Flatbush man works to find home for abandoned dog
After taking Cooper to the doctor the next day, Giraldo was able to use Cooper's microchip to track down his owner.
Flatbush resident David Giraldo says it was a combination of snowing and raining when he found Cooper all alone and tied to a pole across from the 67th Precinct.
"The dog was freezing, terrified," Giraldo remembered thinking, before making the decision to take him home.
He said he could not "go on just ignoring this creature that's looking for help, who knows how long it's been out here. I'll just ask questions later."
After taking Cooper to the doctor the next day, Giraldo was able to use Cooper's microchip to track down his owner.
He told Giraldo via email that he could no longer afford to keep Cooper, and had no luck finding a place to take him, so he left him outside the precinct, hoping one of the officers would see him and take care of it, but never followed up.
"He didn't go inside the precinct, I guess he was embarrassed," said Giraldo who added that he has heard that is a common thing for people who abandon their pets.
So Giraldo decided he would take it upon himself to find Cooper a home.
While he also found that shelters were full, he kept going.
"That's just the way I was raised. We always see people in need, dogs in need, animals in need, and we're always taking them in," he says.
Eventually, he got in touch with Animal Care Centers of New York, which said it had room.
Giraldo had made a TikTok video of the whole process, and after he dropped Cooper off, it started going viral.
With over 130,000 views and new messages in his inbox every time he looked at his phone, he could not stop thinking about Cooper.
Making matters worse, he had learned that Cooper had some expensive medical issues that the next owner would need to take care of.
"It was me freaking out and just being a head case," Giraldo remembered. "I can't take that chance that somebody else is going to take the dog and not do right by him."
So two days later, Giraldo went back to the ACC, and adopted Cooper himself - adding the 4-year-old to a home that already included another dog named Yoshi.
"It's definitely a little family now. We're going to go to watering holes, we're going to swim, we're going to go camping," said Giraldo excitedly.
He says his hope is that my sharing his story, people will realize that even if they cannot give their pet a home anymore, there is always somewhere to take it and always someone else who will want it.
Animal Care Centers of New York says that if someone is having trouble, reach out to the center, and it will have plenty of ways to help out, including food.
If it does come to the point where someone needs to give their animal up, ACC is an "open admissions shelter" - meaning it will never turn an animal away.
MORE: Animal Care Centers of NYC | NYC's Largest Animal Shelter
