A German Shepherd dog in a snowy outdoor setting on what appears to be an overcast winter day.

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Quasi, the shepherd with almost no neck

Name: Quasi, the shepherd with almost no neck
Uploaded: 2016-02-22T00:00:00Z
Duration: 3 min 28 s
Description: Rachel has the best way to describe Quasimodo. "He is a true German shepherd," she says, "just shortened."

Rachel has the best way to describe Quasimodo. "He is a true German shepherd," she says, "just shortened." more

The 4-year-old was born with short spine syndrome. As Sara explains it, the bones in his back are pressed together, and he is missing a couple of them. That leaves him with almost no neck. He's believed to be one of just 15 dogs in the world living with it.

His name comes from the famous character in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," and his shape gets a reaction. People compare him to a werewolf, or to a panorama photo taken while the dog moved. The rescue posted about him and got a nice number of likes. Then he got his own Facebook page, Quasi The Great, and he stole everybody's hearts.

Before any of that, Quasi was a stray running loose in Kentucky. It took five days and a live trap to catch him, and he was afraid of people. He landed at Secondhand Hounds in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a rescue Rachel started while she was pregnant with her daughter. She jokes that hormones made her do it. The first day she met him, he was so shy that she wondered if he enjoyed life at all.

A German shepherd runs through snow, with a person partly visible at the left edge of the frame. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Quasi once ran loose in Kentucky, and it took five days and a live trap to catch him.

Then she got him home. "He is goofy, he is playful," Rachel says. He loves girl dogs, too. "He thinks he is Casanova," she says, "not Quasimodo."

A German Shepherd dog in a snowy outdoor setting on what appears to be an overcast winter day. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Rachel has the best way to describe Quasimodo.

He also has fans, lots of them. The rescue has 1,200 applications from people who want to give him a home. Rachel and her family are in no rush. "It's going to be hard to let him go," she says. They want to learn more about him first and find the perfect match. She asks everyone else who wrote in to visit their local shelter, because he's one of millions of dogs there who need a home.

Meanwhile, a vial of his blood has gone to geneticists at the University of California, to help find out what causes his condition. He will see a specialist again, and for now he takes pain medicine. "He is doing great," Sara says. "He is mobile."

Some things he does his own way. Bending down to a bowl on the floor is hard for him, so he eats from a raised bowl, or Rachel holds his food up to him. The rest is all shepherd. He's mouthy, he loves to herd, and if he sees something run, he wants to chase it.

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