Maggie Cogan has been homeless, living in Central Park with her pack of dogs. All but two, who still reside with her, have been moved to Pets Alive, a sanctuary in Middletown, New York, run by Sara Whalen, one of the first rescuers in New York. Cogan is about to see her dogs for the first time since they were taken from her and moved to Pets Alive. It’s 1995. (A version of this article originally ran in the Village Voice. You can visit Part One and Two of at substack.com.theballadofpearlandspike)
Whalen and Cogan walk towards the kennel where the dogs are living. “I know you’re anxious to see your dogs, but I’m going to limit your time with them,” says Whalen. “You have one hour. We’ll bring out two at a time into the office.” Cogan is upset; she wants to bring all her dogs outside at once. This is the moment when she begins to realize that these dogs are no longer her own.
We all go into Whalen’s office, which is a little gloomy. There are a couple of couches, a desk, a phone, and bathroom. Whalen sits at the desk and starts chain smoking. “I tried to get hypnotized for these,” she says. “But they couldn’t put me under.” Behind one door is a cat room. The others lead to a kennel we are forbidden to enter.
Since we have no access to the kennel, Beverly, Whalen’s single employee, brings Cogan’s dogs out to us. Neri, a solid black pit bull, looks smaller than I remember and calmer; he walks around the room checking us all out and then lies down on the couch next to Cogan. “I thought he was going to be out of his mind,” says Cogan. “The dogs are not panic-stricken here,” Whalen explains. “Your dogs have been here for a week and the others have told them—there’s nothing to fear.”
Duchess the funky wolfhound and Boris, the eight-year-old mutt, come out next. When we last saw Duchess she was traumatized, matted, and growling. Now, she looks like a different dog. She sniffs everyone in the room and then leaps into Negroponte’s lap to lick his face. Then she lies down on the floor near Beverly. Boris is more interested in Cogan, but most interested in going back inside the kennel. “I can’t believe this,” says Cogan. “I thought Boris would be furious with me.” But Boris is not the least bit angry. “Nobody believes me,” says Whalen. “But my dogs are really happy. Beverly and I spend quality time with them.”
Negroponte, Cogan and I are impressed. Maggie’s dogs are a little fatter, a lot cleaner, and already seem to have bonded with their new owners. Only Annie, the collie, pays special attention to Cogan. “I couldnt imagine how my children could survive without me,” she says in dismay.
This is my chance to convince Whalen to let me into her kennel. When I explain that I have to see the condition of her dogs to write about Pets Alive, she finally relents. She knows she needs good press and says, “Ok. Just you.”
Beverly takes me in and the dogs instantly go off like bombs. The noise is ear-splitting, painful. I wonder if any of the 70 beasts are going deaf in these conditions. I would need earplugs to spend time in the building, but Beverly just walks around, saying hello to her pals. One dog jumps up and down frantically in circles; an old basset hound sits in his kennel, wagging his tail. There’s a calm dog with piercing blue eyes who looks like a golden retriever. “Where’s Stonewall,” I shout at Beverly. (Stonewall is a pit bull sent to Pets Alive by the courts.) She leads me to a run where there’s a handsome white dog with a patch of brown on one eye. He’s sitting quietly. I don’t bother him.
Whalen is in the office waiting for me. She’s smiling because she knows what it’s like. “They only put on that show for strangers,” she says. Whalen is right to keep the public out. It would be impossible to select a dog from inside the building.
I want to see some of the other dogs outside of their kennels, to find out if they are all as happy as Cogan’s crew. I mention the dog with the blue eyes. “That’s North,” says Whalen. “If I could find a home for that dog, I’d be a happy woman.” Beverly is sent to get him. North has lived at Pets Alive for four years. He’s a golden retriever-mix, the color of butter. “He was brought here to be temporarily boarded,” says Whalen. “The man who owned him told me he was going blind.” He never came back. “North is a perfect dog,” says Whalen. “He’s gentle and beautiful. He’s blind, but that’s not a hardship for a dog.” North explores the office without bumping into any furniture. The dog is generous with his affection. “He’s great with kids, too,” adds Whalen, pitching him. I want to take him home on the spot. [A photo of North is put on the cover of the Village Voice with this story and the dog is adopted the following day.]
