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Zack Keithy, our author, is a certified veterinarian technician (UC Blue Ash) for over 6 years (contact him here). The articles written here are based on his expertise and experience, combined with a review by our expert vet reviewers including Dr M. Tarantino. Learn more about us here.
A nine-month-old puppy named Zephyr is recovering at a Nebraska animal shelter after being found alone and starving in a pumpkin patch field in Otoe County. The Capital Humane Society in Lincoln shared her story in a September 26, 2025 Facebook post, describing her as “starving and emaciated” when she was discovered.
“She was so desperate to survive that she had been eating her own feces,” the shelter said. Zephyr weighed just 12.1 pounds when she arrived, according to Jake Bornschlegl, the shelter’s director of veterinary medicine, who told KLKN a healthy weight for a dog her age would be 35 to 40 pounds. Bornschlegl said Zephyr had a difficult time moving when she first came in. “She can’t lift her head up, she can’t move herself in any way, shape or form,” he said. “She just kind of laid there in whatever position she was at.”
Because of her condition, shelter staff say her recovery could take months. She is being monitored constantly and receiving food and IV fluids as the team works to bring her back to full strength. In a September 27 post, the shelter said it was “cautiously optimistic” about a full recovery, calling it a good sign that she’d started eating. “She’s continuing to make progress but she has a long road ahead of her towards a full recovery,” the shelter wrote the following day. “Our veterinary team has done an awesome job this weekend taking care of her and we are so lucky to have such amazing and caring staff who go above and beyond to help pets like Zephyr!”
My thoughts: The detail about Zephyr eating her own feces is the one that’s hard to shake, and it’s really a measure of just how long she must have gone without food before anyone found her. A dog that young shouldn’t be at a fraction of her healthy weight, and the fact that she couldn’t even lift her head when she arrived says a lot about how close this was. The shelter’s cautious language, “cautiously optimistic,” “a long road ahead,” feels honest rather than overly reassuring, which matters for a case this serious.
Source: The Kansas City Star
