F rom the minute it was described to me, I knew that &ldquo;Rescue Ink&rdquo; was going to be a hit.</p><p>A biker den full of burly, tattooed guys devoting themselves to extreme animal rescues? On the same channel that brought you &ldquo;The Dog Whisperer?&rdquo; Are you kidding?</p><p>I haven&rsquo;t made such an easy call since I turned down Chiefs tickets.</p><p>Sure enough, when I screened this new reality series for my audience at &ldquo;Watch the Pilots With Aaron&rdquo; earlier this month, they were immediately taken by the show&rsquo;s larger-than-life characters and ready-made drama. (It premieres at 9 p.m. Friday on the National Geographic Channel.)</p><p>In the scene I showed them, the group&rsquo;s leader, a 320-pound Long Island, N.Y., native named Anthony Missano &mdash; whom everybody calls Big Ant &mdash; invites himself and his crew into the home of a shady fellow who, according to a tipster, has been mistreating his dog and might also be dealing drugs and packing heat.</p><p>But the owner is outnumbered, so he relents and calls the dog, Zeus, who bounds toward the boys happily. Big Ant starts looking around the house. The reality-show narrator informs us ominously that aside from a small cage, &ldquo;there are no other signs a dog lives here.&rdquo; Then the owner says, oh, I let Zeus run free in the basement. Big Ant asks to see the basement. And as they head downstairs &hellip; &ldquo;Rescue Ink&rdquo; goes to commercial.</p><p>&ldquo;Awwwwwwwww!&rdquo; the crowd groaned. I took that as proof that many viewers will find the combination of friendly pets, idiotic owners and white knights (dressed in black T-shirts and leather) irresistible.</p><p>The group Rescue Ink has only been in existence a couple of years, but it&rsquo;s been riding a rocket ship, with more referrals than the guys can handle and piles of media attention, owing largely to their role in a high-profile case involving a kidnapped bulldog named Clara. Clara&rsquo;s owner just happened to be Howard Stern&rsquo;s girlfriend (now wife) Beth Ostrosky, and when news of the dog&rsquo;s disappearance hit the street, so did Rescue Ink.</p><p>The members fanned out in the owner&rsquo;s neighborhood &mdash; a still-dicey part of Manhattan &mdash; and before long two scam artists popped up with Clara. When they demanded that the owner give them a $5,000 reward, she got on the phone with Rescue Ink, which told her they were on their way to deal with those two chuckleheads. They split.</p><p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re educated in the streets, and we tend to read people pretty fast,&rdquo; said Joe Panz, whom I met along with Big Ant and two other Rescue Ink members this summer while they were promoting their show and companion book (also out this month).</p><p>&ldquo;When we pull up to your house, we don&rsquo;t pull up with a cop car,&rdquo; said Big Ant. &ldquo;We pull up as ourselves, on Harley-Davidsons, with our tattoos. So now the person comes out, he doesn&rsquo;t even know what the hell we&rsquo;re doing at first. All right? It&rsquo;s confusion until he finds out our way, and what we want him to do, and what he&rsquo;s <em>gotta</em> do.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;Quite frankly, it&rsquo;s exactly like this,&rdquo; continued Joe. &ldquo;If Rescue Ink shows up at your door, chances are you did something to bring us there. That&rsquo;s all I got to say.&rdquo;</p><p>Rescue Ink works with other animal welfare agencies, and they are big advocates of spaying, neutering and adopting from shelters. </p><p>Do not even start with them on pet stores.</p><p>&ldquo;These puppy stores are promoting puppy mills, and puppy mills are heinous, heinous, they do unspeakable things,&rdquo; said Joe.