Animal control officers made a grisly discovery in the Town of Sand Lake. A starved pit bull’s body was left in a wooded area off Parker Road. Erin Vannella reports.

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SAND LAKE, N.Y. -- Walking along Parker Road in Sand Lake Thursday, police say someone found a pit bull, dead. Photographs of the emaciated dog are too gruesome to show.

“You could just see the muzzle, the face of the puppy and kind of faded out the rest just so nobody. You didn't need to see it,” said Sandy Bonacquisti.

Bonacquisti lives a mile from the otherwise wooded stretch of road. Its isolation is a reason she and police agree the dog could easily have been left there without a witness.

Bonacquisti said, “People leave all kinds of stuff, bags and boxes and cans and all kinds of stuff over there. It's a spartan road, so you can just chuck something out the window.”

“We've since done interviews and so far, those interviews reveal that carcass may have been there possibly as far back as November, December,” said New York State Police Captain William Keeler.

Sand Lake animal control officer Catherine Crawner picked up the carcass and brought it to the vet. Even after decades in the business, she says she's never seen anything like it.

“It was nothing more than a skeleton with skin stretched across it,” Crawner said. “It's horrifying. It’s certainly something that doesn't happen very often and it certainly doesn't happen in Sand Lake.”

Bonacquisti, while waiting for an explanation, says she hopes it never happens again.

“I don't understand that. There’s a lot of other things you can happen if it's a dog you don't want,” Bonacquisti said.