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 Jill Krementz Photo Journal - Top Dogs
Amy Tan with Bubba Zo, her Yorkshire terrier, New York City, April 16, 1996.
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The 133rd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show comes to New York City on Monday (today) and Tuesday, February 9-10th. Competing this year for Best in Show will be over 2,000 dogs and the hours are from 8 AM to 11 PM at Madison Square Garden Center, Pennsylvania Plaza, 31st to 32nd Street, Seventh to Eighth Avenue.
On Tuesday night we'll know the winner. In the meantime, here are a few "Top Dogs" who over the years have wagged their tails into my photographs ... and into my heart.
www.westminsterkennelclub.org |
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Bill Styron walking with Aquinnah, Roxbury, Connecticut, April 29, 1979.
"For the last few months, whenever I have been home--which has been most of the time--I have been accustomed to taking long daily walks with my dog Aquinnah. Our walks are for business and for pleasure, and also for survival--interlocking motives that have somehow acquired nearly equal importance in my mind.
Without a daily walk and the transactions it stimulates in my head, I would face the first page of cold blank paper with pitiful anxiety."
Excerpted from Havannas in Camelot: Personal Essays (Random House). |
| Kurt Vonnegut with Pumpkin, a Lhasa Apso, New York City, January 17, 1982. |
| Amy Hempel with her yellow Lab, Wanita, NYC, January 18, 2008. Wanita is a breeder for Guiding Eyes for the Blind--which means her puppies become guide dogs for the blind. Wanita is pregnant right now, due to deliver in late March. Guiding Eyes selects the top 2% of their dogs in training to breed and pass those good genes along. In the March issue of Oprah's magazine, Hempel has a short piece about looking up 4 blind people who got Wanita's puppies as their guide dogs, accompanied by several photos of them. |
| Stephen King with his Corgi Marlowe, Bangor, Maine, July 20, 1995. |
| William F. Buckley with Rowley, his King Charles Spaniel. |
E.L. Doctorow with Becky. a Weimaraner, swimming in Gardiner's Bay, NY: August 3, 1975.
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| E.B. White with Susy, a West Highland White Terrier, in his study in North Brooklin, Maine. |
| James A. Michener with Burma, foreground, a black pure Alsatian and Java (white), half Collie and half Labrador, Bucks County, PA., July 9, 1974. He is seen here at the foot of a hill on his property of 80 acres. Mr. Michener walked two miles a day. "South Pacific," adapted from Michener's Pulitzer Prize-wining novel, Tales of the South Pacific, is currently a huge hit at Lincoln Center Theater at The Vivian Beaumont. |
Robin Cook with Fluffy, Bijon Fuse. Cook is an eye surgeon which explains why both he and Fluffy "have a lot in common, including the enjoyment of riding in a fast convertible with appropriate eye-protective gear." Naples, Florida, February 21, 1997.
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Donna Tartt with her Pug, Pongo, New York, March 15, 1997.
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Edward Albee with his Maltese, Poochi, Montauk, NY, August 9, 1976.
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Robert Penn Warren with Frodo, his Cocker Spaniel, Wardsboro, Vermont, July 31, 1971.
Frodo, named for a character from a J.R.R. Tolkien novel, was immortalized in Warren’s poem, “Rumor Verified.”
English cocker: old and blind
But if your hand
Merely touches his head,
Old faithe comes flooding back—and ...
The paw descends, His trust is infinite
In you ... |
| John Cheever with Flora, a yellow Labrador retriever, Ossining, New York, October 1, 1971. |
| P.G. Wodehouse with his Dachshund, Jed, Remsenberg, NY, February 21, 1973. Devoted animal lovers, the Wodehouses owned many dogs and were active in the Westhampton branch of Bide-a-Wee Home Association, which cares for abandoned dogs and cats until their adoption. The Westhampton branch is now called the P.G. Wodehouse Shelter in commemoration of their generous donor. |
Ann Patchett with Rose, Nashville, Tennessee.
"Like any love, it was giddy at first. I couldn't get my work done. I kept having to stop and roll around on the floor with her. She followed me from room to room, licking my ankles. I could hardly sleep at night for watching her sleep. She was small and white; maybe a cross between a Jack Russell and a Chihuahua, without the deep neuroses of either breed. If shedding was an Olympic sport, she would have brought home the gold. I was besotted."
From Ann & Rose: How to Love a Dog, by Ann Patchett. |
| All photographs © by Jill Krementz: all rights reserved. |
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