A woman in a sequined silver skirt suit holds a Chihuahua in each hand. Before I can open my mouth she says, with the type of brusqueness typically only heard from Times Square Mickey Mouses and Canal street bag salesmen, “You wanna photo with an eight-time award winning Chihuahua?” and thrusts one of the supine animals into my arms. It’s the 149th annual Westminster dog show! The nation’s second longest continuously held sporting event has returned to New York City and I am so happy my throat feels like it’s closing. I am also so allergic to dogs.
After receiving a press confirmation from the Westminster PR detail (she apologized for her tardiness because she was “knee-deep in a pile of kibble”) I gleefully trek up to the Javits Center where I have not been since I spent all my middle school babysitting money on a ticket to Comic Con. For transparency, when I pitched this to the rest of the i-D team, I neglected to mention my nearly debilitating dog allergies. Armed only with Zyrtec and the will to live, I descend into the barely ventilated basement of the conference center.
Skye Terriers with bat wing ears, Bichon Frisés, Biewer Terriers, Briards, Kuvasz, Lhasa Apsos, Norwegian Elkhounds and Buhunds, Pointers of all type, Salukis, Rottweilers and Ridgebacks. Dogs everywhere for the eye to see! What splendor! A woman in a sequined Yves Klein blue suit with a single white lock spiraling from the back of her voluminous pixie cut grips a miniature schnauzer by the neck. A lot of owners look like their dog but few own up to it. An owner naps on the floor using his giant Mastiff’s belly as a pillow. A dog owner in stiff black pumps mops up a puddle of pee with a paper towel. A man with a buzzcut demands into a phone, “Somebody find out Sonny’s birthday, now!” A Westie is rushed paws first through the room. A group of state cops cluster around a skinny pooch as its owner declares, “They actually wanted him for the force but he couldn’t because he needed a lot of therapy. You know, he came from that sort of situation.” A man walks towards me and says, by way of introducing his dog, “Bitch. 150 pounds.” If I was that dog I’d bite that man.
The rules of dog showing are labyrinthian. The more involved you are the more questions you might have, but essentially, dogs compete within their breed to be “Best in Breed.” These Best in Breed winners then go on to compete within the broader groups they belong to: Sporting, Hound, Working, Terrier, Toy, Non-Sporting, and Herding. The seven winners of the group competition then participate in Best in Show, where one lucky dog comes away with a fat purple and gold award ribbon.
What the judges look for is a dog that most adheres to the “breed standard.” Not the most interesting Pekingese but the most Pekingese Pekingese, the Pekingese that is exactly what a Pekingese should be, no more and no less. At Westminster the phrase “breed standard” whispers through the air, at any moment somebody is uttering “breed standard” with reverence or despair. A dog could be disqualified for being too tall. A dog could not be disqualified for having uncontrollable diarrhea on the floor (guess how I learned that). There is a lot of conversation about breed preservation. Whether or not Westminster, where more than 2,500 dogs from every state in America vie to be top dog, can be considered a sporting event is a matter of personal feeling, but these dogs are more than just elite athletes: They are pals, family members, and hard workers.
When the dogs are not trotting around the astroturf they rest in the benching area. The benching area is like the backstage of any pageant: controlled chaos filled with women of a certain haircut liberally applying hairspray. Dogs are given nearly imperceptible snips and their leads are picked from bedazzled caboodles. A trend among handlers is to stick dog combs into their own up-does for ease of access. Handlers are strict coaches, and owners are lenient parents. Some handlers handle 10-15 dogs a show, others only handle their own dogs. Breeders also come to Westminster to see the dogs they reared. In some ways Westminster is a trade show, prospective dog owners shop for the best breeders. Just like purebred dog breeding the world of Westminster is generational and kind of incestuous. It’s rare that someone enters without having been born into it. People meet their spouses at these events. It takes a village to show a dog and winning Best in Show at Westminster is a life in the making.
All around benching owners, handlers, breeders, and groomers cajole and bribe. Beyond the smell of piss and dander something else lingers—a synthetic caramel scent, maybe it’s the hairspray, maybe it’s one of the popular dog perfumes (featuring smells like Summer Fig and Cookie Crush) that are sold in the specialty Westminster gift shop, maybe it’s just the smell of the Javits Center (I do not remember this from my brief time at Comic Con).
An equal amount of primping is spent on the dog’s handler. There are more skirt suits here than at the RNC and they are all sequined! If they are not sequined, they are sparkly. If they are not sparkly or sequined, then they are at least pink. The hardcore go pink tweed, sparkles, sequins, eyelashes, and a bump-It. I pass a sullen eighteen-year-old handler getting her hair done. Her dog sits in a crate nearby with a similarly sullen look. The bond between handler and dog is sacrosanct. The eighteen-year-old’s mother tells me nervously, “She’s freaking out, so the dog’s freaking out ’cause they have that bond.”
