The Frenchies

I’ve been taking an alarming number of photos of dogs wearing sweaters on the streets of New York City. It’s become a passion of mine.

Marilyn and I went on a walk yesterday afternoon, and stopped for a while at the Tompkins Square Dog Park. I was on the hunt. There was a wiener dog in a knit purple turtle neck sprinting around, but he never came close enough to the fence to get a good photo.

Eventually an odd looking woman in a boxy leather coat, leather skirt, and squat black hat walked in with two french bulldogs. One was black, the other a light tan. But their hair color was irrelevant to me. They were wearing matching navy sweaters with red designs on the top I couldn’t make out.

Once off the leash, they proved to be mangy little gremlins. Making those horrible retching sounds that only french bulldogs can make. They rolled around on the turf in their sweaters, and harassed a beautiful young golden retriever. Like evil twin henchmen chasing after a princess. They were such a shocking pair, tongues longing out now and again, that I insisted we wait around for them to leave so I could get a photo.

As we waited we watched the dogs. There were two pens, one for the smalls, and one for the bigs. It seemed as though we were watching a group of toddlers playing while the teenagers loped around the room next door. A golden pointer caught our attention for a while. He seemed young and not quite fully in control of his very long and sleek extremities.

Eventually the lumpy looking woman in the toddler pen hooked both of the evil frenchies up to the leash and walked out. As they did, I took a photo with the flash on, and the woman looked up at me.

“Aren’t they adorable?” She said in a sweet and soft voice. Under the squat hat, she had very sweet eyes and a kind simple face that surprised me. “Their names are Moshi and Bayo.” It was only then that I realized the matching sweaters the dogs were wearing said “Louis Vuitton” in curvy red letters. Their faces were terribly ugly close up.

The woman, Kimmy, told us she was watching the dogs for a friend, a hypnotist-dula who was their normal dog walker, but was apparently always in high demand around this time of year. We never heard about the owner, but the dogs had a private chef and flew around in a private jet. And both had $4,000 Louis Vuitton harnesses as well as the sweaters.

“But I don’t like to use them…” said the Kimmy. “I live on Ave B, it would just be too much. They’re all sparkly with buckles and straps and everything. They live with 13 dwarf Japanese cats, too. With tiny little legs.” Kimmy held her pointer finger and thumb about three inches apart to show the size of the legs of the 13 cats in question.

“Well,” she said after we talked for another minute. “I’ve got to go to work.” And with that, she walked off with the gremlins. I used three shots on the disposable camera for Moshi and Bayo. They deserved it. Well, the Louis Vuitton sweaters deserved it.