KENT—Dr. Amy Attas admits that she’s pretty obsessed with pugs. Her Kent home is filled with representations of the small breed that has a short muzzle, wrinkled face and curled tail. A big believer in rescuing dogs, the veterinarian shares stories of her own life, as well as many celebrity clients, in her new book, “Pets and the City.”
She will talk about her new book, which was published June 18, during a program Thursday, Aug. 1, at 6:30 p.m. at the Kent Memorial Library, 32 North Main St. Her practice, City Pets Vets, is unique because she does house calls in New York City and many of her clients are celebrities, who care deeply about their pets.
Attas credits her husband, Steve Shapiro, for helping her to get the book written. He kept encouraging her to write the crazy stories down.
“I’d literally come home every day and say to Steve, ‘you will never believe what happened today.’ And he would say, ‘turn around, go into your study, and just write it down,” Attas said. She followed his advice. She didn’t consider herself a writer, but she would write down what happened. It took her four years of starting and stopping but she was able to organize the stories into themes.
“I realized that in my hundreds of stories, they were themes. If I just picked a theme, and then I could pull out from the different stories,” Attas explained.
Attas always knew she wanted to be a veterinarian. Her family got its first pet when she was five years old and it was a pug. But her dad had to convince her mom to add to the family in their Queens home.
“Nobody had a dog in our neighborhood. My dad wanted one, and my mom was afraid,” she said. Her father was convinced that he could find a dog that would make her mom comfortable. It took a couple of tries. First it was a boxer, but mom felt the large muscular dog was too scary. Next it was a bulldog breeder, who happened to live in Warren, Conn., but mom found the dogs too big and scary. Finally, her dad took mom to see a pug and that worked.
“I woke up one morning and found our little Duchess in the kitchen,” Attas said. The dog became her best friend and soulmate. “I told her all my secrets. So, pug was imprinted on my heart.”
She went to Barnard College and later attended the University of Pennsylvania where she received both a master’s degree in Animal Behavior and her veterinary degree. While in college she met her next dog, another pug, who was tied to a tree and had a note: “I am blind. Please take good care of me.” While it was not practical for her to own a dog, she took him home.
“He bumps his way around the entire apartment, goes back to the front door, lifts his leg and pees, as if to say, I’m home. This is my territory,” Attas said. She tried to barricade him into the kitchen but in the middle of the night she woke up to the dog with his head on her pillow staring at her. She named him Bumper and they were together for years. She is drawn to pugs because of the way they look, “cute,” and their personalities.
“They have unique personalities. They’re completely ridiculous. They serve zero purpose in this world other than companionship,” Attas said.
When she and her husband bought their house in Kent 25 years ago, Attas figured there wouldn’t be many pugs in town. They were wrong. She met Lee Sohl and Jacques Kaplan, both pug owners.
“There were more pugs per capita in Kent than anywhere else in the world. We fit right in,” she said.
Her love of animals is evident throughout the pages of her book, as well as meeting her in person. One of her close friends is Diane Meier, who first met her in NYC as the vet for her dog, and later became neighbors living across the street from each other in Kent.
“She’s incredibly kind. She’s very tuned into animals,” Meier said. “She’s hugely respected by everybody she’s ever worked with. She’s smart and loves her work.”
Meier said that she was one of the people that Attas consulted with when she decided to launch her mobile veterinary practice. It was an incredibly difficult time for Attas because she had been working for Park East Animal Hospital for four years and had been promised a promotion and a raise but instead was fired. Attas tells the story in the book of how her boss felt threatened because she was making connections with so many of the celebrity clients, including Joan Rivers, who started requesting her to treat their pets.
Attas was a huge fan of Rivers and she got the opportunity to treat her Yorkshire Terrier Spike during an overnight shift, when he was having a medical emergency. She was able to make Spike better. Rivers began requesting Attas whenever Spike needed medical help.
Rivers ultimately helped her launch her new house call practice by encouraging her friends to work with Attas.
Throughout the book are many stories about her interactions with celebrity clients. She also explains how she was able to connect people with some of her favorite philanthropies. Billy Joel was someone that she forged a connection to and ultimately got legislation passed with his help.
“He’s a real animal lover. He’s a piano player. Pianos have ivory keys,” she said. “Through my relationship with Billy, through my relationship with Billy Joel’s ex-wife, we were able to have him come to the table. His best friend was Andrew Cuomo, governor of the state of New York at the time, and we were able to pass the ban on ivory sales.”
She has been a huge supporter of the Wildlife Conservation Society raising $1 million through educating her clients.
“My people are real animal lovers and often are people with philanthropic tendencies. And if I introduce them to something and they feel passionate about it the way that I do, then they’re motivated to give money,” Attas said.
With each of the celebrities, who are still alive, she sent them the chapters in advance for their approval.
“Everybody wrote back and said, ‘I wish you the best of luck. This is wonderful,’” she said. “It’s not a tell-all book. It was never intended to embarrass anyone.”
However, she does have a number of stories where the humans were not at their best behavior. Attas always wants to do what’s best for the animals. In those cases, names were changed.
“In the few stories where maybe the clients displayed behavior that was not in their pet’s best interest, I tell those stories as examples of how people can keep their pets safer or healthier because there is a little bit of veterinary wisdom woven through the stories,” Attas said.
Attas describes her book as a people book, not a how to train your puppy instruction manual.
“This is a book more about the families with their pets and the relationship with their pets and the bonds with their pets,” she said. Readers started sharing photos of themselves with their pets as part of their book reviews and it has really touched her.
