Times journalism.
He Befriended 4,000 Dogs to Get Their Side of the Story
An author wanted to set the record straight about what life is like for four-legged New Yorkers. So, he interviewed some — and their humans — for a new book.
The author Ken Foster with some very good boys at the dog-friendly Boris & Horton cafe in Manhattan. Boris, for whom the establishment is co-named, is the long-haired pit bull terrier mix in the blue handkerchief.CreditLily Landes for The New York Times
By Winnie Hu
Nov. 11, 2018
Dogs in New York City have a miserable life — that’s what Ken Foster kept hearing. How could they not? Many live in tiny apartments. Most do not have backyards to romp around in. They are bored at home all day while their owners toil long hours.
Nov. 11, 2018
Dogs in New York City have a miserable life — that’s what Ken Foster kept hearing. How could they not? Many live in tiny apartments. Most do not have backyards to romp around in. They are bored at home all day while their owners toil long hours.
Mr.
Foster’s job is to help dogs (and cats, too). He runs a community
outreach program in the Bronx for the Animal Care Centers of NYC, a nonprofit that operates the city’s animal shelters. The program provides free vaccinations, training and food to pets whose owners are struggling financially. Mr. Foster, 54, also writes books about dogs.
He
has met more than 4,000 dogs in their homes, in their neighborhoods and
with the people they love. Lots of them are happy. So Mr. Foster and a
photographer, Traer Scott, decided to tell some of the canines’ stories in a new book, “City of Dogs.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Q. What did you learn about how dogs live in New York City?
A.
People live a variety of amazing, different kinds of lifestyles in the
city, and dogs do as well. I think we think of dogs strictly as pets,
but we went to J.F.K. Airport, where there are dogs that work and love
their jobs. They are mostly looking for agricultural contraband, but
they also go through the mail that comes through, like every piece of
mail. They go through people’s luggage on the conveyor belts. It’s like a
game that they’re playing all day long. We should all enjoy our jobs
that much.
What is an example of a dog living the good life?
There’s
Oz. He’s a pit bull mix in NoHo. His owner, Noah, is a trainer and has
this chain of gyms across the country called Rumble Boxing. Oz often
goes to the gym and sits, waiting for classes to be over. He lives in a
great apartment with a nice roof deck. He’s got the spoiled life. I like
to say, and Noah doesn’t disagree, that he needed to maintain his dog
in the lifestyle he deserved.
You even found dogs on Rikers Island. What are they doing there?
The
Rikers dogs are spending eight weeks, usually living in a cell with
inmates who are charged with caring for them and training them. They
come from different shelters. The men who are assigned to them work in
teams, so part of it is also about really learning to work with other
people and build team skills. It’s a mutually beneficial exchange. A lot
of the men have dogs that are waiting for them to come home.
You went to all five boroughs in search of dogs. How are the dogs different by borough?
Manhattan:
They are more cosmopolitan because they’re used to being around a lot
of activity, a lot of people, a lot of businesses. They walk by
everything that’s going on every day because Manhattan is completely
built up. There aren’t many quiet corners left.
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Bronx:
They seem very much like family dogs, and there’s always an extended
family. The dogs have cousins. The extended family includes not just
your human relatives, but your human relatives’ dogs. So everybody knows
everybody. In talking with people, I’ll hear the story not just of
their dog, but their sister-in-law’s dog.
Staten Island:
They are quieter. They’re a little bit more laid back because they have
less chaos around them. They probably have no idea that they live in
New York City. It’s very suburban there.
Brooklyn:
The dogs that we met were, for the most part, from single-dog homes.
Even if they were in a family, it was five people and one dog. And so
they seemed to feel a little bit like they were the center of the world.
Maybe Brooklyn feels that way about itself, too, these days?
Queens:
They are the most diverse. If you look at the pictures that we took in
Long Island City of a group of people who meet every morning with their
dogs, every dog is completely different. There’s a sheepdog, an Akita, a
pit bull, a corgi, a Pekingese, and a Chihuahua. These dogs are all
best friends.
What is one of your favorite dog places in the book?
You
can go off-leash in Central Park after dark. It seemed like something
out of a storybook, and the moon was out and it was reflecting in the
water. At first, there weren’t that many other people around, but as we
went a little deeper into the park, we started running into more and
more people with their dogs. It really was like a secret society because
unless you have a dog, you’re probably not going to walk in there.
Did you actually interview the dogs or just their owners?
It
was really a little bit of both. Sometimes their owners try to speak
for them. But then, if you’re observing, you can see where the dog might
disagree. We talked about, where do you want to go? Where do you
typically go with your dog? That’s kind of a dog interview, I think,
when you walk a neighborhood with a dog and you see where their nose
goes.
Your book shows the relationships between dogs and their humans. Is there one that stands out?
Talia
is a girl in Queens who is autistic. She has a service dog that’s
trained to stay with her. As she is getting older, holding her mother’s
hand in public is not a cool thing to do. So now she has this dog to
hold on to. I think dogs are anchors in a lot of different ways for all
of us. But in this case, it almost seemed like a literal anchor to keep
somebody calm and in place.
What can dogs teach us about city life?
No
matter how completely different we are, if you have dogs in common it
cuts through whatever else you might think would be a barrier. We’re
different people, we come from different cultures, we speak different
languages sometimes, and yet if there’s a dog in front of us, we can
find a way to connect.
I think that’s
true no matter what part of the city you’re in. We may not have the
same kind of dogs, and we might not interact with them in exactly the
same sort of way, but we can all understand each other by observing the
bond that we have with our pets.
More dogs on the internet
Winnie Hu is a reporter on the Metro desk, focusing on transportation and infrastructure stories. She has also covered education, politics in City Hall and Albany, and the Bronx and upstate New York since joining the Times in 1999. @WinnHu
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/nyregion/nyc-dogs-book.html
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