Charlie, too weak to survive the sub-zero temperatures, froze to death.

A rescue group found the collared, tawny-colored male dog’s body in the Detroit snow.

“He walked until he couldn’t,” Detroit Dog Rescue’s Executive Director Kristina Millman-Rinaldi posted on social media Wednesday, retracing its last steps by following its tracks. Charlie stumbled, she added, feeble from the cold and “laid down and died.”

People have been finding companionship in pets — particularly dogs — for thousands of years; but judging by the comments on Millman-Rinaldi’s post, some Michiganders now are struggling to understand why a pet was left out in the cold.

Recently, reports of endangered and neglected dogs have emerged as millions of people in the Midwest and East Coast cope with temperatures so low that forecasters have urged residents to stay indoors.

To protect children, many school districts closed for at least a couple of days.

As for pets, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals urged owners to safeguard them by making sure they, too, are out of the cold and not left outside, which in some communities is a crime.

More: In Michigan’s deep freeze, even the dead struggle to find respite

The cold weather earlier this week, Millman-Rinaldi said, likely stopped Charlie’s heart and took his breath — and life — away. As tragic as the dog’s end was, the rescuer speculated it likely was “relief to the pain” the cold caused its body.

Protecting a ‘best friend’

Detroit Dog Rescue, a no-kill shelter, seeks to save animals.

Dogs, after all, are “man’s best friend,” a phrase that dates to the late 1700s. Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia, is said to have referred to one of his Italian Greyhounds as his best friend.

French philosopher Voltaire concluded nature gave the dog to man for defense and pleasure. Of all animals, he wrote in 1764, the dog is the most faithful, calling it: “le meilleur ami que puisse avoir l’homme.”

In an 1870 court case in Warrensburg, Missouri, a lawyer, George Vest, representing a farmer whose pet, Old Drum, was killed, made an emotional plea to the jury, explaining a dog is “the one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world.”

The farmer, who was seeking damages, won the lawsuit.

Almost a century later, in 1958, a statue of the black and tan hound was cast with the support of contributions from dog lovers everywhere and erected outside the courthouse where the case was tried.

And in 2007, real estate magnate Leona Helmsley died leaving $12 million to her dog, Trouble, proving that a dog could be a woman’s best friend, too. Helmsley reportedly also dedicated other assets, worth $5 billion to $8 billion, to the care of more dogs.

‘I’m not leaving them’

Still, over the years, plenty of other people have neglected their best friends.

Millman-Rinaldi mentioned she also saw dogs at a southwest Detroit residence in the cold. She described how whining, freezing animals held up their padded paws, “trying to get out of the cold.”

More: In Michigan’s deep freeze, even the dead struggle to find respite

Four dogs recently perished in and around Indianapolis because they lacked shelter and warmth, Newsweek reported. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals documented that at least three dogs were saved from extreme cold situations.

One dog, PETA said, was freed from a vehicle that broke through the ice on a Minnesota lake; a second, was pulled out of an icy Maryland pond, and a third, in Massachusetts, was rescued after getting stuck on a beaver dam.

The Humane Society of the United States, based in Washington, D.C., warned that dogs and cats — despite the “misconception that the fur on their backs” will protect them — suffer from winter cold.

The society added that leaving pets outside in extremely cold weather is cruel.

As for Charlie, Millman-Rinaldi said the rescue organization lifted the dog’s lifeless body out of the snow, gave it a name, and then, a dignified goodbye. But, the executive director added, the dog deserved better.

“Oh, sweet boy, I’m so sorry,” Millman-Rinaldi said in her post, explaining why, in part, she and others picked up the frozen bodies and put them to rest: “I’m not leaving them for kids to see on their snow day.”

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.