New York Couple Battles Pet Rescue in Heated Dispute Over Foster Puppy Ownership

It’s a tale with a lot of bark—and bite.

A couple from New York is facing allegations of dognapping nine high-profile canines from a Westchester shelter owner. Interestingly, this shelter owner is herself entangled in a string of complaints from former clients.

The controversy between the two parties revolves around eight charming boxer-shepherd puppies and their mother, leading to a heated dispute.

Kris Fuhr, a tech professional, and Sara Obstarczyk, who previously worked as a pilates instructor, have filed a lawsuit against Lisa Smith. Smith, 53, is the president and owner of A Good Dog Rescue, Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Westchester.

The couple alleges that Smith engaged in harassment, publicly exposed their personal information, and incited death threats against them. They claim that these actions forced them to drastically alter their lives after deciding to keep the nine dogs they had fostered from Smith, despite her demands for their return.

Fuhr and Obstarczyk assert that they felt a responsibility to retain the dogs due to concerns about the animals’ welfare under Smith’s care.

Smith, whose organization claims to have saved more than 6,000 pooches since its inception in October 2018, filed a countersuit alleging they kidnapped the dogs — and that they remain hers. 

Death threats

Fuhr and Obstarczyk — a couple since September 2011 — told The Post the drama that has upended their lives all began when they answered a Facebook post in mid-January 2025 asking for emergency fosters for a dog named Paisley. 

According to the lawsuit, on Jan. 10, 2025, Obstarczyk contacted Smith. 

Obstarczyk, 45, was told that Paisley was taken, but Smith had a boxer-shepherd mix named Lily and her litter of 10 puppies, which were 3 weeks old, also in need of emergency care.

They decided to do it. 

After clearing an 11-dog adoption with their landlord in their Tribeca building, Obstarczyk and Fuhr said, Smith asked minimal questions before sending over a single-page, unsigned foster agreement, according to the suit.  

“We went from having never met her to her wanting to give us 11 of her animals in just a few hours of time,” 45-year-old Fuhr told The Post. 

Nevertheless, on a freezing January morning, days later, Smith’s two young daughters transported the dogs to the couple’s apartment. 

In her affidavit, Obstarczyk called the exchange “oddly transactional.”

“We did this out of the goodness of our hearts and for the well-being of the animals we were helping,” Fuhr told The Post of the couple spending thousands of dollars on food and supplies.

Two of the puppies were adopted quite quickly; eight remained with the couple, along with Lily. 

Anonymous attacks

It all started to go wrong when the puppies were a few months old.

According to the couple, Smith told them she had “an approved adopter in Westchester County” who was seeking a male dog, so Smith wanted “to pick up all the male dogs so this one adopter could meet them.”

But in their experience, Fuhr and Obstarczyk said, fosters typically had some input on where the dogs would go. 

Plus, after an earlier email exchange where Smith had previously admitted she’d had a parvovirus outbreak in her home — a virus that is highly contagious and deadly to dogs — the couple didn’t want to hand them over. 

“We informed her that we didn’t feel like it was safe to have the dogs in her own custody,” Fuhr told The Post. 

“As such, we were willing to pay the full value of all the dogs to adopt them all, and we would handle it from there. She rejected that.”

(Regarding parvovirus allegations, Smith admitted she had an isolated case in a guest bedroom years earlier, but an unrelated outbreak in 2024 involved a separate litter that had never been in her home. 

“Saying they would die of parvo at my house is the equivalent of saying a tornado will hit them if they live in Westchester,” Smith told The Post.)

After a few more reportedly heated conversations, Smith told Obstarczyk that one of her daughters would pick up the dogs on the morning of March 14, 2025 — but Obstarczyk and Fuhr refused.

Smith then reportedly posted Obstarczyk and Fuhr’s photos, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses on her organization’s Facebook page, which had about 32,000 followers at the time, and a $2,000 reward for “the Safe Return of Lily and her 8 remaining puppies (anyone other than the thieves).”

Soon after, Fuhr and Obstarczyk claim they were hit with an onslaught of anonymous phone calls, emails and text messages — escalating into death threats, by anonymous people.  

“If a group of fools can rush the White House, surely a group of concerned animal saviors could bust open a measly apartment and two foolish bastards,” the commenter social posted.    

Their lawyer, Mark Doerr, said he has also received harassing voicemails and emails.

