You’ve no doubt seen the myriad posters around Greenpoint alerting the community about missing dog Frankie. Great news – Frankie has now been found!
Frankie, a scruffy little terrier mix, was last seen in Greenpoint at Java Street and Manhattan Avenue and had been missing since December 20th. True North Pet Rescue, the NYC-based volunteer-run and foster-based rescue that was housing Frankie, first alerted the community to Frankie’s absence.
Alicia Torello, a concerned Greenpoint local, decided to take it upon herself to try to find the dog. She contacted Jim Tierny, a Brooklyn-based intuitive pet tracker who was known around the neighborhood for finding other lost animals. Jim helps people find lost pets using both common-sense strategies, coupled with intuitive psychic impressions.
They teamed up to paper the neighborhood with about 500 flyers. After weeks of searching and dead ends, Jim received a tip from a tugboat operator who noticed Frankie when he was coming in from New Jersey.
On January 23rd, Jim found Frankie by a recycling plant next to Newtown Creek. Alicia was with him and ended up taking Frankie to the vet. “I know accidents happen but I just couldn’t let him go. So I told them I would take him to the vet and foster,” Alicia told Greenpointers. “He warmed up so fast!! After a bath he was chilling. He was shaking and nervous at first, we were at the vet for a few hours and by the end, he was cuddling with me.”
Lost pets are an unfortunate fact of life, but Jim has some advice if you ever find yourself in that situation. First, your pet’s personality is key to understanding where they might have ended up. A friendly, extroverted dog is more likely to approach people for assistance, and a more timid, introverted dog might get scared off by a stranger trying to help.
“Within the first 24-48 hours, the dog usually returns to the place where it went missing,” Jim says, advising people to stick close to the area and avoid getting too many people involved in the search, as a mob of people might intimidate your pet. This includes using social media for updates on your pet’s location, as that might encourage strangers to look for your pet and potentially scare them away.
With recent health scares in McCarren Park, it’s nice to have some good news about dogs these days!
As a proud owner of a dog named Frank I have many stories to relate. But the one that stands out is how the mutt got it’s name.
A friend of my brother whom we shall call Cyr for simplicitys sake brought the cute puppy home one day with the name Damnit. He purportedly did this so he could call it just by saying “Come here Damnit!”. With five minor kids living in the house, Mom was not amused! So Cyr changed the name of the forlorn looking pup to Frank. She, like other youngsters of our family, was neither obedient nor chaste. In any case, one day Dad who usually fed Frank failed to find the wirey pup in the usual place outside the plate glass door. He went in search. After a good while and worry Dad found Frank forlornly at the usual spot. But the pup soon disappeared again. After some uneasy searching he decided to follow that mongrel. Much to his shock he finally found the mutt in a cubby hole behind and slightly under the red
brick house nursing eight little pups as varied in appearance as if each were from an alien land, one cuter than the last. Frank, formerly Damnit, was in fact the doting mother of eight tiny blind aliens.