Then I ask Whalen to bring out her most unadoptable dog, apart from the pit bulls. We have a discussion about the contentious word, unadoptable. It’s a toss up between Valentino and Patty Cakes. Cakes is older, so Beverly chooses her. When I see her, I don’t understand why she’s never found a home. She’s a typical black shepherd-mix, friendly and easygoing. “There’s nothing wrong with this dog,” explains Whalen. “She just hasn’t appealed to anyone and probably won’t now because she’s 10 years old. She’s not a beautiful long-haired dog, a purebred or a cute terrier. That’s what people want.” I decided to take Cakes out for a walk. She’s lively and seems to enjoy the attention.
When I return, Whalen tells me that she doesn’t want Cogan to stay—yet. She needs to think about the situation. She’s had homeless people on the farm before, “and they can be difficult to get rid of,” she adds. “I just don’t have time to be a babysitter.” I too am wondering how the homeless anarchist will do here.
When we get ready to leave, Cogan is visibly disappointed; she wants to live at Pets Alive. “Would you like to leave Jovita here,” Whalen asks as if this will make her feel better. “I don’t know,” Cogan says. “Let me ask her.” Cogan puts the little Chihuahua down on the ground and says, “Jovita, do you want to stay here with Sara?” The dog looks at Whalen, then looks at Cogan, pauses, and then takes a few steps towards the car. “I guess she wants to go with me,” says Cogan, pleased. “What do you think?” she asks the dog expert. “I don’t think Jovita has an opinion,” says Whalen. We leave with both dogs and head back to New York.
Whalen and Cogan have the threat of homelessness in common. Whalen has borrowed thousands of dollars to keep the farm running and lives in constant fear that she will loose the place and have to move all her animals. Initially, Whalen seemed to identify with Cogan, yet she resists giving her a home right away. But Whalen is not the kind of person who easily says “no.” Three days after her first meeting with Cogan, in a sudden and dramatic gesture, Whalen herself drives into the city and scoops up Cogan, Jovita, and Herculissa, to bring them up to Pets Alive.
It’s not clear what has changed Whalen’s mind, but a large photograph of the two women appears in The New York Times a few days later. The article, sweetly titled “A Safe Haven for all Creatures in Need,” is a short upbeat piece about Wahlen’s newest stray: Maggie Cogan. According to the Times, these two are going to live happily ever after.
“I’m standing in my bedroom looking out my window, only to see my horses in the driveway,” Whalen tells me over the phone, the day after the Times piece comes out. It’s the beginning of Cogan’s mischief. “My horses told her they didn’t want to be kept in the paddock, so she opened the gate for them,” she explains angrily. Later that day, her neighbor calls and asks whats going on in her backyard. Maggie took her clothes and hung them all over the trees,” says Whalen. “It looked like a homeless encampment.
Whalen is so upset she consults a local psychiatrist about schizophrenics; he tells her they have problems following rules. At Pets Alive, every minute of the day is structured into a rigid routine so that two women can feed, clean, and water approximately 100 animals. Cogan’s role in this process is not clear. “She won’t do anything I ask her,” complains Whalen. “In fact, she does quite the opposite.”
Whalens anxieties escalate with a series of minor disasters. First, Cogan lets a group of feral cats out of their cages; it takes Beverly hours to catch them. One night, Cogan goes into the kennel, wakes up the dogs and the neighbors along with them. Whalen has to keep buildings and doors locked. “I’m constantly screaming at her,” she confesses guiltily. “Yet, I know it’s her illness.”
