SAN BENITO – A Cameron County woman is asking the sheriff’s department to look into an animal cruelty case after she found a dog left for dead with burns down his back lying in the middle of a road.

For nearly a month, Emma Hotze has worked to nurse the dog back to health.

“His name is ‘Hotah,’ which means strong in the Lakota language,” she explained.

When Hotze found Hotah curled up in the middle of the road late one night, she wasn’t expecting what she saw.

“I was like ‘oh he’ll just get up and move,’ and when I got closer I saw the injury on his back where it was all red and it looked infected and I immediately pulled over,” she told CHANNEL 5 NEWS. “I thought he had gotten run over by a car or hit by a car.”

She was able to get him into her truck and take him home.

“He was very, very, very malnourished. He was just a skeleton,” she said.

Even though he was malnourished, the dog was in such bad shape that he wouldn’t eat. Hotze took him to The Country Vet in Harlingen the next day.

“They said that the burn on him was intentional and it was done by either hot oil or from chemicals,” she said.

 Hotah also has burns to the under backside of his body, which Hotze said is another reason why vets believe he was purposely burned.

Hotah is lucky to find Hotze, because now he has a new forever home.

Hotze told CHANNEL 5 NEWS she reported the case to the Cameron County Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff Omar Lucio stated cases like this are taken very seriously and the sheriff’s department will be looking into it.

“I hope that they are able to find whoever did this and give them the consequence that they deserve, because this is absolutely ridiculous that someone would do this to an animal,” Hotze said.