Saving Peter

from Out of the Cage! (Winter 2007)

For more than an hour that wintry Saturday evening, the young dog cried out in pain. In her apartment, Diane Schmidt, a school teacher, heard his cries from the park across the street. She called 311 and 911, but was unable to get help. So she bundled up and walked over to the park, where she found a small, white German Shepherd puppy howling in pain. "The closer I got to him, the louder he howled," she remembers.

Diane observed that someone had attempted to help before she arrived. A bonfire had been set in a nearby trashcan, a blanket laid near the puppy, and two dishes were placed just out of his reach — one with food, another with water. Diane sat down next to the injured puppy while her two children watched from their window across the street. "The closer I sat, the more he howled, but did not move."

Twenty minutes passed, and Diane managed to get the blanket over the puppy. She began to stroke his chin with a part of the towel. The puppy wouldn't allow her to pet him with her bare hands. "At every attempt he would flinch and cower. My heart was aching for this little baby." She continued to sooth him with the towel and talked to him. Finally she managed to maneuver the water dish close to him, and he lapped it up.

Meanwhile, cell phone in hand, Diane tried to locate a local animal shelter or veterinary hospital in the Bronx or Yonkers for help, but to no avail. "One animal hospital advised me just to leave the puppy, and not to touch him," she says. Frustrated but not discouraged, Diane called her husband, Pedro, a sergeant in the NYPD, and asked him to dress the kids and bring the truck around to the park. When they arrived, they gingerly moved the shivering puppy into the back of the truck, where Diane coddled him and reassured him that everything would be alright.

"The hour-long drive to the city felt like two," remembers Diane. "Every bump triggered another howl from the puppy. But finally, between my four-year-old daughter singing her ABC's to him, my eight-year-old son praying that he would be alright, and me stroking his head, he stopped shivering and fell asleep."

When the troupe reached the Animal Care & Control (AC&C) shelter on 110th Street, the doors were locked and no one appeared to be there. But Diane rapped loudly on the door, and after a few minutes someone answered and brought them inside. Diane comforted the puppy while her husband provided the AC&C's Ati Spence, ACO2, with the necessary information. "Ironically, Ati, without knowing, named the puppy 'Peter,' which happens to be my husband's name in English," says Diane. She was told that they would keep Peter comfortable until the morning, when a shelter veterinarian would examine him.

It turned out that Peter's injuries were serious — a left femoral diaphyseal fracture and several rib fractures. Although the cause of Peter's injuries was unknown, it appeared that he might have been hit by a car. Despite the severity of his condition, AC&C staff wanted to give the sweet puppy a chance. So they called the Mayor's Alliance, and the Mayor's Alliance arranged for Peter to be admitted to NYC Veterinary Specialists, an emergency specialty hospital on West 55th Street. Dr. Andrew Kyles performed the delicate surgery required to mend Peter's broken body, including inserting a plate in his leg to stabilize the fracture. Funds to pay for Peter's medical care were provided by the Picasso Veterinary Fund of the Mayor's Alliance.

Four weeks after the surgery, Peter was taken in by Animal Haven Shelter, an Alliance Participating Organization (APO), where he is awaiting adoption. You can meet Peter, who has been re-named Juneau and is now three months old, on the Animal Haven website.

The Picasso Veterinary Fund has been saving the lives of hundreds of animals like Peter (Juneau) since 2003, when the fund was founded by Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore to pay for extraordinary medical treatment for sick and injured animals who wind up at NYC's Animal Care & Control. The fund, administered by the Mayor's Alliance, is kept alive by private donations. To become a part of this life-saving program, we invite you to donate to the fund, either online or by mailing your check, made payable to Picasso Veterinary Fund, to the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals, 244 Fifth Avenue, Suite R290, New York, NY 10001.

To read about some of the other wonderful animals whose lives have been saved thanks to the Picasso Veterinary Fund, click here.