Negroponte doesn’t believe that Cogan is being that difficult. “Maggie went up there to help save Pets Alive,” he insists. Whalen thinks he’s completely unrealistic. “How can this woman help anyone if she can’t help herself?” But she will not kick her out. Whalen doesn’t blame Maggie for her condition, but she faults Negroponte. “He romanticized her problems,” she says. “Instead of making a movie about her, he should have gotten her some help.”
The documentary filmmaker is increasingly faced with the reality that Maggie can’t function in a normal environment—not that working for a woman who has 81 dogs is particularly “normal.” But Maggie doesn’t want to live in anyone else’s world; she’s satisfied with her own. Negroponte knows that she’s going to end up back in Central Park, homeless again. He begins to realize that the woman he made a movie about is not entirely the same person who is creating chaos at Pets Alive.
Katrina Pendelton, Maggie’s good friend, and I decide to visit. As we drive up, she regales me with hilarious stories about her husband, actor Austin Pendelton, and the cantankerous Cogan. Her husband is a fan, but Pendelton is Maggie’s real life support; she takes Cogan’s dogs to the vet and brings her soup and dog food at night. The Pendeltons are the proud owners of Prince William, son of King Boris.
When we arrive, Whalen is taking Pets Alive board members on the tour. We find Cogan raking manure in a field. When she’s finished, we sit down under a tree with Herculissa and Jovita. I ask Maggie how the dogs are doing. “They’re very disobedient because they can’t run free like they did in Central PArk,” she says. “And they can’t visit Boris.” Does she want to stay here? “Well, it’s beautiful, but there are so many rules. You have to walk on eggshells around here because the dogs have so many psychological problems. There’s certainly a higher I.Q. in Central Park.”
Nevertheless, Cogan wants to stay if she can. When I ask what she’s been doing with her laundry, she says, “I hung it up all over the trees to get the city smell out,” she continues, “You know the neighbors here are incredible. They put chips all around so they can see everything.”
Whalen is fed up with Cogan’s “unconventional reality.” She will no longer listen to Maggie’s raps, poetry or not. The two women are grating on each other. Whalen says Cogan is not an animal person—the greatest insult the Queen of Rescue can dish out. “My animals might be talking to Maggie, but her animals are talking to me,” she says sarcastically. “She doesn’t go near my horses or take good care of her own two dogs.” Herculissa almost strangles herself one afternoon when she is left tied to a tree. And Whalen is concerned about Jovita. “Maggie won’t put her inside when its cold,” she says. “We’ve asked her to again and again. That’s not love.”
While Whalen worries about Cogan’s dogs, Negroponte and Pendelton worry about Cogan. Everybody’s on the phone. But Whalen won’t ask Cogan to leave as long as she has nowhere to go. Negroponte is getting a stiff neck; Pendelton is getting fed up. Should they rescue Cogan from the rescuer? Cogan’s responsibilities at Pets Alive shrink to zero.
For the next few weeks Cogan continues to lead a homeless life in Middletown. She brushes her teeth outside and spends her time the same way she did in Central park, painting charming pictures of her dogs and searching for people to talk to. “She had my garbage men out of their truck for 45 minutes,” says Whalen. Cogan hangs out in the road with her dogs, watching the traffic. Negroponte insists that she’s just lonely. “She’s not lonely,” asserts Whalen. “This woman needs help.”
Negroponte is home asleep when the phone rings at 6:15 in the morning. It’s Cogan whispering: “Michel, I’ve got to get out of here. Help me.” She sounds like a prisoner. Negroponte prepares for his last trip up to Pets Alive. I tell him that he is Cogan’s prince. “And soon I’ll be her pauper,” he says.
Brendan Nugent is actively trying to find Cogan temporary quarters in an SRO or anywhere else, before she comes back to the city. “But no one will take her with two dogs,” he tells me. Cogan, however, won’t give them up, even temporarily. Besides, she wants to go back to the park where she is famous. “We gave her a choice,” says Nugent. “She chose the dogs.”
