By Ivan Pereira
A sandy Puerto Rican beach is anything but a tourist destination for the island’s canine population, according to animal activist Bobby Beckles.
At “Dead Dog Beach,” dogs as young as a few months are beaten, starved and otherwise mistreated by people every day.
“Sometimes they use them as target practice with BB guns,” said Beckles, who works as a stuntman for movies.
Beckles and his wife Chrissy said they were shocked when they saw the dogs, so they teamed up with an upstate nonprofit to fly the animals to John F. Kennedy International Airport, rehabilitate them and get them into loving homes.
The Beckles brought 20 dogs that they rescued from Puerto Rico June 29 and stopped at the airport before arranging for them to be taken to the Pets Alive sanctuary in Middletown, N.Y. The dogs were shipped to New York on two separate American Airlines flights from San Juan.
Janet Pirog, a vet tech who helped pick up the dogs that were mostly around a year old, said the airline and JFK were accommodating about the transportation of the animals.
“They have a limit on the number of dogs they can fly, but we had an agreement to get all the dogs on the two flights,” she said.
Pirog said Chrissy Beckles came to her organization more than a year ago after she came upon the beach while working in Puerto Rico.
Since last summer, she has saved more than 50 dogs.
“Chrissy wanted to see if we could join forces and we were happy to accommodate her,” Pirog said.
Puerto Rico only has five animal shelters for an island the size of Connecticut and its kill rate is 99 percent, according to Pets Alive. Pirog added there are not that many animal rights groups in the U.S. commonwealth, which that leads to more abuse cases down there.
The dogs were taken to Pets Alive’s animal sanctuary, which saves dogs from all over the nation, where they get medical attention for their various health problems. The dogs live freely on the property, which has a no-kill policy, and are up for adoption once they get a clean bill of health, Pirog said.
Bobby Beckles, who has adopted some of those mistreated dogs, said the sanctuary does a good job at making them loving pets at home.
“They’re pretty much well-behaved, good dogs,” he said.
The nonprofit is aiming to build a new shelter in Puerto Rico that not only saves the dogs down there, but also helps to educate the public on animal abuses.
Log on to petsalive.org for more information.
Reach reporter Ivan Pereira by e-mail at ipereira@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4546.
