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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 young dog now named Adaline, or Addie for short, is recovering after being found shot multiple times and left in murky water inside an Oklahoma City culvert. Several 911 calls on Sunday, September 21, 2026, led Oklahoma City Animal Welfare officers to the dog near I-240 and Pennsylvania Avenue, where she was found wrapped in a tarp weighted down with metal, struggling to keep her head above the water.
Addie, who is less than a year old, was rushed in for emergency veterinary care and is now in the ICU at Neel Veterinary Hospital, receiving support through the local rescue group Angel Fund OKC. Misty Wilson, a registered veterinary technician and the founder of Angel Fund OKC, said Addie arrived covered in filth and fleas, with significant swelling and bruising across her body. “When we got her, it was just you could just tell it was a long period of abuse that she suffered that day,” Wilson told KFOR.
X-rays revealed the extent of her injuries. Veterinarians found her lungs were bruised, and five or six bullet fragments were still lodged in her head, believed to be from a pellet gun. So far, none of the fragments appear to have penetrated her brain. Wilson said the case is especially difficult because it comes just weeks after another dog, named Mango, arrived at Angel Fund OKC with a similar gunshot injury and survived. “The first one was hard, but now it’s like the second one in a month is just, I don’t understand it,” Wilson said. Addie already has a committed foster lined up for when she’s ready to leave the hospital.
My thoughts: What’s striking is Wilson’s own frame of reference here, 25 years as a vet tech, only three dogs she’s seen shot like this in that whole span, and two of them in the same month. That’s the detail that turns this from an isolated tragedy into something that reads more like a pattern worth paying attention to. It’s also worth sitting with the layered nature of what was done to Addie: shot, then wrapped in a tarp, then weighted down with metal and left in water. Each of those was a separate decision made after the last one. She’s alive because people called 911 instead of walking past a culvert.
Source: KFOR Oklahoma City, with additional reporting from KOKH FOX 25 and iHeartDogs.com
