Twelve puppies were found abandoned in a trash bag Thursday afternoon at the green-box site on Montana 82 in Somers.

Ten of them were dead.

"They're so tiny. They don't even have their eyes open yet," said Jenn Makulec, who is contracted by the county to maintain green-box dump sites. "It's the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life."

Makulec was working at the Somers green-box site about 1 p.m. Thursday when a regular salvager heard faint squeaks coming from inside one of the trash containers.

"He jumped in there, opened the bag, and there were all these soggy puppies inside," Makulec said. The owner "apparently tried to drown them but just didn't finish the job."

The infant puppies, identified by a veterinarian as German wirehaired pointers, had been put in a gray plastic garbage bag and thrown away along with household trash.

Makulec wrapped the surviving puppies, one male and one female, in a shirt and brought them to the Flathead County Animal Shelter on Cemetery Road.

"They're currently doing pretty good," said the shelter's director, Kirsten Holland.

Makulec returned to the shelter Thursday afternoon to bring the surviving puppies back to her home, where they will have to be bottle-fed - they are so young the nubs of their umbilical cords are still attached. The veterinarian who examined the black-and-white pups estimated they were two days old.

"I know this isn't out of the ordinary, based on my experience in this line of work, but we don't see it a lot," said Holland, noting that most people tend to dump animals where they can be found and brought to the shelter. "I hope we don't see more of it."

The Flathead County Sheriff's Office opened an animal cruelty investigation into the incident Thursday, Undersheriff Pete Wingert said. Besides a dozen puppies, the garbage bag contained material that could potentially identify the perpetrator.

Investigators have a possible suspect, reportedly a man who breeds dogs.

Dumping animals where they can suffer injury, hunger, exposure, or become charges of the public is illegal in Montana, as is putting down animals in an inhumane way.

Holland said she will ask the Flathead County attorney to charge the suspect with one count of animal cruelty for each puppy found, citing a recent case in Whitefish where prosecutors filed separate charges for each animal a resident attempted to poison.

After the investigation is complete, deputies will forward reports to the Flathead County Attorney's Office for possible charges, which could be filed as early as Tuesday.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com