CNN correspondent Soledad O’Brien wants this dog gone.
The newswoman and other members of a Chelsea co-op board are trying to evict a beloved family pet from a swanky loft building because they say the dog is smelly and slobbers.
O’Brien, in a 20-page affidavit, complained about the pooch’s “size, slobbering, shedding, drooling, gassiness and odors.”
“She told me at a shareholder’s meeting that my dog stinks,” said Steven Lyons, owner of Ugo, a good-natured, 150-pound mastiff.
Lyons, an immigration lawyer, lives with his wife and their three kids in a loft three floors above the journalist on West 26th Street.
O’Brien, the co-op board’s secretary, signed a notice on Jan. 5 that terminated the family’s lease, the first legal step before asking a Housing Court judge to remove the dog or the family from the building.
“Her behavior has been particularly outrageous,” Lyons said of O’Brien.
His wife, Monica Nelson, said, “She did get in my face.”
“What’s the matter? Aren’t you talking to me?” she said O’Brien asked her.
Other board members ridicule Nelson by holding their noses when they ride the elevator with her – even when she’s not with Ugo.
Lyons said neighbors had welcomed him to the building after he purchased his $3 million, 4,000-square-foot, eighth-floor apartment in 2003.
But that changed in March 2007 when he got the Neapolitan Mastiff, bred from an award-winning bloodline, in Turin, Italy. By that summer, a newly elected board had begun complaining, despite a co-op agreement allowing pets and the fact that several residents own cats.
Lyons said he began taking Ugo to a pet-grooming salon three times a month and spritzing him with an organic, orange-scented deodorizer. He also offered to use the freight elevator to walk the dog, but the board refused to allow it.
Soon the family will have to defend the dog in Housing Court.
“No family should have to decide between its own shelter and putting the family pet in a shelter,” said Michael Schwartz, the family’s lawyer.
O’Brien, 42, an anchor and special correspondent for “CNN Worldwide,” declined comment.