A Star is Born

Some of you are aware our dogs Minnie and Sadie were adopted from Main Line Animal Rescue. As with most shelters today, MLAR often photographs its residents and displays their pictures on the web and in brochures hoping to encourage a speedy and successful adoption.

Sadie (and her brother) and Minnie (and her sister) were photographed in the Fall of 2003, shortly after their arrival in the United States from St. Croix, and their pictures were included in a then-current brochure.

Some time in May of 2005 I was driving to an appointment when I stopped at a red light behind a bus. I looked up and saw the atttached picture and my first thought was how cute the dogs were. Then my jaw must have dropped as I realized the picture was the one of Minnie (seen on the right) and her sister taken for the aforementioned brochure. But did I have a camera with me? Of course not.

When I returned to the office I immediately sent an email to Bill Smith, the director of MLAR. I have periodically sent Bill pictures of Sadie and Minnie as they have grown and thrived so he is quite used to receiving correspondence from me. He responded in a few minutes informing me "They're too damn cute! People are calling us crying that they want the little dogs on the bus. We have placed other puppies through the ads. The old bait and switch." (No one needs to tell me about Bill's ability to "sell". We went to MLAR with the intention of finding one dog and came home with two. "They'll bond with each other," Bill assured us, which turned out to be true but at the time I was more than a little skeptical.)

That night at dinner I repeated the entire story to my wife and told her I had already checked the bus schedules on line, knew the route in question and would go out the next morning and photograph the bus. "Let's go now," she said, adding, "We need to get out more at night during the week." I didn't disagree though this sort of expedition wasn't what I had in mind. Nevertheless, we hopped in the car and literally started chasing buses around the neighborhood. Up Montgomery Avenue. Down Lancaster. We saw all manner of buses (short and long) most of which have ads on the back for a local radio station. They have more money than MLAR, we surmised.

By the time we had been out driving for about 20 minutes it occurred to me we weren't that far from the terminal from which the bus in quesion would originate. So, we drove to the 69th St. Terminal, all the while laughing and agreeing we were slightly nuts. Now, as a trained photographer I mentioned several times to my wife that ideally we needed a bus heading East because the sun will be behind it. All of the routes we had followed up to that point were E-W roads but most of the buses we found were heading West, directly into the sun. Not ideal for pictures, I warned her.

We arrived at the terminal and noticed all of the buses faced West. Not good, I said. And, of course, they all had ads for that damn radio station. But, one lone bus did have "our" ad. My wife was thrilled. I parked, jumped out of the car camera in hand and ran toward the bus. It was idling. No driver. Facing due West with the sun looking right down my lens. There was no hope of turning the bus around (bad enough I was taking pictures of the back of an empty bus let alone jumping into the driver's seat and turning it around in a one-way space). So I used the broad back of the bus to shield the sun and took the attached picture. Pleased with ourselves, we headed home. The next morning I downloaded the image and made a few adjustments in PhotoShop.

Thus far we haven't heard from the subject herself regarding a possible raise in biscuits. Since that day, however, we have taken to referring to Minnie as that star of stage and bus.