J.C. Rice
This pooch must have had a ruff day.
It looked as if a Upper West Side doggo was at the end of his bone on Nov. 23, when the canine was photographed navigating a narrow ledge on the 15th floor of a West 86th Street building — some 200 feet from the ground.
“I watched him walk all the way to the end [of the ledge] and he stretched his neck over the edge — I was freaking out,” said eyewitness Deanne Romano, who posted the shocking snaps to the Nextdoor app. “It’s very disturbing. There’s no good explanation for any of this.”
“I thought it was a statue at first, because he was frozen out there on the ledge,” said Romano, who was visiting a pal’s apartment when she spied the medium-sized daredevil-dog.
At one point, the dog stopped near one of the apartment’s windows, and stood up on its back legs, as if trying to catch the attention of someone inside, Romano said.
The death-defying dog remained on the ledge for 15 minutes, said Romano, who called 911. The NYPD responded but did not see the dog. The hair-raising sight generated at least one 311 complaint, which was closed soon after it was filed.
“I don’t understand how this could happen and I don’t know how that dog moved around up there. That’s got to be a building code violation or animal endangerment,” Romano said.
A doorman at the building acknowledged the incident, and told the The Post he’s received prior complaints about the perilous pooch.
Building management has met with the unidentified owners and urged them to make sure the dog can’t access the ledge, the doorman said. On Wednesday, it appeared the dog’s owners placed an outdoor chair near the opening to the ledge, in order to block the dog’s path.
Some neighbors slammed the high-wire act as a case of animal cruelty.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said one man, when shown the photo. “That’s a dog? Unbelievable.”
“Someone needs to be arrested,” insisted another. “That’s so dangerous. I hope he’s okay.”
Others wondered if the pup was simply tired of the rat race.
“He looks like an older dog,” one neighbor reflected. “Maybe he’s had enough.”
Dominick Feichtner, a canine behaviorist, told The Post the edgy dog is no laughing matter.
“It’s a case of neglect and carelessness,” he said. “They should obviously have conditioned the dog to be in a crate to sleep, rest and relax when unsupervised the moment they realized that this was going on.”