Kelsey Dennis said her terrier Keegan was competing for Best Smile in part because he didn’t happen to have a costume on.
Kelsey Dennis’s wirefox terrier Keegan showed some impressive pearly whites, while Mical Raz’s Pomeranian Sophie got a lot of perky personality into her active little jaws as the canines competed for Best Smile and inclusion in the inaugural 2012 Dogs of Wooster Square Calendar.
Sophie and Mical Raz
The friendly Saturday morning canine photo shoot at Wooster Square Park was the first fundraiser organized by Friends of Wooster Square (FOWS).
It’s a new group that is moving at full trot to convert a 250-foot strip of under utilized grass at Union and Chapel streets into a fenced, lit, and much needed dog park.
The proposed site for the Union Street Dog Park at Union and Chapel Streets across from Firestone Tires store.
The plan to convert the relatively unused city-owned strip of grass into a park where dogs can roam unleashed has the blessing of the city’s parks department, according to FOWS organizer Talia Bennick. Parks chief Bob Levine confirmed that. He said his department stands ready to “mow, empty rubbish, repair damage, the usual stuff,” at the space once it’s created.
Saturday morning’s photo shoot and the subsequent publication of a Dogs of Wooster Square calendar is a first step to raise $17,000 to provide fencing, lighting and other amenities for dogs as well as their owners to socialize at what is being called the Union Street Dog Park.
Allan Appel Photo
Keegan and Kelsey Dennis.
The campaign was triggered by the closing of a field behind the Conte-West Hills School in a dispute between area dog owners and school officials. The field had been informally used for years as a place for dog owners to let their animals run unleashed.
Bennick said that while she doesn’t know the density of dog ownership in the Wooster Square area, the park and the quiet streets do attract canine owners.
Sophie’s owner says: “I desperately need a place for the dogs to be off leash and also for the owners to create a community.”
“This community has so many dogs and no place they can be let off leash to play and to exercise,” she said.
According to research she and her husband Jeremy (co-owners of a 140-pound Great Dane) have done, there are very few places where dogs are legally permitted to be off leash: one by the Yale University Divinity School on St. Ronan Street, a small triangle between lanes of moving traffic on Upper State Street, and across the Hamden line at Basset Park on Ridge Road.
And nothing near Wooster Square.
Emmi and Dozer’s owners Chantal and Chris Sander come from Milford every Saturday for the Wooster Square Farmers’ Market.
As Bennick and her fellow organizers signed up Emmi and Dozer, two boxers from Milford, to compete for Cutest Couple Portrait, she said all the feedback has thus far been very positive.
“Even people who don’t own dogs are supportive. It’s a win-win,” she said.
Mikado, a seven-year-old Lhasa dropped by and made quite a hit posing for the Most Festive category, though owner Cindy Rosarbo said Mikado refused to keep his hat on.
She and her husband have lived on Wooster Street for 16 years. They pronounced the proposed Union Street Dog Park a “great idea.”
Bennick said she and the city are exploring inclusion in the new park of a program called Park Spark , a technology created by scientists at M.I.T. that converts the methane in canine waste into energy for lighting their dog runs at night.
But the first step is the calendar. The drop-in dog pictures, by photographer Cesar Martinez, cost $15 apiece. The crew will return to the park again next Saturday morning from 9 to about noon. The calendar should be published by the end of the year and available for purchase in January.
Those wishing to contribute to the effort should contact the group by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call Talia Bennick at 914 – 924-4662.
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More fun FOWS events in Wooster Square to follow!