The Pioneer Rescuers

by Elizabeth Hess

Maggie Cogan, living in Central Park with her pack. Courtesy Jupiter’s Wife.

December 19, 1995 (First published in the Village Voice)

This is a story about two women who love animals, possibly more than they love people. One is homeless, in part by choice; the other lives in constant fear of homelessness. In the beginning, their compulsion to save dogs brought them together. Today, this is what divides them. Welcome to the world of animal rescue.

The story begins for me when a friend asked me to help drive a pack of dogs from the city to the country. The dogs were sitting on death row at the Center for Animal Care and Control (CACC) in Brooklyn, New York. They had been seized in August, 1995, from a woman named Maggie Cogan, the day she was evicted from a small apartment in Long Island City where she had been living with all 11 of them. Cogan managed to hide two of her dogs from the animal police: Jovita, a 13 year old chihuahua with a heart condition, and Herculissa, a four-year-old, deaf German shepherd. The three of them moved back to Central Park. But they would not be homeless for long; the dogs were about to lead Cogan to a woman who could change her life: Sara Whalen.

I was first introduced to Cogan and her dogs in a film by Michel Negroponte called Jupiter’s Wife, a deeply empathetic, even lyrical portrait of this woman’s vagabond existence that aired on Cinemax and got modest theatrical play. The film is a jewel. (It’s available today to watch on YouTube.)

Perhaps this story really began the day, several years ago, when Negroponte met Maggie, quite by accident, while videotaping in the park. “I’ve been expecting you,” Cogan told him. Whether by fate or circumstance, these two people never really parted after their initial meeting. To him, she wasn’t just another homeless woman to appease with a quarter. He invested her eccentricities with artistic gravity, taking her life and her poetic ramblings seriously. He made her a celebrity.

Negroponte, an attractive boyish-looking man in his early forties, quickly became the most important person in Maggie’s life. He split the film’s modest profits with her and, unlike some documentary filmmakers, continued to feel some responsibility for the subject of his movie.

Jupiter’s Wife had a happy ending, of sorts, but life is rarely so neat. Now, Negroponte and actress Katrina Pendelton, Cogan’s closest female friend (who appears briefly in the film), were desperately trying to save Maggie’s dogs. They were afraid that Cogan would kill herself if the animals were put to sleep. It was an emergency.

The CACC is not a hotel. And since most shelters do not release animals to the homeless, Cogan’s dogs had to be adopted out—or euthanized. Neither option was acceptable to Cogan, who wanted them all alive and together. So, in a desperate search for help, Negroponte and Pendelton took a blind leap into the animal rescue underground, an elaborate network of activist animal lovers.

Animal people are by no means one big happy family. The shelter movement is divided into at least two camps. There are those who believe that euthanasia is the only sane response to the herds of throwaway animals who end up starving in the streets. But others believe with equal passion that killing animals for any reason is wrong; they’re the right-to-lifers of the movement. The rescuers are an informed army of individuals who comb the city for strays, stashing the dogs and cats they find in a web of foster homes until the animals can be placed in more permanent dwellings. To rescuers, shelters that euthanize are hostile territory.

For Cogan’s dogs, the clock was ticking. First, Pendelton turned to Mimi Stone’s high profile “no kill” shelter in Elmsford, New York; Stone agreed to take two dogs, one right away; a puppy was promptly delivered. The rest of the pack was still in jeopardy. Then, Cogan handed Pendelton a crumpled clipping from the The New York Times that she had been keeping for months in her backpack. It was a piece about a woman named Sara Whalen who has made a career out of rescuing homeless, sick or aggressive animals. Whalen was about to loose her farm as a result of a nasty divorce; the article championed her cause.

Whalen had become a kind of folk hero for Cogan. She was well known in animal circles for her passionate stance against euthanasia and her willingness to permanently house older, unadoptable dogs. Pets Alive, her farm in Middletown, is frequently the last stop for New York’s most unadoptable animals.

When Pendelton put in a call to Whalen, the search ended. This 52-year-old rescuer agreed to take the rest of the dogs. She even offered to do more. She wanted to meet Cogan, and consider giving her a home, too. But Whalen had a few demands of her own. She insisted on spaying and neutering the dogs, and wanted funds for the construction of new outdoor kennels for them. The entire rescue would cost Negroponte and Cogan $4,000. “I explained to Maggie that we had enough money to either rescue the dogs or pay her rent for a period of time,” says the filmmaker. “She said, “ ‘Save the dogs.’ ”

We arrive at the Brooklyn animal shelter with two vans and four handlers—Negroponte, Pendelton, actor Tim Doyle, and me—for eight movie-star canines: two pit bulls, one Irish wolfhound mix, a basenji mix, a beagle mix, a collie mix, a Lab-weimaraner, and a large nondescript mix named Boris, “the King of All Dogs.” We need a bus. Nonetheless, we stuff the dogs into two vehicles, tie their leashes down, and hope for the best.

The hour-and-a-half ride north is memorable; the dogs are incredibly excited to be reunited but they are also carsick and shitting in the vans. We drop Juanita (the second dog going to Stone’s shelter) off in Elmsford and take the other seven to Whalen’s vet near Middletown. Then we head out Derby Road to Whalen’s farm.

Whalen is standing in her driveway watching for us. She looks slightly out of place, more cut out for the suburbs than life down on the farm. “Where’s Maggie?” she asks as we get out of the car. “We didn’t bring her,” says Pendelton. “It was too much with the dogs.” Whalen frowns. “Well, now that you’ve made your movie and saved the animals, what about her?” No one responds.

Pets Alive is a modest, picturesque farm with a small barn and a huge dog kennel. There are grazing horses, grunting pigs, and a couple of magnificent goats showing off their horns. The animals seem friendly enough but Whalen herself is a little scary. She tells us a story about how she got into this peculiar business. It was 1971 and she was living in the country with her husband and then 18-month-old son. When her neighbor died, she orphaned an 11-year-old golden retriever. Whalen agreed to take the dog, her first one. The following month, Whalen’s toddler wandered out of the house unattended. When she couldn’t find him, Whalen frantically called the police. They searched for hours until it began to get dark. Then, one of the troopers asked about the barking that had been coming from the woods. Whalen suddenly remembered her new dog, Brandy. They ran into the forest and found the golden with her son, who was fast asleep near a ravine: the dog’s body was between the child and the drop. “Now I ask you,” says Whalen. “How can I say No to any dog after that one saved my son’s life?”

NEXT WEEK: Cogan arrives at the farm….