Heights’ Steak-carrying Dog Tommaso Expires at 17
By Juliana Merz
Tommaso, the dog so many people in Brooklyn Heights had come to know and love as “the dog who carries his steak home,” died on Easter Sunday. He was 17 years old. Tommaso lived on a diet of raw meat purchased at Key Food on Montague Street, which he initially ate in front of the grocery store. One day he began to cary his steak home on his own accord in order to devour it in the privacy of his Brooklyn Heights garden.
Tommaso was a Shepherd-Malamute mix with an Italian name because he was from Tuscany. He was found running loose and confused without a collar on a traffic-dense road near Massarosa, Italy. A longtime Brooklyn Heights resident who had been living in nearby Pietrasanta, I saw him and took him in. Worried that someone had lost him, I put signs up everywhere and placed “dog found” announcements on a local radio station. Nobody called to claim Tommaso, and so he had a home with me.