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Doomed Dog Friended By Chelsea Resident

By Amy Zimmer | May 20, 2011 6:51pm | Updated on May 23, 2011 8:25am

By Amy Zimmer

DNAinfo News Editor

MANHATTAN — A pit bull mix named Justin was hit with a death sentence by a Manhattan Animal Care and Control shelter.

His crime? Having kennel cough.

Dog lover Donna Darrell was still mourning the loss of her English bulldog when she saw Justin's photo on the Facebook page Urgent Part 2 one night in February 2010.

She knew right away that she had found a new canine companion.

"My English bulldog was my life," Darrell, 49 said. "I wanted another English bulldog, but they're $3,500, and I wasn't in a position to buy a dog, so I thought maybe I would foster a dog."

The Facebook page, along with another site called Pets on Death Row posts pictures of cats and dogs leaked each night before city Animal Care and Control is slated to put them down the next day.

The emotional pictures on the site encourage people to swoop in at the last minute to save the animals.

Darrell was Justin's savior. She decided to adopt him. What she thought was a one-time good deed turned into a new role.

Not only did she adopt Justin (now named Brutus), she became hooked on the photos on the site.

Darrell eventually teamed up with two other women to start their own rescue group in September called Rebound Hounds.

Since then, they've rescued 75 dogs posted on Urgent's death list. Darrell also worked as a volunteer at an Animal Care and Control shelter.

"I used to go four hours at a time, walking the dogs and hugging them," Darrell said. "Then I was on the Urgent page all of the time. I saw these dogs that could be saved."

From the site, Darrell found Freedom, a pit bull mix slated to be euthanized by Animal Care. It had been found tied to a radiator and left for dead in an abandoned Harlem apartment, its fur ravaged by mange.

"I cried over this dog," said Darrell, an executive assistant who lives in Chelsea. "He was days away from organ failure. He was a bag of bones."

Now named George, Freedom lived with Darrell for almost two months before a family in  upstate Monroe adopted him.

"Now the vet wants him to lose five pounds," Darrell said. "He's a chunky monkey though his hair is still growing in."

Many in the animal rights community believe most of the doomed animals are not really sick at all.

They believe the animals are being put down just because there's not enough room in the shelters for them.

"They can't put down a healthy animal or one that's foster-able," Darrell said.

The challenge for groups like Rebound Hounds, however, is that they don't have a lot of time once they see the list of condemned animals.

Often times, people will volunteer through the Facebook page to adopt the pets. But Darrell's group must first do background checks and home visits to ensure they'll be suitable.

Several other groups save many animals from the list, such as Zani's Furry Friends, which has a regular Sunday adoption event at the Petco on 86th and Lexington, and Anjellicle Cats Rescue which hosts an adoption event at the same Upper East Side Petco every "Caturday," as its website says.

From April 2010 through March 2011, nearly 6,500 cats and more than 2,200 dogs were put to sleep by Animal Care and Control, according to the agency's statistics.

Sometimes the diagnoses of the shelter animals miss problems, as they did with a dog named Betty, who was found to have a broken hip after Rebound Hounds rescued her.

The dog needed surgery that cost $2,000.

"A lot of people aren't in the financial situation to care for a pet, sometimes they can't even buy food," Darrell said. "We have to vet the dog if the dog needs vetting."

"We did a 'chip in' [for Lucy] on the Urgent page and we wound up with $2,000," Darrell said. "It's all because of Facebook. It's bringing the dogs to the people."