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Hot dog! This couple loves dachshunds

HOW INTENSELY do Lee and Docena Blyden love their wiener dogs? The Northeast Philadelphia couple bought an Xfinity Home wide-angle security camera so that when they're away from their house near Franklin Mills Mall, they can watch streaming video of Percy and Wendy on their smartphones. That's intense.

YONG KIM / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Docena and Lee Blyden installed a security camera so they could monitor dachshunds Percy and Wendy from their smartphones.
YONG KIM / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Docena and Lee Blyden installed a security camera so they could monitor dachshunds Percy and Wendy from their smartphones.Read more

HOW INTENSELY do Lee and Docena Blyden love their wiener dogs?

The Northeast Philadelphia couple bought an Xfinity Home wide-angle security camera so that when they're away from their house near Franklin Mills Mall, they can watch streaming video of Percy and Wendy on their smartphones. That's intense.

The Blydens have a grown son and young grandchildren, so they are not substituting canines for kids to fill an emotional void.

It's more like Wendy, 9, and Percy, 2, are a second set of grandkids - with shorter legs, longer ears and tails that don't quit.

And, Lee said, the dachshunds rock. "I'm into David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Docena's crazy about Ozzy Osbourne. Every year we went to Ozzfest, and she's jumping in the mosh pit."

Percy and Wendy can dig it. "If I play something upbeat like a Bowie song, they grab squeezy toys and go crazy," Lee said. He demonstrated. Squeezy-toy madness ensued.

Lee said he named Wendy after Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," then sang, "Tramps like us, Wendy we were born to run."

Docena said, "I named Percy after Percy Sledge," then sang, "When a man loves a woman . . . "

She saw her first dachshund when she was 5, growing up on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. "I was walking home barefoot," Docena said, when she saw a man walking his dachshund.

"It was like a little worm with legs," Docena said - wiener dog love at first sight. But buying a pet was out of the question.

"I'm the 12th child of 14," she said. "We all slept on the floor together. A big pot of soup fed everybody. My father rode a donkey. We were dirt-poor but didn't know it because everybody was poor.

"My mother died when I was 9," she said. "My father went blind. I lived with an aunt and then I left the island."

Docena went to New York, got a counter job with White Castle, worked herself up to supervisor, came to Philadelphia to open White Castles here, retired after 34 years, and finally got the dachshund of her dreams, the first Percy. The current one is Percy III.

When she's not rocking with wiener dogs, Docena is a passionate poet, tackling child abuse, rape and gun violence in her two "Dark Visions" collections.

She read a poem called "Pedophilia" aloud like a fiery preacher. Then Percy licked her face, lifted her mood.

"They eat what we do," Docena said, laughing. "If we eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, Wendy will hit you with her paws until you give her some. And they love C-A-R-R-O-T-S. I can't say it because they'll go crazy."

Wendy furrowed her brow as if she was sounding it out phonetically. She and Percy have been so humanized by the Blydens, it's only a matter of time.