Rescue Ink: Tough guys saving puppies

Batso and Big Ant hold pit bull pups from a litter they rescued.
Photo: Librado Romero/The New York Times

Although at first it might seem unlikely that a band of inked, leather-clad tough guys roaming the streets and boroughs of New York City are out saving helpless animals, once you think about it a moment it makes perfect sense. Just like the street dogs and cats they rescue, the men of Rescue Ink are often misunderstood, feared, and alienated from a more genteel world. So perhaps they are the most appropriate angels to rescue the abused fighting dogs, the neglected watch dog, the stray alley cat.

There's a great article in the New York Times today about Rescue Ink, the atypical rescue group that willingly checks out reports of abandonment, neglect and abuse. Not always focused on the street animal, they also took on the case of a purebred Maltese stolen from its owner's car, most likely by thieves planning to sell the valuble pooch for drug money. But Rescue Ink members spend much of their time on the grittiest streets in urban New York, checking out squalid dog yards and alleys. They work in loose association with police, animal control and the ASPCA, often taking on challenges for which the main stream groups do not have time or capacity.

They met on the local hot rod scene. They saw one another at tattoo conventions around the area, comparing bikes. They looked like heavies, a band of Hells Angels, with nicknames equally tough: Mike Tattoo, Big Ant, Johnny O, Batso, Sal, Angel, Des.

... Clad in leather, inked to the hilt in skulls and dragons, with images of bloodied barbed wire looped about their necks, they shared something else — a peculiar tenderness for animals, and the intensity needed to act on the animals’ behalf when people abuse them....

“I’m a vegetarian,” said Mike Tattoo (real name Mike Ostrosky), a former bodybuilding champion with a shaved head, great arms covered in art and a probing clarity in his blue eyes.

... The group became a little larger over the course of about 15 years, with various animal-loving, tattooed bikers in the New York area joining the conversation. One member, Angel Nieves, a 47-year-old retired city police detective, grew up in the projects on West 125th Street and remembered taking in strays from the streets as a boy, as did many of his cohorts. He owns a tiny, white bichon frisé named Cris.

What's next for Rescue Ink?

[In September]... the bikers will begin a program in the city’s public schools to educate children about being kind to all animals, even the less attractive breeds. They will be accompanied by Elwood, a small, hairless Chihuahua mix judged in an annual California contest to be the World’s Ugliest Dog.

Story here. Slide show here.