It’s as awful as the name implies. On a stretch of shoreline in Puerto Rico, heartbreakingly dubbed Dead Dog Beach, live pups are abandoned in the dunes by careless or impoverished owners. Some are tossed from moving cars like unwanted trash. Many arrive frail and emaciated, with pellet wounds lodged in their backs. Others are missing legs or ears, covered in mange and fleas.

New Yorker Christina Beckles discovered the beach of horrors 10 years ago — and has been working tirelessly to save the slum dogs of the bankrupt island ever since.

“At first, I could only rescue one dog at a time — and the feeling of leaving all of the others behind was terrible,” Beckles recently told The Post.

Once a beautiful beach with a pool and changing rooms, the area was abandoned by the government and left littered with garbage as the island plunged into economic disaster.

“There were so many dogs running in packs, it was very overwhelming,” Beckles said. “Everywhere you looked, there were dogs in terrible conditions, in the blazing sun all day, with no proper nutrition or fresh water.

“Many of the dogs were gravely injured. There were dogs who had been hit by cars. There were a slew of dogs missing their back right hind legs.

“It was overwhelming, the sense of what I felt, but it ignited a fire within me,’’ Beckles said. “I couldn’t sit back and do nothing. I had to help the dogs.”

Beckles first flew to the island in 2007 to visit her husband, who was then working as a stuntman on a Benicio del Toro movie.

At the time, she was training as a Golden Gloves champion boxer at famed Gleason’s Gym in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

‘We fight so the dogs of Puerto Rico don’t have to.’

But once Beckles saw Dead Dog Beach, which is also known as Sato Beach, she couldn’t stop thinking about the poor creatures.

She returned to Puerto Rico to volunteer for groups like Hands for Paws and soon quit her lucrative job as a marketing executive to launch her own nonprofit, The Sato Project, in 2011 so she could dedicate herself to rescuing Puerto Rico’s abandoned dogs full-time. (“Sato” is local slang for street or slum dog.)

Beckles set up an office for the group at Gleason’s Gym. Their motto? “We fight so the dogs of Puerto Rico don’t have to.’’

In the past ten years, Beckles has helped rescue more than 1,800 dogs, as well as launch educational programs in Puerto Rico.

At the same time, a new municipal government is working to revive the beach while revitalizing its port.

Many of the abused dogs from the beach have been placed with families. And now, The Sato Project is working on its most ambitious project to date to try to rescue the rest.

On Aug. 23, Beckles’ group, together with Wings of Rescue and the Humane Society of the United States, will fly 200 dogs rescued from the island to the United States, where they will be adopted.

It’s the largest transport ever of dogs from Puerto Rico, according to Beckles, who has dubbed the transport Mission Possible 8.

There are currently only nine animal shelters on the island, and more than 90 percent of the dogs who end up in the shelters are euthanized.

“The shelters don’t receive government help, and yet they have to receive the dogs with minimal staff and resources. They are completely overwhelmed. It’s heartbreaking,” Beckles said.

“The shelters are doing their best, but there is just nowhere to place the dogs and not enough resources to care for them.”

The dogs will fly out on two private cargo planes. One will land in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., while the other will end up in Raleigh, NC.

A team of professional stuntmen and riggers — led by Christina’s husband, Bobby Beckles — will load the pooches in Puerto Rico and ensure that they are safely secured for flight.

When the planes land, the dogs will be met by the Humane Society and vets, who will check the pups out and put them on vehicles for transport up the East Coast.

There will be stops from Washington, DC, to Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

In New York City, the dogs will go to Animal Haven and the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons. The Sato Project also will keep 31 dogs that will be adopted directly or go into its own foster network in New York.

Many of the 200 soon-to-be rescued dogs are older.

Beckles says the mission is in memory of her own dog, Boom Boom, an Australian shepherd and Jack Russell “sato” mix that Beckles adopted in 2008.

Beckles was devastated when Boom Boom died in 2016.

“We rescued Boom Boom from a shelter. She [had been] left with her mother and four siblings,’’ Beckles recalled. “She was the only one who made it out alive. She was the impetus for our organization.”

ON average, the cost to rescue a dog is between $1,000 and $1,500, according to Beckles.

In addition to raising money for rescues, The Sato Project runs the educational programs and hands out vouchers to help locals pay for the costs associated with owning a dog.

In Puerto Rico, residents often would run over dogs if they didn’t get out of a driver’s way fast enough, Beckles said. Children who grew up watching their parents’ animal cruelty continued it.

“Education begins with the young,” Beckles said.

The Sato Project also teaches Puerto Rican residents about neutering their dogs, which is something that was shunned by the island’s “machismo” culture, she said.

“Locals are learning that neutering dogs doesn’t take away their manhood and it is helpful because it can curb behavioral and medical issues.”

Today, Dead Dog Beach is “unrecognizable — and that’s because of us,” Beckles said.

A new mayor has removed some crumbling warehouses, and there is even construction going on to build an atrium for public events.

“There’s plans to bring in food vendors and a fishing association to sell fresh fish and revitalize the port,” Beckles said. “There isn’t a lot of garbage now, the way there once was.’’

She has also petitioned the local administration to place gates on the beach to stop cars from dumping dogs at night. So far, local authorities have put up one gate. She says the beach needs two.

“You can walk on that beach today and [sometimes] not see a single dog,” Beckles said.

“Because of the work we do, the numbers have decreased dramatically, and that enabled us to work in other areas on the island,” Beckles said. “We’re finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel.”