The Carbon County Animal Shelter is caring for a lost dog found tangled in a barbed wire fence in Jim Thorpe last weekend.

The dog will soon go up for adoption, but the shelter is still leaving the door open for the owner to claim the dog.

“Right now the dog is safe with us, he’s eating and drinking, and we’re just trying to earn his trust,” said Tom Connors, shelter manager.

The black-and-white pit bull was found on West Broadway on Saturday. Connors and a team of volunteers spent about an hour and half removing him from the wooded area where he was found.

The dog was wearing a harness and a muzzle. That gave the volunteers hope that it possibly ran away from a nearby campground, but no campers had made any reports that they had lost it.

Connors said he would expect an owner to contact someone if their dog got loose, especially with the muzzle, which makes it difficult for the dog to eat or fend for itself. The dog is no longer muzzled.

“We don’t want to judge too early. The owner could be in the hospital. You never know,” Connors said.

The shelter typically waits five days for an owner to come forward. After that, dogs are vaccinated so they can be put up for adoption.

Lost dog owners can still pick up their dogs until a new owner adopts them.

Connors said he hopes to scan the dog for a microchip, which would reveal information about the owner. But he will wait until the dog is willing to be leashed before that happens.

“In the next few days he’ll let me walk him then everything will be good. I don’t want to pick a day. He picks it,” Connors said.