INWOOD — An abandoned pit bull found Thanksgiving Day will soon have a place to call home after an Inwood resident who read the dog's story on DNAinfo.com decided to adopt her.
“Inwood Sandy,” who was found shivering and tied outside Papasito restaurant on Dyckman Street on Nov. 24, will soon move in with her new owner, Amy Sims, a self-described “big dog lover” who lives near the site where the dog was rescued less than two weeks ago.
Sims, a high school math teacher at City College Academy of the Arts and a City College adjunct professor, said she fell in love with the wide-smiling brindled pit as soon as she read her tale of abandonment.
“It just made me so sad that someone could abandon a dog like that,” Sims, 40, wrote in an email. “I'm always amazed that people can be so cruel to animals and that animals who are mistreated can still be loyal and forgiving and sweet companions.”
Sims, who has lived uptown for more than six years, most recently lived with two dogs — a wolf/husky mix that died of a brain tumor in 2008 and a pit bull that died from prostate cancer in 2009.
“It's actually bringing back lots of memories and stirring up emotions,” Sims wrote. “I really miss my pooches, so this is as much a gift for me as it is for her.”
Sims said she still has many of the items she used with her previous dogs at home.
"They're hard to get rid of," she said.
The fawn-colored dog is scheduled to move in with Sims on Friday after she is spayed and vaccinated through the ASPCA’s “Operation Pit” program, which offers free spay and neuter surgeries for pit bulls and pit bull mixes throughout the city. The free program was recently expanded to every day of the week at the Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital on the Upper East Side after previously being offered only Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Since Thanksgiving Day, Sandy has been living with Inwood resident Katie Weaver in the apartment she shares with eight cats — four she owns and four she fosters.
Rescuers received calls from interested adopters from as far as Schenectady, N.Y., after DNAinfo’s article ran last week, but her rescuers held out hope for a local match.
“We really wanted to keep her in Inwood,” said Laura Simpson, who helped get the word out about the dog. “Most important was finding her a home, but keeping her local is great.”
