NYC’s finest and furriest have their day in Police Foundation 2023 dog, horse calendar

Four-legged members of the NYPD get their day in the New York City Police Foundation’s new 2023 wall calendar.

The NYPD’s own therapy dogs, Jenny, 7, and Glory and Piper, both 2, are on the cover of the Canine & Friends Calendar, and they’re joined inside by police pooches from the Transit Bureau, Emergency Service Unit and Critical Response Command and horses from the mounted unit.

The Labradors were trained by prisoners in a program called Puppies Behind Bars, and bring comfort to NYPD officers, their families and civilian employees.

The pups visit precincts and hospitals after officer-involved shootings and other traumatic events. They were at the funerals of police officers Wilbert Mora and Jason Rivera, who were killed in a shootout in Harlem in January, said Deputy Inspector Mark Wachter, Commanding Officer of NYPD Health & Wellness Section.

“They’re trained to detect stress and they offer comfort,” said Wachter. “They’re the chief spokesdogs for mental health,”

The Police Foundation was established during the city’s financial crisis in 1971, and funds police programs outside the city budget.

“One of their first successful missions was to save the mounted unit,” said Inspector Barry Gelbman during an event promoting the calendar Thursday at the NYPD’s stables in Manhattan.

Gelbman spoke as he sat atop 12-year-old Rusti, a horse named for Russell Timochenko, an officer slain in 2007.

The Foundation says that in the 1970s, it bought the department’s first bullet-resistant vests. It also says it bought the first computers used in the CompStat program in the 1990s, and it funds the assignment of NYPD officers overseas. In 2014, it also funded the department’s first body-worn cameras.

This is the sixth year the hooved and fuzzy friends posed for photos for the foundation’s calendar, and humans can’t seem to get enough.

“We thought it was a great idea to share those animals that were on the front lines every day,” said Susan Birnbaum, President and CEO of the New York City Police Foundation. “We love our finest and our furriest.”