Dog shot on highway near Nye County

A dog known as Dudley was found shot in the face on a Nevada highway.

How did he end up there last weekend?

That’s what the Nevada Highway Patrol needs help from the public to figure out.

“Animal cruelty is a felony in Nevada, and these perpetrators need to be brought to justice,” Trooper Jason Buratczuk said in a news release Tuesday.

The dog was found bleeding from his mouth around noon Sunday on U.S. Highway 95 near Paiute Drive, northwest of Las Vegas, according to the Highway Patrol.

Dudley was taken to The Animal Foundation, at 655 N. Mojave Road, where vets determined he had likely been shot in the face.

Dr. Ken Sieranski, a veterinarian with The Animal Foundation, said Dudley was scheduled to have surgery Wednesday to remove bullet fragments and to adjust fractured teeth.

Buratczuk told reporters Tuesday afternoon that two people found the dog on the side of the road near the Las Vegas Paiute Golf Resort. They gave Dudley a blanket and a bowl of water, which was already stained red with blood when a trooper arrived.

“It’s unthinkable that someone would do something like this to an animal,” Buratczuk said.

Troopers have no leads on how the dog was shot or how long he was on the side of the road, he said.

“We don’t know who the owner of this dog is,” Buratczuk said. “If (Dudley) was shot, this is a crime.”

Read more about this story, and Dudley, on our newspaper’s website, pvtimes.com

Dudley, whom the Highway Patrol described on Tuesday as “the sweetest dog,” will be up for adoption once he recovers from his injuries. Dudley “loved all the attention and rubs he was getting,” the Highway Patrol said in Tuesday’s release.

“The dog was completely calm, docile, a sweetheart in (the trooper’s) words,” Buratczuk said, adding that it appeared obvious that Dudley was someone’s pet.