By Christina Santucci
An Astoria soldier who had to give up his beloved blue brindle pitbull when he headed to boot camp is hoping his little crooner will find a new owner with help from an animal rescue coalition.
Before Sal Lopez shipped off to three months of basic training in Georgia, he sent his 3-year-old pup Sinatra to Glen Wild Animal Rescue in Cherry Valley, N.Y., where the dog will stay until he is adopted.
“They had desperately been trying to find a home and hadn’t been able to locate one,” said Jane Hoffman, president of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals, the lead agency in a network of more than 150 animal rescues groups and shelters that placed Lopez’s Old Brown Eyes in the foster location.
The group coordinated Sinatra’s foster placement.
“We are just hoping to find the perfect home for him,” she said.
And Lopez and his relatives are wishing for the same thing.
His grandmother, Maria Lopez, has been keeping tabs on the pooch and whether anyone plans on adopting him.
“Sal’s grandmother calls regularly to check up on how he is doing,” Hoffman said.
Maria Lopez said her grandson adopted the dog when he was a 5-month-old puppy, fed him a special diet of Beneful chow and a raw egg and took the pooch for long walks. She said Sinatra was trained to have a calm temperament.
When asked about the dog’s name, Maria Lopez laughed and said, “He liked Frank [Sinatra].”
Maria Lopez said when her grandson realized he would have to give up Sinatra so he could complete his four-year enlistment, he was heartbroken.
“He broke down. I’ll never forget about it. That was a terrible day,” she said. “He broke down and he cried.”
Sal Lopez told the founder of Glen Wild Animal Rescue that sending off his four-legged friend of 2 1/2 years was the hardest thing he had ever done.
Maria Lopez had hoped Sinatra would be taken in by her son, who lives on Long Island, but his family said they could not adopt the dog.
“I hope he gets someone loving and kind that treats pitbulls the way Sal did,” she said.
Hoffman praised Lopez and his grandmother Maria for contacting the Mayor’s Alliance rather than putting the dog out on the street.
“He did the responsible thing. He wasn’t just going to dump his dog,” she said.
Hoffman said large dogs like Sinatra and cats are the animals that rescue groups still struggle to find homes for.
“They are very effective reproductive machines,” she said of felines.
The Mayor’s Alliance coordinates with Animal Care & Control to place pets in no-kill shelters until they can find permanent homes and works to spay and neuter stray cats among other initiatives.
“Our efforts are both getting the animals transferred but also to try to prevent animals from going into the shelter in the first place,” Hoffman said.
