Wolf-dog captured after being spotted around Bristol, Bucks County

BRISTOL, Pa. (WPVI) -- A wolf-dog hybrid spotted in Bristol, Bucks County managed to evade animal control and the Pennsylvania game warden, until a nonprofit was called in to to help capture it.

Colleen Bell runs the nonprofit GoodBoy Dog Recovery, which specializes in capturing hard-to-find and hard-to-catch lost and abandoned dogs.

She says this was her first time ever getting called to capture the rare hybrid.

"He managed to get her contained in a schoolyard. The plan was to put out a box trap to lure him with raw meat. That didn't really work out," said Bell.

But, she said, she had a big soccer net in her trunk.

"Between the chief and police and myself we were able to use that to pin it up against a fence and I was able to get something on him," she said.

She says the animal is 80 to 90 percent wolf, and adds the species itself is rare to the area and predatory in nature.

"It's my understanding that it is not legal to have them, you have to have a permit to have them. So a lot of people might acquire one and not realize what they were getting into and then some get abandoned - and they believe that's what happened with this animal," said Bell.

The wolf-dog was taken to Howling Woods Farms in New Jersey and is doing well.

There are an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 wolf-dogs in the U.S.