It’s a ruff story.
A New York couple is being accused of dognapping 9 premier pooches — by a Westchester shelter proprietor — who herself is on the middle of a number of complaints from earlier purchasers.
The 2 events are at the moment locked in a vicious dogfight over eight cute boxer-shepherd puppies and their mother.
Kris Fuhr, who works in tech, and Sara Obstarczyk, a former pilates teacher, are suing Lisa Smith, 53, president and proprietor of A Good Canine Rescue, Inc., a Westchester-based nonprofit.
The couple claims in a lawsuit that Smith harassed them, doxxed them, prompted them to get demise threats, and compelled them to uproot their lives after they determined to maintain the 9 canines they fostered from her — when she demanded them again.
The couple says they felt obligated to maintain the pups after considerations for his or her well-being in Smith’s custody.
Smith, whose group claims to have saved greater than 6,000 pooches since its inception in October 2018, filed a countersuit alleging they kidnapped the canines — and that they continue to be hers.
Demise threats
Fuhr and Obstarczyk — a pair since September 2011 — informed The Submit the drama that has upended their lives all started after they answered a Fb publish in mid-January 2025 asking for emergency fosters for a canine named Paisley.
In response to the lawsuit, on Jan. 10, 2025, Obstarczyk contacted Smith.
Obstarczyk, 45, was informed that Paisley was taken, however Smith had a boxer-shepherd combine named Lily and her litter of 10 puppies, which have been 3 weeks outdated, additionally in want of emergency care.
They determined to do it.
After clearing an 11-dog adoption with their landlord of their Tribeca constructing, Obstarczyk and Fuhr mentioned, Smith requested minimal questions earlier than sending over a single-page, unsigned foster settlement, in response to the swimsuit.
“We went from having by no means met her to her wanting to present us 11 of her animals in just some hours of time,” 45-year-old Fuhr informed The Submit.
However, on a freezing January morning, days later, Smith’s two younger daughters transported the canines to the couple’s house.
In her affidavit, Obstarczyk referred to as the alternate “oddly transactional.”
“We did this out of the goodness of our hearts and for the well-being of the animals we have been serving to,” Fuhr informed The Submit of the couple spending 1000’s of {dollars} on meals and provides.
Two of the puppies have been adopted fairly shortly; eight remained with the couple, together with Lily.
Nameless assaults
It began to go flawed when the puppies have been a couple of months outdated.
In response to the couple, Smith informed them she had “an permitted adopter in Westchester County” who was looking for a male canine, so Smith needed “to select up all of the male canines so this one adopter may meet them.”
However of their expertise, Fuhr and Obstarczyk mentioned, fosters sometimes had some enter on the place the canines would go.
Plus, after an earlier electronic mail alternate the place Smith had beforehand admitted she’d had a parvovirus outbreak in her dwelling — a virus that’s extremely contagious and lethal to canines — the couple didn’t wish to hand them over.
“We knowledgeable her that we didn’t really feel prefer it was protected to have the canines in her personal custody,” Fuhr informed The Submit.
“As such, we have been prepared to pay the total worth of all of the canines to undertake all of them, and we might deal with it from there. She rejected that.”
(Relating to parvovirus allegations, Smith admitted she had an remoted case in a visitor bed room years earlier, however an unrelated outbreak in 2024 concerned a separate litter that had by no means been in her dwelling.
“Saying they’d die of parvo at my home is the equal of claiming a twister will hit them in the event that they dwell in Westchester,” Smith informed The Submit.)
After a couple of extra reportedly heated conversations, Smith informed Obstarczyk that one among her daughters would decide up the canines on the morning of March 14, 2025 — however Obstarczyk and Fuhr refused.
Smith then reportedly posted Obstarczyk and Fuhr’s photographs, addresses, cellphone numbers and electronic mail addresses on her group’s Fb web page, which had about 32,000 followers on the time, and a $2,000 reward for “the Secure Return of Lily and her 8 remaining puppies (anybody aside from the thieves).”
Quickly after, Fuhr and Obstarczyk declare they have been hit with an onslaught of nameless cellphone calls, emails and textual content messages — escalating into demise threats, by nameless folks.
“If a gaggle of fools can rush the White Home, certainly a gaggle of involved animal saviors may bust open a measly house and two silly bastards,” the commenter social posted.
Their lawyer, Mark Doerr, mentioned he has additionally acquired harassing voicemails and emails.
Upending their lives
Fuhr and Obstarczyk informed The Submit they have been so terrified that they packed up their complete lives and fled Manhattan, 9 canines in tow.
Smith requested her followers to ship any data on them, and a few folks reported sightings of the couple “promoting the canines,” in response to posts on the rescue’s Fb web page, in upstate New York.
