Yes, I admit, it has been a while since the last Puppies of Jenkintown entry, a full month in fact. I don’t want you, dear reader, to suspect that I haven’t been walking my daughter or I haven’t been allowing her to shoot puppies or, heaven forfend, we ran out of puppies. We haven’t, of course.

Why this very evening I went for a walk with Benny — just a block or so — and saw two entirely new pups. I didn’t tell Julia for fear of launching her into a snit, as she was already in a fragile, post-rainy day state of mind. We did manage to bring back the acorns freshly shook from a tree up the street by the earlier thunder boomer. Julia places them strategically around the yard for squirrels.

Squirrel!

Um, where was I, oh yes, more puppies of Jenkintown. My point was that three things must come together toget some proper puppy shots: 1) puppies, 2) camera, 3) fresh batteries. Those three things don’t always coincide. However, here are some from the latest batch, including Grover, the hardest working dog in Jenkintown.

All photos by Julia Rose Lester

Continue Reading Puppies of Jenkintown Part VI: Ah, that’s where...

I’m catching up with last week’s photos, so I’m afraid I don’t have time for individual entries this time around.

However, I wised up just a bit and I’m now using Flickr. Let’s see how that goes…

(stuff happens)

…ok, it doesn’t go great…the Flickr gallery maker I use stopped functioning after I upgraded to WordPress 2.8. Grrr.

You can see better versions of all these pictures in my Flickr stream. I’ll get around to updating the my Flickr pages with the older photos. Eventually.

I can’t seem to get the gallery to work, but here they are individually.

Dexter is an adorable cocker spaniel, allegedly great with kids, but was shy around Julia. After petting him, Julia described him as soft, very, very soft.

To see the rest, you’ll have to hit the “continue reading” button, just over in the bottom right of this post.

Continue Reading Puppies of Jenkintown, Part V: Catching up

The ratio of days we remember the camera to days that are rainy have not been in favor of puppy snapshots in Jenkintown. Still, the sun must come out eventually, even during monsoon season.

And when it does, we are sure to see the two sun-worshiping ladies from the apartment down the street, as was the case last week. And when they’re out soaking in the ambient photons — a little too often for the taste of this cancer center employee — so is their dog, Cassie.

Cassie is a compact lab mix, just perfect, I’m sure for hopping in his owners’ jeep and heading to the Jersey shore. He is also as freaked out as you’d imagine an apartment dog in a town full of stray cats. He has no territory to really call his own, yet he must deal with the constant insult of feline intrusion. A nervous wreck, really.

After that, we went a long while before finding any street-walking pups. I don’t like taking pictures of dogs in yards or, worse, yelping out of house windows, for fear somebody will think I’m teaching my daughter how to peep — or, even worser, that I’m teaching her how to peep ineffectively, out in the open, during daylight.

We have our pride, after all.

Just before turning back down Greenwood toward home, we saw this pooch, Pookie, a toy poodle, across the street. Pookie’s daily walks are regular sight in the neighborhood, captured here for the first time. While certainly cute and pup-like, Pookie is a bit of a codger at, I believe, nine.

INTERMISSION

Last Thursday, the 1811th (d’oh), we saw a bunch of snakes (OK, two big ones and a baby) sunning themselves on the rocks along the Wissahickon in front of Valley Green Inn. A lady there vehemently claimed that they were water moccasins, but I tend to think that they are northern water snakes. (No, I mean vehemently, like, almost angry. Just snakes, lady, chill. You ain’t Ranger Rick.)

/INTERMISSION

Last night we took The Little Girl Across The Street with us on our evening walk. You can never be too sure with those two, either they get along like sisters…or they get along like sisters. They were both fairly well behaved, but grumbled when we took a side trip to the post office to check Aly’s PO box. After a short, albeit heated, discussion on who was, in fact, line leader (me…always), we stopped by to say hello to our neighbor who was gathered with his fellow volunteers out front of the fire department. I have to mention that it was Pioneer, of course, Jenkintown has two about a block apart for historical/religious reasons.

(Have I ever mentioned that Jenkintown is a weird burg?)

They plied us with fire-themed coloring books, tattoos and plastic helmets, in an effort to reduce the stockpile some. The fire company must have invested heavily in handouts at one point, since we’ve received a lot of them in recent years. We must have thirty plastic fire helmets rolling around the house from all the community events, pre-school visits and our neighbor’s whims. They are always appreciated, especially since the tattoos feature dalmatians. Julia was sporting one at the time, coincidentally.

As we were trying to keep the girls from strangling Benny with his fire helmet, The Little Girl Across The Street spotted a dog. It was one we’ve seen previously (A.K.A. Molly) , but I had forgotten to record her name. The Little Girl Across The Street snapped the shot of the puppy we now know as Sadie.

Alas The Little Girl Across The Street was getting tired, so we dropped her off at home and kept going. Good thing, too, otherwise we never would have been able to get this extreme closeup of Wilson.

