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BY Thomas Zambito, Rob Sgobbo and Bill Hutchinson DAILY NEWS WRITERS Wednesday, July 14th 2010, 8:33 AM
A heartbroken upper West Side couple has slapped a dog-walking service with a $1 million lawsuit, charging its employee left their beloved pooch to die of heat exhaustion.
Laura Garner and Roger Hardon accused Queens-based Doggie Love NYC of callously abandoning their pampered pet Percy despite obvious signs he was in distress.
Percy was my rock and my biggest source of comfort, Garner wrote in the Queens Supreme Court suit filed July 2. Percy wiggled his way into our hearts.
Garner and Hardon, both financiers who have no children, doted on Percy and said they filed the suit to alert other pet owners about the company.
I am haunted with the thought running through my head of what it was like for Percy being left to die in our apartment by someone who was supposed to care for him, Garner wrote.
Percy, a 5-year-old French bulldog, died last July after the couple went on a weekend getaway and put Percy in the Doggie Love kennel for the night.
Witnesses – including federal Appeals Court Judge Pierre Leval, a neighbor of Garner and Hardon – have submitted affidavits saying they saw Percy in the throes of death after he was driven home from the kennel in a hot van.
Two veterinarians also submitted affidavits saying the adorable pooch died from heat exhaustion.
Percy was lying on his back, with his legs sticking straight up. Percy looked exhausted, in distress, breathing with great difficulty, wrote Leval, adding he expressed concern for Percy, but the dog-walker insisted, ‘He is fine.’
Percy was dead when his regular $6,500-a-year dog-walker, Jay Ward, went to the apartment the next day and found his body dirty and covered in twigs, splayed in front of an air-conditioner.
Tembani Xaba, the lawyer for Doggie Love owners Nilo Silva and Marla Abrams, scoffed at the suit as sensational and predicted the company will be fully vindicated in court.
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