A pack of dogs races across the hard-packed dirt of Fajardo, Puerto Rico, running to greet Steve McGarva and photographer Traer Scott.

From Street Dogs by Traer Scott

Steve McGarva went to the beach to kite surf, not to crusade.

This was more than two years ago in Puerto Rico, where McGarva’s wife Pam had taken a job for the pharmaceutical company, Amgen, which provided McGarva, 42, an artist and extreme sports enthusiast, with a studio and easy access to the ocean.

“I thought, ‘What a great opportunity.’ ”

McGarva, who parasails, hang-glides and base-jumps, thought he had entered heaven, until he visited hell: the beach.

“There were stray dogs everywhere. They weren’t just stray, but skinny and abused.”

Some dogs had been burned with fire, others with acid. Some were slowly suffocating on too-tight collars and ropes. Many nursed machete wounds. All were starving.

“This is the island of enchantment,” McGarva says. “It says that on their license plates.”

The United States territory, about twice the size of Rhode Island, has an estimated 150,000 abandoned dogs roaming around. This is not new. What is new is how one man is doing something about it — by providing food and care for the dogs; and by making one public and shocking tourism-deterring disclosure at a time.

Last month, McGarva appeared in People magazine. This week, he appears on the Ellen Degeneres Show (3 p.m. Thursday on Channel 10), where he’ll talk about the prevalence of Puerto Rico’s dog problem.

“I am making them look bad. The only way to make change is to hit them where it hurts: tourism.”

McGarva says many Puerto Ricans have become inured to animal abuse and resistant to animal control because of what he calls their “machismo” culture. “They say you don’t emasculate an animal by taking away its reproductive organs.”

Puerto Rico’s abandoned dog problem is not new, according to Kim Intino, director of animal sheltering for the Humane Society of the United States, an animal protection organization. “It’s been around for years. It’s fairly severe, but not necessarily unique to Puerto Rico.”

However, Intino said, Puerto Rico’s problem is now receiving lots of attention because of an incident that occurred last fall: residents of a public housing complex were ordered to part with their pets, which were then taken by a company and dumped over a bridge.

“That incident garnered international press. It created outrage across the United States and other countries.”

As a result of that, Intino and others with the Humane Society visited Puerto Rico last December to meet with tourism officials to determine how to address the island’s abundance of unwanted animals.

For his part, McGarva says he’s motivating officials by sharing Puerto Rico’s bad publicity, which means less tourism and less money for the island. In 2002, the Puerto Rico Hotel and Tourism Association reported that the island’s abandoned dog problem was costing the country $5 million a year. McGarva suspects the losses have since mounted. And that has meant trouble for McGarva, who last year fled the island after receiving multiple threats on his life, he said, and a few actual attempts on it.

“When you’re in a dysfunctional environment, you become dysfunctional, or you get out. We got out.”

McGarva now lives in East Greenwich in an 1862 colonial house he and his wife are restoring. They live with two dogs and three cats rescued from Puerto Rico. However, he periodically returns to Puerto Rico to check on a network of volunteers who have taken up his cause and joined his organization, which he founded with Katie Block of Baltimore, Md.: Island Dog Inc.So far, the organization has placed 500 stray dogs in the United States, including a dozen in Rhode Island. The placements, McGarva says, are with people who have heard about his organization, many of whom have been to Puerto Rico.

“They can’t get the nightmarish images out of their heads. They were haunted by the dogs, but didn’t do anything about what they saw.”

The first dog that McGarva saw his first day on Puerto Rico was on Playa Lucia Beach, commonly called Dead Dog Beach, for obvious reasons.

“It’s a dumping ground.”

The first dog looked dead.

“It was basically bones with a leather skin stretched over it. It was the remains of a dog.”

As McGarva approached, the dog, which was lying on its side, began to wag its tail, but couldn’t move much else.

“If the dog was going to die that day, which I thought it would, I thought he should die with a full stomach and knowing someone loved him.”

McGarva went to a store and returned with dog food.

“That dog told two friends who told two friends that some sucker was bringing food. There were 16 dogs when I got back. That began my journey.”

McGarva’s journey took him to local residents. “They said, ‘Oh, you get used to it.’ ” McGarva’s journey took him to some of the island’s overwhelmed shelters to try to create more shelters.

“I was trying to work with the shelters. They would say, ‘Why don’t you come to our shelter and shovel poop with us?’ ” The journey took McGarva to veterinarians, who only wanted to serve wealthy Puerto Ricans and didn’t want to provide discounted services or give him medicines, claiming liability concerns.

“How could I hurt the dogs? If I didn’t do anything, the dogs were going to die.”

McGarva and his wife paid for food, water and medical supplies ––about $1,000 per month –– which McGarva brought to the beachOne veterinarian sympathetic to McGarva’s cause taught him how to stitch wounds, having him practice on pig hide purchased from butchers.

“Everyone in Puerto Rico has a machete — in their house, in their car. It’s the weapon of choice. That’s what I spent most of my time stitching, machete chops.”

When McGarva would go to the beach, he would go with wire cutters and a shovel.

The cutters he used to remove collars that were put on puppies that had since grown into abandoned dogs and were struggling to breathe, drink and eat. The shovel he used for burials, 1,200 in two years.

“The locals don’t see this problem,” he said, because they’re so used to animals being mistreated.

McGarva saw people dumping dogs on the beach, and killing them. He saw two men pour rat poison into the dogs’ water, which he videotaped, along with their car’s license plate. But McGarva says when he went to the police, the police did nothing. So McGarva took two dogs that died from the poison and placed them on the courthouse steps in Yacuboa, and waited for the police, and the media, who he notified, and who showed up with TV cameras rolling.

“That was the worst press for them.” At the beach, McGarva began finding dogs hanging from trees and chopped up and stuffed in plastic bags.

“That was a message to me,” he said, from people who wanted him to stop the publicity.

Fishermen warned McGarva that people in municipal vehicles were asking about his whereabouts. A couple of times motorists tried to run him off the road. And on three occasions, McGarva says, men with machetes approached him on the beach.

But each time McGarva was in the company of his dogs, a pack of about 100 of them. “I was the alpha dog.”

The dogs stood between McGarva and the men, which most times was enough to deter the men. But on one occasion, McGarva says, the men attacked, killing two dogs before withdrawing.

“If they’re going to kill dogs like they’re Jeffrey Dahmer, killing me is not a big stretch.”

McGarva bought a 10,000-volt taser gun, which he never had to use. The couple returned to the States, after an unauthorized moving truck pulled up to their house in a gated community and took all of their belongings in what McGarva calls “an inside job.”

“Go home Gringo” is what the burglars spray-painted on the exterior of the house.

McGarva abandoned the island, but not his cause, which is to pressure government officials to create shelters and to implement public policy on behalf of Puerto Rico’s abandoned dogs; and to promote educational awareness about proper animal care in Puerto Rico’s schools. And until those things happen, McGarva says, he’ll be bringing attention to Puerto Rico’s problem.

“I am not trying to sink Puerto Rico. I am trying to do the right thing.”How to help

To learn more about Steve McGarva’s project, to contribute or to adopt a dog from Puerto Rico or help dogs get to the United States, visit www.islanddog.org.

brourke@projo.com