold,” said the centre on a Facebook post about the incident.

“Somehow he managed not to freeze to death in the seven hours he endured and pulled himself from his hiding spot to the sunshine at 9.30am when we found him. Our sadness has turned to anger,” continued the post.

The recuse centre's video shows the dog, which has since been named Olympus, staggering and falling on the sidewalk for hours before he dragging himself behind a wall at the rescue centre.

“He was completely emaciated. He was freezing cold,” RACC director Christie Chipps-Peters told CBS 6. “His little paws started to turn under, which is what we see when death comes often.”

Remarkably, the dog survived: “Olympus is doing better (waiting on more test results today, 8 Febuary) but he’s eating and up/walking and we will post a full update once we have a defined diagnosis.”

The shelter suspects that this was a case of neglect, rather than a stray dog. Feral dogs are typically resourceful and about to find food, this dog was emancipated. “Usually, the dogs that are emaciated and horribly neglected like this is a human at cause,” said Mr Chipps-Peters.

The centre is actively working on an investigation to find our who did this to Olympus, it is asking for anyone with information on this incident to contact Metro Richmond Crime Stoppers.