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Campaign to Save Feral Dog Sparks Two Funding Efforts

By Gwynne Hogan | February 19, 2015 8:56am
 Charlie was the last of a wild pack of dogs that roamed HighBridge Park, neighbors said.
Charlie was the last of a wild pack of dogs that roamed HighBridge Park, neighbors said.
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Denise Lauffer

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — One scruffy pooch, two funding campaigns.

The feral dog that has survived on its own in Highbridge Park for about a decade has prompted separate groups of neighborhood animal lovers to start different public fundraising campaigns to pay for the aging mutt's medical care.

Charlie, as he was referred to by one faction, or Ricky, as he is called by the other, needs $7,000 to pay his recent veterinary bill.

The pup was captured during the recent cold spell and taken to three different vet clinics racking expenses for neutering and infectious disease and heartworm tests, according to neighbors involved in the dog's care.

Two GoFundMe pages sprouted up on Sunday and Monday each raising money for veterinarian expenses for the wild, grey and black dog.

One page that refers to the dog as Charlie has raised more than $2,000. The group that calls him Ricky has brought in around $600. But residents say there are likely dozens of other names for the feral pooch.

“He’s a famous dog,” Yuliya Avezbakiyeva, who said she and her mother have brought "Ricky" food and water almost daily since 2009. “There are different people, different nationalities, different backgrounds, and this one dog united them all."

The residents that call the dog Ricky reached out to Denise Lauffer, who slept in the woods to care for the dog and is behind the Charlie GoFundMe campaign, hoping she would change the title to also reflect their name for the scruffy pup, but never heard back. They started their own page a day later.

"It's not competing. It's all for the same cause," Avezbakiyeza said. "The money will go to the one pool."

Lauffer could not be reached for comment about her fundraising page.

A group of five neighbors who know the dog as Ricky rescued the pup on Sunday afternoon when record breaking temperatures promised to clamp down on the city. Some residents also noticed that the dog had lost his appetite and seemed unwell in the few days leading up to his capture.

Residents say Charlie/Ricky was born to a wild pack of about a dozen dogs that used to roam the park freely. But about five years back, the other dogs mysteriously vanished, leaving Charlie all alone.

That's when neighbors started to help the lonely creature, leaving him food and water, blankets and pillows and building him makeshift shelters, which would be removed by the park security.

Last week, Lauffer said she even slept in the woods with Charlie/Ricky hoping to get him more acclimated to human contact so she could wrangle him in.

And as time passed all these passionate animal lovers found their way to one another.

“We just all happened to bump into each other; we started exchanging phone numbers,” said Tina Ilmet, 51, who's lived in Washington Heights since the late 90's. “People have this connection to animals; they see this animal in distress and they just want to help.”