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Q: It’s still a mystery?

A: Well, yes and no. We’re positive that he’s a puppy mill dog. There’s no question from his behaviour that he basically had little to no human contact for his entire life. He has dental disease, and was anemic and hypoproteinemic and had whipworm. But we fixed all of that.

Q: How long do you think he was in that shape?

A: Months to years, absolutely. This is not a dog who could survive on his own in the forest, though, so I don’t believe that based on his body condition that he would have been [wandering] more than a week or two at most.

Q: Have you been able to trace the steps?

A: An investigation is ongoing.

Q: So your husband spotted him first. What did he think when he found Shrek?

A: He thought it was honestly an old piece of carpet or maybe a dead coyote. He wasn’t sure. All he saw was this blob. He was driving out to the pond and Shrek wasn’t that far from the lane-way.

Q: What time of day?

A: This is the part that really breaks my heart. It was morning and it was after that horrible drenching, torrential downpour the night before. I think back to waking up at 2 a.m. thinking ‘Wow that sounds bad.’ And he was out there. He was scared when we found him, so he wasn’t easy to approach and we didn’t know if he had rabies or if he was injured, so we put a blanket over him and put him in a kennel. He tried to run away a little bit, but he couldn’t move. If you think about it, you’re in prison for the first six years of your life, and you finally escape with 50% of your body weight in fecal matted hair on your back and if you don’t know what to do when you get into the big outdoors, you just go until you can’t go anymore.