A four-month-old pit bull puppy is lucky to be alive after being dragged through midtown Sacramento< California on Saturday.

Andria Borba has the story.

It's hard to belive, but just two days ago, a hazel-eyed puppy nearly died.

The four-month-old pit bull was chained in the bed of a pickup truck near J and 19th and either jumped or fell oout and was dragged.

"He's underneath the vehicle, they're thinking he's crushed, he's dragged, he's dead," says Dawn Capp of Chako Pit Bull Rescue.

A crowd of people outside Starbucks saw the cuddly fella trapped underneath the wheel and managed to flag the driver down and untangle the puppy from the single chain.

"I mean, that's huge and then he ended up being strangled by it and then caught up underneath the vehicle," Capp says.

As soon as the puppy, nicknamed Django, was freed...

"He was trembling," Capp says.

The driver was gone.

"He just basically got back into the truck and left," Capp says.

Someone at Starbucks rushed the puppy to El Camino Veterinary with a gash on his leg and a bloody mouth.

The vet's notes agree, calling Django an "excellent patient."

Capp, who runs Chako Pit Bull Rescue, has custoday of Django until a new owner can be found and wishes people would remember dogs, especially puppies, are fragile.

"You certainly wouldn't put a child in the back of a pickup truck that way, hopefully. So why would you take a little puppy and put it in the back of a pickup truck that way? she asked.