Stop me if this sounds familiar: big, muscled guy with tattoos, who can come across as a little intimidating until you know him, ends up having the biggest heart for homeless, neglected and/or abused animals. At first, he and his family adopt dogs that they find wandering alongside the road. He imagines he’ll never really be a cat person, but once that first stray cat finds its way into his home, he’s in love, and begins to do more serious work with animal protection and advocacy associations.
Surprisingly enough, I’m not talking about my partner Kevin Coolidge, his childhood dogs Kirby and Hoover, or Hobo. Or, at any rate, I’m not just talking about them. For the purposes of a BOOK review, I was actually referring to a touching new book about Rescue, Ink. The eponymously-titled Rescue, Ink recently released by Viking Publishing, was penned by Denise Flam with a great deal of input from the ten-man New York City animal rescue group. This core group of guys has a lot in common – most are big guys, with at least a couple of tattoos, interested in classic cars and motorcycles, who grew up rough and aren’t easily intimidated. Their “daytime” jobs span the gambit from managing the family catering business to retired police chief to personal trainer to bar bouncer. What they brings them together, though, is a deep love for animals, and an intense dedication to changing the lives of those who are neglected or abused.
The cover photo on the book – all ten guys, eighty tattoos, dogs, kittens, and turtles among them – is worth the proverbial thousand words, but, thankfully, that’s only the beginning of the fascinating stories here. This book, which could have just been a publicity stunt in the wrong hands, instead flows with individual stories about different rescue cases that wonderfully showcase who these men are, what their mission is, and how they have gone about implementing it. Here are the stories of the cat rescued from sixty feet up a tree; the help given to the family whose cat population had ballooned to over 150 in the house; the rescues of “bait” dogs, mostly Rottweilers and Pit Bulls, who are miraculously rehabilitated; the delivery of new dog houses to shelter big dogs left in their yards, under the elements; the ‘undercover’ work at a slaughterhouse in the Pocono area; and many more.
Though the men of Rescue Ink have been adopting individual animals throughout most of their own lives, and now facilitate the adoption of individual animals, their mission is as big as their hearts, and bigger than the largest member of the group, “Big Ant. (Anthony)”, who weighs in at 320 pounds and whose tattooed arms are bigger than most people’s thighs. These men also confront abusers, offer help to overwhelmed rescuers and pet owners, build doghouses and better dog runs, maintain feral cat colonies, give talks at community centers and schools, and work with the larger network of animal rescue societies across the nation.
I could recap the specific stories of this book, but that would take away from your experience with it. I invite you to dig in to the personal stories of Big Ant, who had to learn to walk again, or Joe Panz, whose scars – five bullet holes, knife wounds, and burns – bear silent but powerful testament to the way he grew up, or Des, who joined a gang young to survive his neighborhood. All these men have powerful stories of their own, and yet, the focus of this book is on the incredible work they do. Gentle giants, every one, with attitude to spare. They’re not afraid to knock on a door in a bad neighborhood in New York City, and tell a guy to his face that he’s abusing his dog; then offer to take the dog, whom they treat with only gentleness, love and respect. This is the powerful combination that Rescue Ink offers.
Hobo gives his two thumbs up to Rescue Ink, the SPCA, Second Chance Animal Sanctuaries, and Animal Rescue Societies everywhere for the work they do. Special thanks to the people who adopted the two abandoned kittens out of the bookstore this weekend. Jeers to the idiot who dropped them off in a cardboard box in the middle of the night. Hobo would like to remind everyone to stop by the Second Chance Animal table at the BookFest this weekend, AND make sure you spay/neuter your pets!
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