A dog who went missing nearly three years ago is found living in the woods among wild animals.

Chrissy is a nearly 4-year-old collie mix who was transported to New Jersey from a kill shelter in Georgia when she was 1 year old. On the day that she was adopted, she slipped out of her harness and went missing. She was finally found by the group Hound Hunters.

“You try not to get emotionally involved, but, how do you not, you know?” says Kristy Linney with the New Jersey team.

Linney says that Chrissy is one of the toughest dogs that she has ever captured.

Hound Hunters was able to track Chrissy since she went missing by using trail cameras and sighting reports, but was never able to physically find her. She was spotted in Echo Hill Park in 2017 near some deer. In 2018, she was spotted with some coyote.

Linney and her team spent countless hours and over $20,000 trying to save Chrissy, but she couldn’t be caught.

“I think the hardest parts were the cold nights, you know, like when we’re sitting at home and it’s snowing outside and she shows up on our camera and you’re just heartbroken,” Linney says.

Hound Hunters lost track of Chrissy for more than a year until they saw a post from Rachel Muglia-Paulus about a dog she saw in Flemington on Friday.

“If that was my dog, I would want someone to post a video or report it immediately,” Muglia-Paulus says. “I knew how important it would be.”

It was an emotional moment when on Monday Chrissy was finally found.

“This truly proved to me that they really can survive, and just don’t give up, because there is a chance,” says Linney.

Chrissy is now back with the rescue that saved her from the kill shelter. And while Chrissy is not ready to be adopted just yet, Linney says that she hopes that Chrissy will find a forever home one day.