Nonetheless, Fuhr vehemently denied that declare.
“It’s illogical to suppose that we’d upend our lives to maintain the puppies protected,” Fuhr informed The Submit, “after which flip round and promote them on the road for money to a stranger, or, higher but, as she claimed in courtroom paperwork, give them up for scientific experimentation or put them into dogfighting rings.”
Fuhr and Obstarczyk felt compelled to relocate but once more to an undisclosed location.
Nonetheless, the web harassment has continued, Fuhr mentioned, pointing to a Good Canine Rescue social media publish from Friday, Could 29, suggesting the formation of a “restoration crew” to ramp issues up. He mentioned they reported it to the NYPD.
“I don’t perceive how this isn’t prison harassment. We now have tried every little thing from NYPD to FBI to native congressman to all types of authorities with no luck and no method to defend our security,” he informed The Submit.
In April 2025, Fuhr and Obstarczyk filed a civil case within the New York Supreme Courtroom towards Lisa Smith and A Good Canine Rescue for defamation and harassment.
Smith, who mentioned she has been battling metastatic breast most cancers for 5 years, countersued to reclaim her “property,” asking her followers for donations to offset authorized charges.
“I consider these persons are con artists and are suing me to close me up and let her take my canines,” Smith, 53, informed The Submit.
The foster settlement Obstarczyk signed, a picture of which was obtained by The Submit, explicitly states “that the canine belongs to A Good Canine Rescue and you’re solely offering short-term housing,” and that the signees “agree to present the pet again anytime it’s requested by A Good Canine Rescue whether or not its [sic] quickly or completely.”
Sad purchasers
Fuhr and Obstarczyk are usually not the primary folks to have battled with Smith.
Nicole Munroe, 43, a advertising director in Westchester, adopted a pit bull-boxer, Ace, from Smith in January 2022 on the grounds that it was kid- and people-friendly. Months later, the mother of three claimed to The Submit, Ace burst by means of a gate, attacked a mailman, and bit Munroe so badly that she wanted greater than 20 stitches.
Munroe mentioned she politely reached out to Smith to inform her what occurred, solely to face a barrage of backlash. “She proceeded to jot down me the nastiest emails,” Munroe mentioned, claiming that she was publicly shamed on-line after returning the canine.
Nonetheless, Smith blamed Munroe, saying she had not correctly “secured” her door.
In a case involving one other New York couple, the courtroom sided with them after they claimed Smith doxxed and harassed them after they have been burdened with well being points for a canine they’d adopted from her and refused to return it. Smith sued for breach of contract, however informed The Submit that she and her lawyer later dropped the case.
Extra doggie drama
Smith’s operation has additionally confronted different complaints.
In July 2023, a rescue she ran at one other location, A Good Canine Rescue and Canine Kindergarten, in Verplanck, New York, was closed down because of noise complaints and a dispute with the owner.
Almost two years later, the city of New Fort — which incorporates Ossining, the place Smith lives — slapped her with a violation for exceeding the variety of canines allowed in a house and operating an unlawful canine rescue out of her home.
On April 29, 2026, the case settled. Smith agreed to the 2 violations charged and paid a $1,000 wonderful, David Levine, the New Fort city prosecutor who dealt with the matter, informed The Submit.
Nonetheless, Smith pushes again on claims that she violated native canine limits or ran an improper group.
She can also be adamant that within the case of Lily and her brood of eight remaining puppies — they’re hers.
“It’s a quite simple case. They’re my canines. I need them again.”
Final Could, Decide Gerald Lebovits issued a preliminary order ruling in Smith’s favor, directing Fuhr and Obstarczyk to return the canines.
He additionally ordered Smith to cease publishing something with Fuhr and Obstarczyk’s cellphone or deal with on it.
The couple appealed, nonetheless, and on Could 12, 2026, they gained in a unanimous appellate ruling that returned the defamation case to trial courtroom. The case is ongoing.
‘Canine legally nonetheless belong to the rescue’
Smith’s lawyer, Harold M. Somer, who runs an English and French rescue together with his spouse in Westbury, Lengthy Island, declined to touch upon Smith’s subsequent transfer. He informed The Submit, nonetheless, that “This can be a easy matter of the canines having been stolen.”
“The canines legally nonetheless belong to the rescue,” he continued.
As for Obstarczyk and Fuhr, they’ve completely fled New York, however for security considerations, he declined to say the place, including that the canines “are of their eternally houses,” thriving and wholesome.
The couple says they’ve lined all of their vaccinations and vet wants out of their very own pockets.
“I by no means would have dreamed that serving to animals — and doing every little thing we will to maintain animals protected — would find yourself in us receiving demise threats,” he mentioned.
