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The Brooklyn Paper / Julie Rosenberg

Patti Hagan with her beloved pooch, Lady Day.

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Residents of Prospect Heights — whether they support the Atlantic Yards mega-project or not — were united in their joy at hearing that Patti Hagan had gotten her dog back.

That is, except Bruce Ratner. But more on that later.

Lady Day, the peripatetic Atlantic Yards protester’s 12-year-old black Lab, had been stolen last week, setting into motion a community-wide effort to find the purloined pup that ended thanks to a hunch by a receptionist at a Fort Greene animal hospital.

The drama began on March 6, when Hagan tied up her dog outside New York Naturals on Flatbush Avenue near Bergen Street.

Hagan was actually going into a different store, but wanted Lady to be in the sun, not in the cold (remember that, it becomes important later).

Ten minutes later, when Hagan returned from photocopying protest flyers (what else?), Lady was nowhere to be found.

She popped her head into New York Naturals — “It’s run by a Bhutanese guy, by the way,” Hagan said — and was told that a “strange” woman with gray hair and a dark coat had poked her head into the shop demanding to know whose dog was tied up outside.

“I went next door and talked to Mike Hussein and he said the same thing about this lady,” Hagan said. “And the optometrist said he saw a woman acting strange.”

Convinced that Lady had been dognapped, Hagan made the rounds of the local animal hospitals to get the word out and posted flyers all over the neighborhood (“Lady Day is very sweet and loves to eat apples,” the flyer said).

Within minutes, Hagan’s phone started ringing. Like an Amish barn-raising, everyone wanted to help. Sightings of the mad dognapper were reported from as far away as the Park Slope Food Co-op on Union Street and the animal hospital on Seventh Avenue and 11th Street (both dogs turned out to be males).

And Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, which is Hagan’s ally on Atlantic Yards, but typically reserves its Web site for analysis and criticism of the 16-tower project, posted a picture of the dog and a plea for her return.

“It obviously was only peripherally an ‘Atlantic Yards’ issue, so I ran it by DDDB’s steering committee, and there was wide agreement that we should do it,” said Eric McClure, who is overseeing the site. “Patti has been a prominent figure in the opposition, so … it just seemed like an instance in which we could step away from ‘the mission’ to do something good in another way.”

On Saturday, four days after the theft, Hagan got the first break in the case: A receptionist called her to say that the crazy woman had left a dog fitting Lady Day’s description at the Brooklyn Veterinary Hospital in Fort Greene.

Hagan raced over — with an apple. As Lady wolfed down the fruit, hospital workers knew they had made a match.

“It was such an amazing feeling,” said Hagan, who has been Lady Day’s pal for 12 years. “She just bounded in and was practically dancing.”

The recovery of the dog put a happy ending on a pretty bad year for Lady Day, who was almost electrocuted in April and also had to watch her owner’s frustration grow as Ratner’s project was approved by the state in December.

In the end, Hagan was lucky. Before the reunion, the hospital almost turned the dog over to the Center for Animal Care and Control for the inevitable euthanasia, but a kindly hospital worker took pity on Lady Day.

“I looked into her eyes and knew that this was not an abandoned dog,” receptionist Luz Santiago later told The Brooklyn Paper.

Santiago said she also knew something was up because the woman who had brought the dog in was “very nervous” and “ran away” when questioned about the dog.

Lady Day was at the hospital for four days before Santiago saw one of Hagan’s flyers, recognized the dog, and called Hagan.

Hagan said she was left with a “great, warm feeling” about her neighbors. Even James Caldwell, the president of the pro-Atlantic Yards group BUILD, called her to show his support (for her efforts to find the dog, not her fight against the project).

Still, Patti Hagan could find the overarching anti-Ratner message in this lost-dog story.

“Obviously, Bruce Ratner had nothing to do with my dog getting stolen, but it was so gratifying to see how the community responded,” she said. “It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t happen in a neighborhood of high-rise luxury condos like Ratner wants to build.”

Forest City Ratner had — what do you think? — no comment.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

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