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Letter To The Editor: Four Legs Good & Rockland Green Have A Responsibility To Refer Suspected Animal Abuse Or Neglect To Law Enforcement; They Failed 5-Year Old LuLu
By Kevin Nolan
Four Legs Good, Rockland Green’s operator of the shelter we’ve all known for the last 50 years as Hi-Tor, posted recently about the euthanization of a 5-year-old pit bull named LuLu after a complication from a last minute emergency surgery. As sad as it is to hear this story, what Four Legs Good reveals in its Facebook post is that it had known that LuLu had been subject to neglect and possibly abuse for a long time, and that it had only given the dog owner advice on spay/neuter and offered a free spay service through its partnership with Rockland Green.
According to Four Legs Good, Lulu’s “owner let her frequently roam the neighborhood and she ended up at the shelter multiple times.” The post said, that the first time LuLu came to the shelter, Four Legs Good discovered an old leg injury that had “never been treated properly and had healed incorrectly.” How many times must a dog end up at the shelter before it is taken from the owner?
Her last visit to the shelter ended in tragedy. She was taken to the emergency veterinarian but it was too late. She died post-op.
A responsible sheltering organization knows that when it witnesses or suspects abuse or neglect of an animal, it must immediately call in the authorities, either the police, the sheriff, or here in Rockland County, the Hudson Valley Humane Society, whose mandate includes investigating and prosecuting animal abuse and neglect.
Four Legs Good, either not knowing what its legal obligations were, or turning a blind eye to them, had multiple encounters with the dog, released it back to the owner, and made no mention on their Facebook postings of referring the case to a local law enforcement entity.
While Four Legs Good said it made valiant efforts at the end, it is nonetheless is partly responsible for Lulu’s death if it didn’t report signs of neglect or abuse. Rockland Green put Four Legs Good in place after ousting Hi Tor in 2023, a nonprofit that had run the shelter for 50 years. Unfortunately, neither Four Legs Good nor Rockland Green seemed to act responsibly and report the case to authorities. Also, it’s surprising that the dog was continuously returned to its owner.
Rockland Green needs to think long and hard about who it’s going to put in charge of the $20 million tax-funded shelter it is building in the Village of West Haverstraw. Shelter operations should be run by professionals, trained in their professional and legal obligations. In light of this project’s long-term debt that will fall on taxpayers’ shoulders for decades, it is even more imperative for skilled operators to be hired to run the future shelter; operators who have shelter training and who know their legal obligations.
And inexplicably, even though Rockland Green charged taxpayers over $2 million in 2025 to pay for “Animal Management” services to pay Four Legs Good to run the shelter, Four Legs Good is now using Lulu’s death as a vehicle for “donations.” Donations for what? All of Lulu’s expenses were presumably covered by taxpayer dollars paid to Rockland Green.
Owning and caring for a pit bull (or any other animal) is a major responsibility. Neglecting it is unforgivable. But what’s also unforgivable is having knowledge of neglect and doing nothing about it.
Kevin Nolan is a resident of Rockland County.
Note: The opinions expressed above are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rockland County Business Journal.
