Community

Finding Homes for Abused, Abandoned Animals

By Nina Curran
Spectrum staff

Approximately 1.5 million animals in kill shelters are euthanized every year, according to the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Social Tees Animal Rescue, a no-kill shelter in the East Village, is working to change that.

Enter the shelter’s 325 E. Fifth St. home and, to the left of the door, a visitor takes in a floor-to-ceiling reptile habitat. On the right, a wall is adorned with adoption posters bearing phrases such as “Post No Bills.”

A location this small begs the question: If this is an animal shelter, where do they keep all of the animals?

Samantha Brody, Social Tee’s director, gives an answer. The shelter’s mainly volunteer staffers don’t believe in “putting animals in cages.” As quickly as a rescued animal comes through door, staffers try to match them with a foster parent.

One such foster parent is Michael Diamond, a pastry shop owner who said he has taken in hundreds of dogs since finding out about the program from a friend 17 years ago.

Many of the shelter volunteers also are foster parents. When no one else would take in Ginger and Presley—tiny, toy breeds—Brody took them in. She calls them her “foster failures,” and can’t imagine them in anyone else’s care.

Three years ago, Ginger arrived at Social Tees from a kill shelter in Brooklyn, sick, emaciated and showing signs of a recent pregnancy. Four months later, Presley, a shi tzu who’d been at a Tennessee shelter, showed up. His tongue is so long it hangs out of his mouth.

Dogs with that abnormality—including Marnie, a 15-year-old shelter shi tzu with 2.1 million followers on Instagram—are all the rage right now on social media.

Social Tees has 56,000 Instagram followers and 35,000 likes on Facebook. For the most part, Brody runs the social media pages and the website. She is a NYU graduate with a degree in journalism and her education, she said has helped hugely with her work at the shelter and raising its online profile. Such Social Tees social media followers as celebrity actors Alan Cumming and Olivia Munn have adopted dogs from Social Tees.

As of this writing, Social Tees had about 70 dogs and cats available for adoption on its website. In the past, has found permanent homes for hundreds of pets, volunteers said.

Social Tees wasn’t always the no-kill animal shelter, though. When Robert Shapiro founded Social Tees, it was a clothing company that sold t-shirts decorated with simple slogans about the “human condition” and issues he wanted to spotlight. In 1991, Shapiro, inspired by his love of animals and the environment, transformed the t-shirt business into an animal shelter. Now, 26 years later, the business is coming full circle and Shapiro is looking to sell his products again, but totebags this time.

Also, Social Tees current expansion involves working with a local photographer to shoot pictures of shelter kittens to create promotional images. In addition, Social Tees host adoption events at Petcos around New York City every weekend.

Looking to the future, Shapiro said, “I’m … the only business that wants to be out of business.”

In other words, he wants to see a world with fewer animal shelters, abandoned and abused pets.