When seasoned dog owner Opal Dubois spotted a large stray pit bull mix wandering her neighborhood in Staten Island, she was smitten. Intent on capturing him and taking him home, Dubois ran home to get a leash – but he was already gone. Dubois discovered through panicked phone calls that authorities had taken him in, and, despite her protests, he was en route to euthanasia at the Animal Care & Control Center (AC&C) in Brownsville.
That’s when Dubois called the Red Hook Dog Rescue.
If you’ve never heard of the Red Hook Dog Rescue, that’s not surprising. The Rescue is a deliberately small, one-woman non-profit operation starring the humble Red Hook mainstay Harriet Zucker.
Though Zucker has been running the rescue for 14 years with superhuman dedication, she likes to keep a low profile. She doesn’t have a shelter location. The business is essentially a small network of volunteers, foster owners, adopters, and Zucker’s trusty Honda Element – which is full of dog stuff. She currently has 10 dogs up for adoption, including two that live in her Red Hook house.
Zucker works as a set decorator for TV shows, but in her minimal free time, she picks and chooses rescue cases that interest her – usually deaf and special needs dogs. She prefers to keep rescues to around 15 dogs per year, and she remains heavily involved in each case – often well beyond the initial paperwork.
“I’ll do what I can to help the owners keep the dogs,” said Zucker as we zig-zagged to the AC&C to pick up Dubois’s dog. “It can be expensive, it can be difficult, so I like to stay involved. I don’t want them to give the dogs up.”
In Dubois’s case, the shelter wouldn’t allow her to adopt the stray dog without a rescue mediator. The dog had bitten someone at the shelter, so the AC&C’s liability was too great to release him to an individual. Zucker spoke to Dubois on the phone and decided to take the case. To her, Dubois seemed highly competent and extremely passionate about the dog, unlike thousands of flaky adopters on social media.
“I think people look at Facebook at night, they’re drinking wine, and they see dogs that are on the euth list” – a list of dogs being put to death imminently, hosted by the non-profit organization Urgent.
Adopters are screened
“They sometimes think with their hearts and not with their heads. You don’t have to be really experienced to adopt from me, but you have to be willing to learn and be able to accept reality if things aren’t going to work out. You have to think it through.”
In a world where any information about dog shelters is drenched in emotion, Zucker is an eternal realist. She loves dogs, but she doesn’t proselytize about animal rights, nor does she adamantly support dismantling kill shelters. Rather, she believes that dog owners would benefit from education and better laws. NYCHA, for example, has strict rules for pet ownership: public housing residents can only have one dog and one cat at a time. Pets above 25 pounds are forbidden, as are pit bulls, doberman pinchers, and rottweilers. Yet, almost 10,000 dogs were surrendered to AC&C last year, and Zucker argues that these laws are part of the problem.
“People give up their pets to the shelter or the street as soon as the landlord catches them breaking the rules,” she said. “There needs to be more education when it comes to owning pets. There needs to be something that supports owners and prevents dogs from going to the shelter in the first place, not just a banishment.”
Zucker, a certified dog trainer, prefers rescuing street dogs over navigating the Kafka-esque shelter system, but those days are nearly gone in Red Hook. When she began rescuing 14 years ago, there were still stray dogs roaming the neighborhood. She fondly remembers working with a wild pack that lived in the former sugar factory. Thanks to Zucker, nearly all the dogs were captured and adopted before the factory was leveled in 2009.
“Everyone was terrified of them,” she said. “But I was fascinated.”
Yet, Zucker knows the shelter system inside and out – and the system knows her. When we arrived at AC&C to pick up Dubois’s dog, all the attendants knew her by name. They ushered her into the adoption room to scope out available dogs. The larger ones are caged in an unnerving, windowless room where the barking is deafening and constant. Zucker however seemed serene as she walked from cage to cage, assessing each dog with love. “This one is scared.” “This one can’t possibly be as old as the chart indicates.” “This one is beautiful.” “Look at him!”
Soon, shelter workers retrieved Dubois’s dog and handed him off to Zucker. He was sweet, happy, drooly and strong – so strong that it took some effort for the slim-framed Zucker to wrangle him into her car. There was no way to be sure, but Zucker guessed he was some blend of pit bull and mastiff.
Either way, he was spared from euthanasia. He was going home.
When we arrived in Staten Island, Dubois was thrilled to welcome the dog she’d been chasing for weeks. She patiently answered Zucker’s questions: what is his yard access? Will you help find a new owner if this doesn’t work out? Is your landlord okay with this? Do you have a crate? Will you take it slow? Will you keep in touch? What kind of training will you implement? (Hint: Zucker prefers rewards-based training over corrections or shock collars.)
Dubois passed each question with flying colors. She was clearly very experienced with dogs, and she asserted that she would never give him up, ever. She named him Gatsby.
Zucker was hopeful, but as always, on guard. She would stay in touch with Dubois to make sure everything was okay. Knowing Zucker, she will be there until the end of Gatsby’s life.
It was a success, but Zucker’s job is never done. There will always be more abandoned dogs, more vet appointments, more grant proposals. She asserted that she needs volunteers to help with the ins and outs of the business. Most of all, however, she needs solid foster homes.
“I need fosters. Good ones,” she said. “I don’t need someone who says ‘sure I’ll take your dog for a bit.’ A foster home is like a halfway house. It’s very important.”
Here are just a few dogs up for adoption through Red Hook Dog Rescue. If you’re interested in adopting, volunteering, or fostering for the Red Hook Dog Rescue, visit their Facebook page for a list of dogs and further details about their needs.
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