New students rescue dogs and cats
Published: June 5, 2006
They rescued dogs living under a trailer, stray cats surviving by a historic steam locomotive and one female dog with its two puppies that had been bitten by a male dog living in the same pen.
The animals — 25 dogs and puppies, 17 kittens and two cats — were all collected from a West Virginia county on the Kentucky border, where a group of nine students and five adults, mostly from New Rochelle, traveled over the Memorial Day weekend.
Now the pets need homes.
“They just come to you and your heart melts when you look at them,” said Rosina Pradhananga, 17, one of the travelers.
The group of eight teenagers, one preteen and five adults drove 12 hours to meet with Alexis Hunt of Logan County, who has taken it upon herself to save cats and dogs in a region she describes as a hell for animals.
“We got to see a lot of the terrible things, and we got to take them away from their misery,” said Blaise Pfaffmann, 12, who was part of the group.
The mission was a project of Pet Rescue, a Larchmont-based organization. Pradhananga and several others who made the trip are members of the New Rochelle High School animal rights club. Their faculty adviser, school counselor Johanna Kennedy, also went.
Kennedy is caring for six 5-month-old puppies at the Yonkers home she bought with her husband in March specifically to have a yard so they could foster pets. She said the young people on the trip were determined to rescue as many animals as possible, even climbing over a fence in one case to rescue kittens.
“They didn’t care about getting dirty; they didn’t care about getting scratched,” she said. “All they wanted was to get to those kittens. It was very moving. The kids are just so into it and just so aware of the need of animals to get the help.”
The visitors found people in the region to be friendly, and they talked of fun times camping. At the same time, they saw upsetting scenes. They found dogs chained up near roads where they could run into the street — and many that had been killed. When they collected the female dog and puppies being attacked by the male — taking them from a man who gave them away — they spied a dead puppy inside the area, which was set up like a chicken coop.
At Kennedy’s house last week, the puppies she is caring for gamboled in a makeshift pen while Morgan Dennis, 17, held Sally, an armful of a dog with long brown hair. The pet rescuers took turns holding the leash for Nana, a Labrador mix about 2 years old. Like several of the dogs, Nana has an injury, in her case on one of her legs, and she requires a special diet because of allergies. She was headed for a veterinarian visit this week.
“Just a little tuneup and she’ll be fine,” said Ruth Frumkin, one of the adults who went on the trip.
Hunt has made it her mission to rescue pets from a rural region where, she said, they are often mistreated.
“It’s just a lack of education about the animals,” she said. She’s been caring for them for several years. Once word got out that she was minding them, people began dropping off dogs and cats unannounced. One couple gave her a German shepherd two years ago when they no longer wanted the pet, then returned recently to drop off a Pekingese they had bought since then and also decided they didn’t want.
“I wish they would stop getting dogs,” she said.
The group took the Pekingese, and Pfaffmann was holding it as a foster pet the other day.
Hunt and a friend managed to send out 500 dogs last year. Typically, she finds them in bad condition: dogs with hair clumped in mats, kittens infested with maggots.
“I have to pick the maggots off of them, and sometimes they don’t make it,” she said.
Hunt said she often drives loads of abandoned pets to Cumberland, Md., to deliver them to rescuers who will distribute them to groups in New Jersey and New York. But the trip in her pickup truck costs $150 in gas, which is difficult for her to afford.
The Pet Rescue trip, she said, was the second time people ever came to her to get them.
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