A Manhattan bookstore known by some as a neighborhood gem has become a shop of horrors for local dog owners after the storekeeper’s German shepherds mauled at least four other pups — one so badly it was put down last week.
La Libaire des Enfants, a French language children’s bookstore on the Upper East Side, is home to five German shepherds including a 98-pound white dog named Syko who charged a toy poodle last week, according to the New York Times.
Akiba Tripp was walking her seven-pound poodle Baby past the store on Friday when the shopkeeper opened the front door and Syko ran out and lunged at Baby — grabbing her in his mouth and breaking her spine, the woman told the newspaper.
“All of a sudden the door opens, a woman walks out, and two large dogs just bum-rushed us,” Tripp said.”[Syko] had my dog literally within his mouth.”
Bystanders rushed over to help pry Skyo off of Baby, but it was too late.
“Finally my dog was able to break free, but she couldn’t move — there was blood everywhere,” Tripp said.
She was forced to euthanize Baby that evening and now Syko’s owner and shopkeeper Lynda Hudson, 58, told the Times she plans to keep her dogs at her home in Westchester County full time.
“My dog is dead,” Tripp, a personal trainer to affluent clients in the area, said to the newspaper. “Those dogs should have been away a long time before.”
Baby was at least the fourth dog attacked by the German shepherds of La Libaire des Enfants in recent months, according to the outlet.
Syko and two of his siblings attacked a next-door neighbor’s dog on May 3. Julia Schafer said her husband walked out of their building with their small collie mix Tarsila when she was also grabbed by Syko.
“The white one bit her and held onto her,” Schafer said to the Times, adding that the pooch needed surgery.
Hudson agreed to pay the $850 vet bill.
Four days later, Hudson’s dogs mauled a pair of small pups — a Cavachon named Chloe and a Malitpoo named Muppet — walking by.
“Next thing I know this big white dog had my dog in her mouth,” Chloe’s owner, Laurie Davis, told the newspaper. “I’m screaming at the top of my lungs.”
Another dog bit Muppet’s face.
Chloe required surgery and her vet bill came out to $6,000 which Hudson said she would pay, according to the Times.
Davis sued Hudson in small claims court and reported the attack first to the police and then to the city health department’s animal bite unit.
The bite unit told her that Hudson claimed the dogs had never attacked before and were moving out of the city in a few days — so no disciplinary action was taken.
Online reviews of La Libaire des Enfants either describe a warm and friendly “neighborhood gem” or warn others to beware of the dogs.
“The owner of this store and the cafe next to it truly make it hard to be a dog owner in this neighborhood,” one reviewer wrote about two months ago. “They have [five] untrained, highly aggressive German shepherds always in the store and I am afraid and uncomfortable to walk past with my small dogs. When passing by, the dogs lunge at the doors and windows and it’s usually followed by the owner screaming profanities.”
One neighbor said they wouldn’t even walk on that side of the street.
“They have really frightening dogs. I live on the block and avoid that side of the street with my dog and with my kids,” David N wrote on Yelp in June. “They can barely control them.”
Another person said the dogs jumped against the glass windows as she walked by with her 10-pound Yorki.
“As we were passing by this shop, few German Shepards started barking, slamming to the glass windows covered in black plastic garbage bags,” Bella M wrote on Yelp in May. “Then I see this nasty woman shouting in French, waving her hands to take my dog elsewhere!”
Following Friday’s attack, Hudson paid the bill to put Baby down after initially offering to adopt and rehabilitate the small dog — which Tripp denied.
Now, Hudson told the Times she is considering the same fate for Syko.
“There is really something wrong with Syko,” she said through tears, “and I don’t know what to do.”