When Negroponte arrives at the farm, the atmosphere is tense. All the animals are strangely quiet. Whalen has given the Chihuahua two warm coats as a gift, but Cogan won’t take them. “I knew Sara would load them with chips,” she tells me later.
Negroponte drops Cogan off at 72nd and Fifth, her doorway into the park. He hugs her and drives away feeling miserable. Cogan feels terrific. She’s happy to be back in Manhattan, where the dumpster diving is first class. Still, winter is coming. Negroponte is starting to wonder how much of Maggie’s insistence on living in Central Park has to do with Jupiter’s Wife, but the director has lost control of the picture; the sequel is being directed by Maggie. He and Pendelton continue to worry about Cogan. Whalen worries about Jovita and Herculessa. The temperature is dropping.
A few days later, I head uptown looking for Cogan. I find her on the steps of an Upper East Side church and I take out my tape recorder. Does she mind? “Are you kidding?” says Cogan. “I see those things everywhere even if they aren’t there.” It’s a warm day and the dogs are asleep. “They’re tired out,” says Cogan. “We walked for hours yesterday.” She has put out an aluminum dish filled with Cambell’s beef broth for the dogs. When Jovita wakes she laps it up. I open a package of Pupperoni dog treats I have brought with me. Maggie chides me. It’s junk food.
She wants to talk about Pets Alive. She stayed for nearly a month only to be near her own dogs locked in a kennel. “I was waiting for my own kids to adopt them because they’re living in Middletown now.” Cogan tells me she has 14 children. She seems more disorientated than when I last saw her at Pets Alive. I have difficulty bringing the conversation back down to earth.
We talk about her dogs. “I don’t want Sara to adopt them out,” she says. “They want to stay together.” (Whalen has recently placed the collie and the beagle.) I ask Cogan if she is eager to move inside before winter. “I was sent here by God on a mission,” she says. “Not to just have an easy time and watch soap operas. My friends worry about me outside, but there are guardian angels watching over me. The unconventional reality doesn’t want me to get involved with housing. It’s better this way.”
But it is not better for Jovita who dies in Cogan’s arms on November 11th, a few days later. Cogan is heartbroken. “It’s the first time I’ve really seen her deeply sad,” says Pendelton. Whalen is furious. “That dog froze to death,” she says, weeping. Pendelton defends Cogan: She died of natural causes. The weather wasn’t freezing.” Whalen is frantic, fearing that Herculissa will go next.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, its business as usual. Whalen is involved with an 85 year old woman who went into a nursing home and left 16 animals, not including some rats, in her house. A vet gives Whalen a healthy two year old dog who was brought in for euthanasia when he snapped at a child. One of her own dogs needs emergency foot surgery. She’s organizing a fundraiser for Pets Alive at the Hard Rock Cafe, and preparing to go to court to face her husband in an acrimonious divorce.
As the weeks go by, Negroponte, Pendelton, and Nugent continue to plot to get Cogan and Herculissa indoors. Negroponte finds an outreach program, finally, that Maggie likes. A little optimism spreads through the group. Regardless, Whalen remains concerned about Herculessa; she can’t let it go. But Pets Alive is the last place on earth Cogan will send her dog. For the moment, they are a family.
UPDATE 2024:
Michel Negroponte has a home in the Catskills and he continues to make films. His newest one, about a herd of cows who live next door, will be out soon. Jupiter’s Wife is on Youtube.
Sara Whalen died in 2007 at the age of 64. A new group of dedicated rescuers took over Pets Alive.
Maggie Cogan is 82 and lives in a nursing home in Queens. She has no dogs. But she has an attentive nephew, Kevin James Cummins. Even better. Here they are in a recent photo taken by Cummins.
*The dogs on this page, “Maisie” at the top and “Nick” in the middle, can be adopted from Out of the Pits, a longtime rescue in the Albany area. Visit them and others at outofthepits.org
These dogs are such tragic innocent victims. Great article. Thank you!
Powerful. Thanks.