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Snatched from the back seat of a parked Porsche on the Lower East Side, a Chihuahua had a New York adventure spanning five days and two boroughs before finally being reunited with his owner.
After shopping at Whole Foods on Houston Street, a Manhattan artist returned to his SUV to find the window smashed and both his laptop and lapdog missing from the back seat.
Bruce, 58, who declined to give his last name, said his beloved Harry, 5, had been sitting in the back of the Porsche Cayenne in a dog carrier that must have been mistaken for a fancy piece of luggage.
“He had never left my side since he was 3 months old,” the devastated owner said. “He’s attached to me and I am attached to him.”
Bruce filed a police report and plastered the neighborhood as well as several Web sites with fliers offering a $2,500 reward, but he thought he’d never see Harry again.
“There were a few false alarms — unsavory people calling looking for the reward,” he said. “It was like ‘Finding Nemo’ — it was a whole adventure finding a 4-pound dog in all of New York City. That is almost impossible.”
Five days later, at 1 a.m. on April 14, he received a phone call from Areli Soto, 32, a vet tech at Animal Kind Veterinary Hospital, who said she had been taking care of a Chihuahua that fit Harry’s description.
It turned out that Harry, who carried no identification or microchip, was picked up wandering around the Baruch Houses in Manhattan the same day he was stolen, and was taken to the Park Slope animal hospital by a woman who did not give her name.
Bruce and his partner arrived at her home to be reunited with Harry.
“He was shaking,” Soto said. “The dog jumped all over them and covered their faces with kisses.”
Soto declined the reward money, so Bruce decided to donate the funds to a Chihuahua rescue group in her name.
“I just had no interest in the money — it was a good deed,” she said. “It was enough just seeing the happiness on their faces.”
Bruce said he never imagined the story would have a happy ending.
“This innocent, loving little thing, This little ball of love. It just gives hope to people that lose their dog,” he said.
“Harry is on my lap now taking a nap.”
Additional reporting by Jeremy Olshan