A missing dog from Brooklyn was found safe in New Jersey on Monday. The puppy, named Bailey, caused quite a sensation after being sighted in the Battery Tunnel, then crossing Lower Manhattan until ultimately arriving in Jersey City via the Holland Tunnel, according to rescuers. Christina Fan of CBS2 spoke with the officer who found him.
After being apprehended by Port Authority authorities at the end of a 10-day multi-state journey, the 7-month-old still had the energy to resist.
Andrew Vignapiano, who led the charge, told Fan that in his five years at ESU, he’s never had to persuade a puppy off a ledge. “We’re talking with the officers that originally made contact and they’re saying this dog is from New York. I’m going, from New York? How is that possible?” Vignapiano said.
Bailey is from Red Hook, Brooklyn, and has been missing since April 29. The Shepard-Akita mix attempted to swim across the East River the same day he escaped from home. Drivers discovered him walking through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel towards Manhattan a few days later. Officers caught up with him after he was spotted walking toward Jersey City in the Holland Tunnel’s North Tube.
“It opens up to about six-seven lanes of very late people going to work. Everyone is in a rush. It’s a dangerous area to walk a dog on a leash, let alone to have one running on its own. I’d say that dog is incredibly lucky,” Vignapiano said.
Bailey ended up on the second-story parking deck of a Home Depot, where police lured him to safety and sent him to a veterinarian.
Harriet Zucker, who has been attempting to train Bailey, believes the pup’s survival is even the more astonishing given that he had never left home before. “He’s lucky and I just think it says something about the resilience and the instinctual cleverness because this dog had never been out,” Zucker said.
She explained that the puppy was born naturally shy and scared of humans and that she has been looking for a foster home where he can learn to trust people. “He got to go to a place where there are no distractions, no big scary dogs, nothing scary, and he has to choose to come and be friends,” Zucker said. She expressed her hope that the result of Bailey’s travels may lead him to a forever home.
