A dog in Lexington was shot with a blow dart, and animal control officers are trying to find out who did it.

Investigators say the dog, named Champ, was shot in the Masterson Station neighborhood.

When Champ's owners brought him to Animal Clinic Leestown Road, 1590 Leestown Rd #128, he wasn't doing well. He was bloated and was having trouble breathing.

X-ray images revealed what turned out to be a steel dart, roughly six inches long, inside the dog's chest.

"The dog was very fortunate because that arrow or that dart could not have gone any better place if it had to go in the chest. It missed the heart, it missed the major blood vessels," said veterinarian Dr. Gary Clark.

Champ needed emergency surgery to remove the dart. With the procedure expected to cost thousands of dollars, his owners faced a painful decision to put the dog down.

That's when Amy Neville, a veterinary technician at the clinic, offered an alternative: if Champ's owners surrendered him, she would take him to have the surgery done.

"I just didn't want the hope to die," Neville said. "Someone did this awful thing to him. I didn't want their kids to think that there were only awful people in this world."

Champ is expected to recover following surgery.

A

has been set up to help Neville pay off the nearly $7,000 bill for the surgery.

If anyone has information on the shooting, you are asked to call (859) 255-9033.