US News

Dog fight over in dachshund custody battle

This dog fight is staying out of the courthouse.

Two Manhattan women involved in a potentially landmark divorce case – that centered on a custody battle over a pooch – have settled their squabble over the miniature dachshund.

Washington Heights resident Shannon Travis agreed to give up her claim to little Joey before a hearing over the pup’s fate could be scheduled, an attorney involved in the case told The Post Tuesday.

Travis bought Joey as a 10-week-old puppy from a pet store and gave him to her then-girlfriend as a gift and “a consolation for her having to give away her cat at Travis’ insistence,” according to court papers.

The couple wed in October 2012.

The settlement, reached late last week, gave Murray permanent custody of Joey.

“She’s very pleased,” Murray’s attorney, Sherri Donovan said.

The estranged couple settled after a matrimonial judge issued a landmark ruling saying that said pets should be treated more like children than a pieces of property in divorce proceedings.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper had ordered a one-day hearing with testimony from the two mothers about who was the more devoted parent.

“People who love their dogs almost always love them forever,” Cooper said in his ruling granting the oral arguments. “But with divorce rates at record highs, the same cannot always be said for those who marry.”

“The decision definitely helped bring about the settlement,” Donovan said. “You have to be pretty serious about wanting to keep the pet.”

Murray, who moved to Maine to purse a PhD, had argued in court papers that the pooch slept on her side of the bed and it was in Joey’s “best interests” to live with her.

She had told The Post: “I consider this puppy, my little angel Joey, the love of my life. He is my little soul mate, and there was no way in this lifetime I could ever live without him.”

Neither Travis nor her attorney returned calls for comment.