Wilson is a five year-old Shar Pei pup — a little bigger, but not as ugly as most I’ve seen — rescued two years ago by a nice lady named Jane. A sweet pooch, we caught her again on the return trip home. Jane and Aly chatted while Julia and I took turns not scaring Wilson. Tired and unseasonably chilled for June — but seasonably mosquito-bitten — we headed home for the night.

As I mentioned last time, Julia received a shiny purpley-pink camera for her fourth birthday and we have commenced, at her request, documenting the local puppylife on our nightly walks (when we remember to take along the camera).

Unfortunately, we had something of a dry spell over the last week. Despite the town’s preponderance of puppies, we hadn’t seen any new puppies close enough to photograph (when we remembered to take along the camera). Julia took all of these pictures (except the tree at the end, which she thought was scary) her very self.

Last night, we went into the unseasonably cool air and scored a bumper crop of canines.

Pebbles
Sue up the street has adopted this five year-old pup, Pebbles. Pebbles is a cute little cocker spaniel with a well-considered fear of larger children. She loved Benny when she saw him the other week, but he’s more her size. Pebbles is just getting used to the neighborhood, so she deserves a little leeway until she can get used to the local pre-K fauna.


Strider
Strider is a strong two year-old boy who was barely restrained by his owner. As I didn’t have my notebook, I didn’t whether it is Strider, a.k.a. Aragorn, or Stridor, the peculiar wheezing breathing that necessitated a trip to the ER when Julia was two. Julia got admirably close to receiving a knock-down slobber-load of puppy love from this friendly beasty, but she held her ground and got her shot. As you can see, Strider is easily distracted.

A.K.A. Molly
Alright, I forgot my notebook and didn’t retain the name of this yellow lab mix, thereby totally screwing up the documentary process. Since neither of us could remember her name, Julia offered the default “Molly,” which she gives to all new otherwise nameless stuffed animals as sort of a baseline until she can come up with something better. (We have one permanent Molly, a stuffed moose that accompanied us to the ER when Julia wanted to give a demonstration of Stridor breathing. It still wears her bracelet as a collar.) Molly, we are told, is normally a more energetic pup, but she just finished her evening constitutional.

While Julia couldn’t remember Molly’s real name, she could remember the stoop a few doors down where The Little Boy Fell On His Head. In short, on a previous Spring evening, we passed by a house where a little boy, his sister and dad were out on their front porch enjoying the season. The boy, probably about three or four, wanted to show us his trick, which ostensibly involved a degree of balance he had not mastered, and ended with him bonking his head on the pavement. Fortunately, his daddy was “a doctor and scooped him up and saved him,” as Julia tells it. I suspect Julia is correct, they have a sign warning of an “Attack Doctor” posted on their porch rail.

This was two years ago, and Julia still retells the story every time we pass by the house.

Roscoe
Roscoe is the ironically butch name of a wee bichon frise/shih tzu mix who lives in Alex’s house. Alex is a friendly four-soon-to-be-five year old who also wanted to invite us in to see his cat and hermit crabs. Sadly it was getting too late to take him up on his offer. Alex’s parents plan on holding him back a year, so we may meet him again in kindergarten.

The Scary Dead Tree
I took this one. It is a scary tree of the sort that might abduct Robbie Freeling from his bedroom and attempt to eat him. But it is just a distraction, where’s Carol Ann?

All photos courtesy of Julia Rose Lester

My lovely daughter Julia got a new camera for her fourth birthday. It replaces the camera we had given her previously, a lovely Nikon point-and-shoot whose shutter never completely opens. (It created arty little Lomo-esque shots, mostly of her feet, her brother and various toy animals.)

Grammy wisely eschewed the bulky cameras-for-kids that V-Tech and Fisher Price produces and picked up a purple low-end dimestore point-and-shoot for Julia. It is one of those ubiquitous no-name brands. It was also cheaper, with higher resolution, than the for-kids models and has an essential LCD screen, which I believe all the for-kids cameras lack.

Of course, as soon as she got it, she wanted to take pictures of puppies. She’s a puppy-lovin’ freak, my girl. Fortunately, we live in a puppy-lovin’ town, so I told her that we’ll take pictures of the puppies of Jenkintown, our wee burg, and once we get a satisfactory amount of snapshots, we’ll make a book.

Last night was our first real Nice Walk of Spring (thanks to the rains), so she brought her camera along, of course. We had a late start, so we didn’t catch the height of the parade of perambulating pups. Our first subject was Tank, who belonged to the nice lady who runs Julia’s pre-school. Tank, a little older now, was a shelter rescue at about a year. She’s a Chihuahua/Corgi mix and was thought to have been abused. She’s sweet enough, but doesn’t like strange men, hats or hoods.

A little further up Greenwood, we ran into Shadow and his patient owner. Shadow is part black lab and part Giant Schnauzer.

Later, as we headed back from the post office, we passed Bailey, an enormous beast of a Golden Retriever. According to his owner, Bailey just dropped ten pounds. I’m fairly certain he meant that the dog was a on a diet as he didn’t have the tell-tale baggy with him.