By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Doggie Love had no love for Percy the French bulldog, an Upper West Side couple claimed in a $1 million lawsuit filed earlier this month, according to newspaper accounts.
The Queens-based doggie day-care center was accused of leaving poor Percy to die in his owners' apartment, after he spent a weekend boarding at their facility in Astoria, the papers said.
Percy, whose flat face impaired his ability to breathe and regulate temperature, was so obviously overheating when a Doggie Love employee dropped him off that the building's doorman and a neighbor offered to get him water or call a vet, according affadavits cited by the New York Post.
Percy was found dead just hours later, lying in front of the air conditioner, the Post said.
Doggie Love's website advertised a "dog-friendly, air-conditioned van" for picking up and dropping off boarding pets, but Percy's heartbroken owners, Laura Garner and Robert Hardon, charged that their beloved bulldog overheated on the ride over, according to the paper.
A lawyer for Doggie Love, which is owned and run by dog trainers Nilo Mathias and Marla Abrams, defended the company, according to the Post, saying, " without an necropsy, the ultimate cause of death cannot be determined."
But two vets, who examined Percy's after his death, found his body temperature was "notably high" along with evidence that he had suffered seizures, they wrote in affidavits.
The Doggie Love employee who was dropped Percy off no longer works for company, co-owner Marla Abrams told the paper.
