NYPD K9 photograph exhibit options the dogs that defend the Big Apple

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By Angela Barbuti

They’re New York’s Finest four-legged associates.

A brand new photograph exhibition honors NYPD cops and their K9 companions who do the ruff work defending town.

The Dogs that Servewhich opens on the AKC Museum of the Dog in Murray Hill on March 13, options NYPD K9s from the 5 boroughs, who’re all named after fallen officers from the NYPD, FDNY and US Armed Forces.

One of the pictures was taken on Sept. 11, 2022, of Officer Andrew Regal together with his K9 Argusnamed after the canine owned by Officer Joseph Piagentini, and Officer Donald Perceval with K9 Petey, named after Officer Peter Figoski.

Both canines, who’re Black Shepherds, are sitting atop the doorway to the Wall Street subway station in the course of the 9/11 memorial.

“I just see these two dogs sitting there, and my first thought is, ‘They’re absolutely beautiful,’” photographer Margaret Foxmoore instructed The Post.

“They didn’t move. They were watching people with handbags. I took 30 to 40 pictures of them, and one is better than the next.”

Foxmoore, who took all of the photographs within the exhibition — which will likely be on show till May 5 — was granted unique access by the NYPD Transit Bureau Canine Unit into a number of the most closely guarded Big Apple occasions.

“Once I get permission I walk away and then I just watch. There’s really no posing,” stated Foxmoore, who has taken 300,000 photographs of town’s K9s.

The New Jersey native at all times liked snapping photographs of pups round Manhattan, however her foray into her work with K9s began in 2018, when she was on the Tartan Day Parade and stopped to ask Officer Leonel Checo, who was together with his K9 Omar, a German Shepherd, named after Officer Omar Edwards, instructions.

“And he said, ‘Why don’t you take pictures of us?’” she recalled.

Checo linked her with then-Lieutenant Commanding Officer of the NYPD Transit Bureau Canine Unit John Pappas, who allowed her to seize the dogs.

After that, she stated, “I basically fit the K9s in between everything.”

Foxmoore now travels into Manhattan “in the middle of the night” from her home in Brewster, NY to hunt out the dogs guarding locations like St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Grand Central Station and the Times Square subway station.

Last 12 months, she turned her assortment right into a e book, “Dogs Outside the Ring,” which is on show on the Library of Congress.

The cowl of the e book, she stated, options essentially the most iconic shot she’s even taken, which can also be within the exhibit, of Officer Justin Gelband and his K9 Straight, a German Shepherd Belgian Malinois named in honor of Officer Sean McDonald, on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2019.

In the picture, Rett, who will likely be on the exhibition’s opening, has his eyes targeted on the gang, whereas a balloon of Snoopy looms within the background.

“There’s a peacefulness and a humor about it,” she stated.

The “heaviest” photograph within the exhibition, she stated, is the one she took on the funeral procession for Officer Wilbert Mora, who was killed in 2022, the place there have been 173 K9s from across the nation.

“I can’t look at those pictures without crying still,” she stated.

Besides the transit bureau, Foxmoore has additionally coated different K9 models similar to counterterrorism, the emergency service unit, bomb squad and harbor patrol.

She makes it a degree to by no means edit the police officer out of the image.

“You can’t really cut the officer out because they are a pair,” she stated. “They are bonded like a husband and wife.”