Nearby two giant Mastiffs drool gently. Madeline, one of their handlers nods wearily when I point out the puddle of drool, “Yes. Yes. They’re very large, very drooly.” Is drooling taken into account in judging? “If they have a taut mouth it is not correct, that’s not breed standard.” As I talk to Madeline, an elderly woman starts baby talking the dogs, “Are you drooling? You’re drooling!” Her companion nods sagely, “So much drool.”
I step over matted clumps of hair, reminding me of my own bathroom. Also in the gift shop: two large $270 dollar Maison Pearson boar bristle and nylon brushes. The shop girl informs me they move about 8 brushes a year—not high numbers but still something. Unfortunately for me, the Maison Pearson brush does not remind me of my own bathroom. An imposing man named Joseph Horvath, the owner of a beautiful mop of a dog named Rozsika the “#1 Komodor bitch” withdraws several locks of dog hair which are rubber-banded together from his pocket.
Rachel from Rhode Island owns Stetson the Great Dane as well as nine other Danes, three Salukis and two Chihuahuas. She tells me she tries to keep her dogs in a bubble before the show. “I take him to physical therapy right before we leave, he goes on the water treadmill for an hour, he gets stretched and lasered, he does shockwave therapy, and then he rests.” When I ask her where he gets lasered she says ominously, “everywhere.” The dog and I lock eyes. I make what I think is a sympathetic face but at this point I can’t tell anymore what my face is doing. My eyes water. I might be dying, I think. Death by a thousand tiny dogs.
Participants in Westminster are advised to stay at a hotel in the area like The New Yorker on 8th Avenue ($271 a night). Others, like Kate from South Carolina instead opt for the more expensive Spring Hill Suites because they have private terraces. “My dogs don’t have to go walking on the street. I brought their own astroturf and an exercise pen and that’s where they go,” she sniffs.
On the other side of the room I pause to watch the large peg heads of the Clumber Spaniels rush around the astroturf. There is a bizarre satisfaction in watching these dogs, all carbon copies, simply stand in a line. In the ring a middle-aged judge in a half-denim half-leopard print midi skirt looks a pup straight in the gooch. Each judge has their own biases. An owner who declined to go give me her name tells me, “Some handlers really know how to work the judges. It’s all political.” A woman named Barbara Walter (not Barbara Walters! she tells me emphatically, all her life people have called her Barbara Walters) wearing a purple shirt with outlines of puppies on it, a purple beret and a purple bag approaches me. Purple happens to be the official color of Westminster so a lot of people are wearing purple, but Barbara Walter tells me this happens to be a coincidence. “Do you know how to tell the difference between a Norfolk Terrier and a Norwich Terrier?” No, I shake my head, not quite sure what I was expecting, something like Norwich’s ask you a riddle every morning and Norfolks are evil? “Norfolk’s ears point down and Norwich’s ears point up.” Also in dog news: even numbers on handler armbands mean the dog is a bitch. Odd numbers are dogs. Dogs name range from the recognizable (Henry) to the referential (Mr. Bates) to the complex, a combination of their breeder/sire/awards they’ve won (Sunmagic For Your Eyes Only, Beachwalk Notoriously Dapper, Rainsway’s What The Flapjack).
At a certain point I notice that one of the handlers discreetly baby birds something to the dog before restoring it to her mouth. In fact, all around the Javits Center handlers are doing this mouth to mouth food transfer. The substance, which could be anything from chicken, hot dog bites, turkey jerky, or cheese is referred to as bait. I’m told by the owner of one of the competing Clumbers that the night before she went with a group of dog owners to Sparks Steakhouse, generally considered one of the best steak houses in New York City, which offers, among other things, large live lobsters, steak fromage topped with roquefort cheese and medallions of beef with bordelaise sauce. The prices at Sparks Steakhouse are “subject to change” and because of that not disclosed online but when I called Sparks the next day (journalism is amazing isn’t it?) I was informed that the cost of their cheapest cut of steak is about $60. According to the Clumber owner, nobody at the dinner finished their meal, opting instead to chop up the steak into tiny bites to use as bait during the dog show. As I watch a handler pass a $60 steak nibble to a dog, the owner said, “You gotta do whatever you have to do to get your dog to focus on you.” A geriatric photographer crawls on all fours on the floor, waving a rubber ball to catch the dog’s attention.
Jenny, the handler of an award winning Clumber, always knows when a dog is going to be a good show dog. “It’s about their attitude. Do they think they’re a big deal?” The dog who she handles has big diamond shaped eyes and apparently lives for this. “But when he’s at home he’s an Olympic snorer and he likes to drink out of the toilet.” Stars, they’re just like us.
Jenny pets her Clumber Spaniel, “You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, people like you.” She often gives her dogs a pep talk, and vice versa. “When you’re having a bad day and you have an animal what’s the first thing that they do? They come and they try to comfort you, they’re giving you a pep talk! They do it for us every day. These dogs know they’re special. They know that this is part of what they’re meant to do because they want to be with you and they want to have fun with you and this is something we have fun doing together.” Though there ended up being only one winner of the 149th annual Westminster–a 5-year-old giant schnauzer named Monty–it’s important to remember that beyond the pageantry and glamour these dogs are just really good boys (and bad bitches).
Photography: Brian Karlsson