After two surgeries, much love, injured dog ready for new home as SPCA probes possible abuse

Smithtown Animal Shelter staffers were shocked when they examined the young pit bull mix found New Year’s Eve off Nesconset Road. 

Scars covered his spindly body. The bones of his right eye socket were fractured and the retina was detached. His left front elbow was dislocated and he could not walk. He’d been dumped, shelter director Leigh Wixson surmised, and before that perhaps beaten or hit by a car. Wixson referred the case to the Suffolk County SPCA for possible criminal charges, and an investigation is ongoing. 

Last year, Smithtown’s shelter, which is smaller than many of the facilities in other towns, oversaw adoption of 333 cats and 18 dogs. Cases of dog abuse in the town are rare, Wixson said. She’d seen nothing like this in her almost four years as director, she said. “The worst part is, despite all of it, he still loves people and trusts people.”

But after almost four months and two surgeries, the 19-month-old dog — whom shelter staff call Chevy — has recovered and is looking for a permanent home.  

For this, Wixson credits Nicole Albala, 47, a veterinary technician at Animal Surgical Center in Oceanside, where Chevy was taken in January. Albala took Chevy into her home and nursed him back to health. 

“I wanted him to forget everything from his past,” said Albala, in an interview last week in the South Shore home she shares with her human family, three dogs, two rescued reptiles and 40 fish. She refuses to call the young dog by the name under which he endured so much pain and instead calls him Bo, after the sight-impaired Italian singer Andrea Bocelli.

Albala’s work with the young dog included daily range of motion exercises and regular trips to an Animal Surgical Center facility for cold laser therapy to decrease inflammation and increase blood flow around his injured body parts. 

Bo was “cautious” moving on his rebuilt left leg, and Albala taught him how to use a ramp she’d had installed so he wouldn’t have to climb stairs. Bo was housebroken before she took him in, making his apparent mistreatment all the more baffling: “I still don’t understand it,” she said. “I’ll never get it.”  

Some answers might come from the microchip carried by the young dog. Wixson said authorities used it to find a former owner, an East Meadow woman who told authorities she gave the dog away several months ago, but doesn’t remember to whom. 

Suffolk SPCA Chief Roy Gross said two detectives are working on the case. He declined to comment on an open investigation but said, generally, charges in mistreatment cases could involve abandonment and neglect, both misdemeanors, and more rarely, aggravated animal cruelty, a felony. 

Albala called Bo a “snuggle bug,” happy to cuddle inside or accompany her husband outside while he works on the yard. 

Parting will be difficult but for the best, she said. “He’ll move on and he’ll give another family his love, and I’ll be able to do this again.”