NYPD K9 photo exhibit features the dogs that protect the Big Apple

They’re New York’s Finest four-legged friends.

A new photo exhibition honors NYPD police officers and their K9 partners who do the ruff work protecting the city.

The Dogs that Serve, which opens at the AKC Museum of the Dog in Murray Hill on March 13, features NYPD K9s from the five boroughs, who are all named after fallen officers from the NYPD, FDNY and US Armed Forces.

One of the images was taken on Sept. 11, 2022, of Officer Andrew Rigel with his K9 Argus, named after the dog owned by Officer Joseph Piagentini, and Officer Donald Perceval with K9 Petey, named after Officer Peter Figoski.

Both canines, who are Black Shepherds, are sitting atop the entrance to the Wall Street subway station during the 9/11 memorial.

“I just see these two dogs sitting there, and my first thought is, ‘They’re absolutely beautiful,'” photographer Margaret Foxmoore told The Post.

“They didn’t move. They were watching people with handbags. I took 30 to 40 pictures of them, and one is better than the next.”

Foxmoore, who took all the photos in the exhibition — which will be on display until May 5 — was granted exclusive access by the NYPD Transit Bureau Canine Unit into some of the most heavily guarded Big Apple events.

“Once I get permission I walk away and then I just watch. There’s really no posing,” said Foxmoore, who has taken 300,000 photos of the city’s K9s.

The New Jersey native always loved snapping photos of pups around Manhattan, but her foray into her work with K9s started in 2018, when she was at the Tartan Day Parade and stopped to ask Officer Leonel Checo, who was with his K9 Omar, a German Shepherd, named after Officer Omar Edwards, directions.

“And he said, ‘Why don’t you take pictures of us?'” she recalled.

Checo connected her with then-Lieutenant Commanding Officer of the NYPD Transit Bureau Canine Unit John Pappas, who allowed her to capture the dogs.

After that, she said, “I basically fit the K9s in between everything.”

Foxmoore now travels into Manhattan “in the middle of the night” from her home in Brewster, NY to seek out the dogs guarding places like St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Grand Central Station and the Times Square subway station.

Last year, she turned her collection into a book, “Dogs Outside the Ring,” which is on display at the Library of Congress.

The cover of the book, she said, features the most iconic shot she’s even taken, which is also in the exhibit, of Officer Justin Gelband and his K9 Rett, a German Shepherd Belgian Malinois named in honor of Officer Sean McDonald, at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2019.

In the image, Rett, who will be at the exhibition’s opening, has his eyes focused on the crowd, while a balloon of Snoopy looms in the background.

“There’s a peacefulness and a humor about it,” she said.

The “heaviest” photo in the exhibition, she said, is the one she took at the funeral procession for Officer Wilbert Mora, who was killed in 2022, where there were 173 K9s from around the country.

“I can’t look at those pictures without crying still,” she said.

Besides the transit bureau, Foxmoore has also covered other K9 units such as counterterrorism, the emergency service unit, bomb squad and harbor patrol.

She makes it a point to never edit the police officer out of the picture.

“You can’t really cut the officer out because they are a pair,” she said. “They are bonded like a husband and wife.”