Upending their lives

Fuhr and Obstarczyk told The Post they were so terrified that they packed up their entire lives and fled Manhattan, nine dogs in tow. 

Smith asked her followers to send any information on them, and some people reported sightings of the couple “selling the dogs,” according to posts on the rescue’s Facebook page, in upstate New York. 

However, Fuhr vehemently denied that claim.

“It is illogical to think that we would upend our lives to keep the puppies safe,” Fuhr told The Post, “and then turn around and sell them on the street for cash to a stranger, or, better yet, as she claimed in court documents, give them up for scientific experimentation or put them into dogfighting rings.”

Fuhr and Obstarczyk felt forced to relocate yet again to an undisclosed location.

Still, the online harassment has continued, Fuhr said, pointing to a Good Dog Rescue social media post from Friday, May 29, suggesting the formation of a “recovery team” to ramp things up. He said they reported it to the NYPD.

“I do not understand how this is not criminal harassment. We have tried everything from NYPD to FBI to local congressman to all sorts of authorities with no luck and no way to protect our safety,” he told The Post. 

In April 2025, Fuhr and Obstarczyk filed a civil case in the New York Supreme Court against Lisa Smith and A Good Dog Rescue for defamation and harassment.

Smith, who said she has been battling metastatic breast cancer for five years, countersued to reclaim her “property,” asking her followers for donations to offset legal fees. 

“I believe these people are con artists and are suing me to shut me up and let her take my dogs,” Smith, 53, told The Post. 

The foster agreement Obstarczyk signed, an image of which was obtained by The Post, explicitly states “that the dog belongs to A Good Dog Rescue and you are only providing temporary housing,” and that the signees “agree to give the pet back anytime it is requested by A Good Dog Rescue whether its [sic] temporarily or permanently.”

Unhappy clients

Fuhr and Obstarczyk are not the first people to have battled with Smith.

Nicole Munroe, 43, a marketing 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 mom of three claimed to The Post, Ace burst through a gate, attacked a mailman, and bit Munroe so badly that she needed more than 20 stitches. 

Munroe said she politely reached out to Smith to tell her what happened, only to face a barrage of backlash. “She proceeded to write me the nastiest emails,” Munroe said, claiming that she was publicly shamed online after returning the dog.

However, Smith blamed Munroe, saying she had not properly “secured” her door.

In a case involving another New York couple, the court sided with them after they claimed Smith doxxed and harassed them when they were burdened with health issues for a dog they’d adopted from her and refused to return it. Smith sued for breach of contract, but told The Post that she and her attorney later dropped the case.

More doggie drama

Smith’s operation has also faced other complaints. 

In July 2023, a rescue she ran at another location, A Good Dog Rescue and Canine Kindergarten, in Verplanck, New York, was closed down due to noise complaints and a dispute with the landlord. 

Nearly two years later, the town of New Castle — which includes Ossining, where Smith lives — slapped her with a violation for exceeding the number of dogs allowed in a home and running an illegal dog rescue out of her house. 

On April 29, 2026, the case settled. Smith agreed to the two violations charged and paid a $1,000 fine, David Levine, the New Castle town prosecutor who handled the matter, told The Post.

However, Smith pushes back on claims that she violated local dog limits or ran an improper organization.

She is also adamant that in the case of Lily and her brood of eight remaining puppies — they’re hers. 

“It’s a very simple case. They’re my dogs. I want them back.”

Last May, Judge Gerald Lebovits issued a preliminary order ruling in Smith’s favor, directing Fuhr and Obstarczyk to return the dogs.

He also ordered Smith to stop publishing anything with Fuhr and Obstarczyk’s phone or address on it. 

The couple appealed, however, and on May 12, 2026, they won in a unanimous appellate ruling that returned the defamation case to trial court. The case is ongoing.

‘Dogs legally still belong to the rescue’

Smith’s lawyer, Harold M. Somer, who runs an English and French rescue with his wife in Westbury, Long Island, declined to comment on Smith’s next move. He told The Post, however, that “This is a simple matter of the dogs having been stolen.” 

“The dogs legally still belong to the rescue,” he continued. 

As for Obstarczyk and Fuhr, they have permanently fled New York, but for safety concerns, he declined to say where, adding that the dogs “are in their forever homes,” thriving and healthy. 

The couple says they have covered all of their vaccinations and vet needs out of their own pockets.

“I never would have dreamed that helping animals — and doing everything we can to keep animals safe — would end up in us receiving death threats,” he said.