Dog Days at Westminster

Arthur Ashe Stadium is a grand space—the vast, domed cathedral of the US Open. The last time I was here, I watched Naomi Osaka play one of her last Grand Slam matches in a crowd of nearly 20,000. Today, I’m here to see a group of excitable six-pound fluffballs run in circles and preen on a podium.

It’s Pomeranian hour at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, the prestigious multiday celebration of canine beauty and performance. On the green carpet, the competitors are getting their final pep talks, their fur brushed out to peak puffiness. Eight women mill around one of the portable grooming stations to fawn over a saucer-eyed munchkin. “Come on, Mr. Star,” one of them cheers.

I, like the rest of the humans assembled, have come to observe the dogs, though my criteria for success has less to do with the muscularity of their legs or the proportions of their ears than with the hit of serotonin I get when they wag their tails or roll over for a belly rub. To my exacting eye, they are all perfect angel sweethearts.

Peter, a grey-haired man with a handlebar mustache, has a Pom tucked in the crook of his suit-jacketed elbow. Andy, he says, is “a great little show dog”—feisty and food-oriented. At home, he likes to run and jump on boxes, though here, he’s mostly in it for the treats. Andy nuzzles my hand, clearly relishing the attention. Back in New Hampshire, he’s one of 10 Poms in the house—Peter’s a former high school football coach, he explains, and dog shows are an outlet for his competitive streak.

At a nearby table, a woman named Peggy wearing all-pink—glitzy skirt suit, glittering nails, furry squeak toy in hand—runs a brush through her Yorkshire terrier’s glossy coat. “The hair is just so inviting,” she says fondly. “After my daughters grew up, I had to have more hair to take care of.” Blue (short for “Signature in Blue”) calmly allows himself to be fussed over. “He'll just go to sleep on a table till it's time, and then he gets up and does his stuff,” says Peggy. This is a helpful trait considering the staggering amount of work that goes into maintaining the lustrous strands, including wrapping them up with special paper to keep them protected and drool-free (a sort of canine version of hair curlers).

I always knew the breed had long coats, but here, the silver manes and copper beards cascade straight and sleek to the floor, pooling around their feet. The effect would be more “tiny wizard” if not for the bedazzled bows on each of their foreheads. In Yorkie world, this is a genderless accessory deployed to give the dogs a bit of razzle-dazzle in the ring.

I think Blue’s bow is pink at first, but Peggy quickly corrects me. She’s wearing pink; Blue is in red, like all the others. While owners here want their dogs to stand out—to be considered the very best of their breed—there’s also a code of conformity. It’s at the heart of the competition (officially known as a “conformation” event), which evaluates dogs against a set of breed-specific standards (which, for Yorkies, includes hair that’s “glossy, fine and silky in texture” and, indeed, tied with a bow or two).

Another part, though, seems to be the kind of humans the Westminster world attracts. In my two days at the show, I met a few dozen of them, and to be honest, I came in expecting a more cutthroat bunch—more simmering infighting and “don’t even look at my dog unless before he goes in the ring” attitudes. I do manage to pry the hint of a rivalry out of an English setter breeder (“The better setter,” she calls it, though the Irish and Gordon packs will tell you differently), and a Great Dane owner tells me conspiratorially that she doesn’t understand the appeal of one of the top contenders (sure, he takes a pretty picture, she allows, but his gait is a mess). For the most part, though, they’re magnanimous and welcoming, eager to introduce me to—and let me pet—their prizewinning pups.

Westminster is just one stop on a year-round circuit of canine competitions—some local, some national; some single-breed, some mixed. This one, though, is the real see-and-be-seen event of the season. “At most shows, we just look like down-home people off the farm, but at the Westminster, we all look really classy,” offers Maura, a breeder from Long Island. She’s wearing a glittering skirt suit—an outfit so ubiquitous here I begin to wonder whether the Kennel Club publishes a set of standards for its human handlers. (It doesn’t, and still, the skirt suit reigns supreme.) For some, the ensembles carry the weight of superstition. “If I don't win, they're gone,” says an owner named Linda, who’s traveled from California with Luke, her English Springer Spaniel. Fortunately for her (and her sequined St. John jacket), Luke is on a winning streak.

A short walk from the stadium—past the long line waiting for a turn at the step-and-repeat, a booth advertising DOGTV (a 24/7 channel “created specifically for a canine audience”), and a concession stand (no hot dogs, I noted)—the grooming tent is a constant flurry of activity. Hundreds of dogs sit, snooze, and snack atop tables while attentive humans comb mats out of their coats and spritz them with styling sprays.

A terrier stands on her hind legs and graciously extends a paw toward doggy nail clippers. In another row, a lanky Borzoi wags his tail as a handler rubs chalk into his coat to enhance its bright white coloring. You’d think it would smell more like, well, dog in here, but the vastness of the space, combined, perhaps, with the nonstop whirring of dozens of Shop-Vac-sized blow-driers, provides sufficient ventilation.

For their patience with the sometimes hours-long grooming process, the competitors are rewarded with treats, head scratches, and boundless attention. In my first lap of the tent, I meet a Shih-Tzu named Sister whose owner, Troy, is cradling her like a baby and cooing as he feeds her bites of salmon. She’s a grand champion, he says, having just won Best of Opposite Sex among her breed. At home, she’s one of four dogs, though it’s clear who runs the show. “She’s very dominant,” says Troy. “She likes to take over… we joke that she's taught all the dogs to say, 'fuck you,’ so if Sister looks at you, she's sticking up her middle finger. Or [we say] she uses naughty words all the time and gets the others to use naughty words, too.”

Sister’s curious eyes flit back and forth between us as he speaks, sending her Cindy Lou Who ponytail flopping atop her head, and I do my best to see through the innocent facade and catch a glimpse of the foul-mouthed ringleader he describes. I can see how she gets away with anything.

Walking down the center aisle, I lock eyes with a teddy-bear-faced Chow Chow. His owner is trying to get his attention, but he follows me with a soulful, expectant stare. “He’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a woman? Okay!’” Lynn says in a friendly drawl. “He loves women and wine.” Cubby is a regular at dog shows across New York wine country, and he practically has to be dragged out of there with so many ladies fussing over him, she says.

There's Jackpot, a Great Pyrenees with a coat as white and thick as Santa's beard. He's about the same size as Joan, his handler, who describes him as a "total lovebug." She doesn't even begrudge him his extravagant dining habits. “He'll eat filet mignon, roast leg of lamb. And he will not eat the same food two days in a row," she adds with loving exasperation. "You have to change what he's eating constantly.”

With a big dog comes a big appetite, but also a big heart. Dare, a 15-month-old Great Dane—150 pounds of puppy energy—comes right up and nuzzles my hand, paying only mild attention to the Corgi pulling tricks at his feet. "He says, 'Just hold me,'" his owner Marin interprets. A good show dog has to have a bit of attitude, she argues. It can't just be about the treats. Dare, for his part, has a healthy ego: "He just wants to pose. He stands in the hotel room and picks up toys and looks in the mirror like, 'Do you see that?'"

A certain level of extraversion is a common trait among the pooches of Westminster. “She loves people. She’d rather be kissing people than anything else,” Maura says of her English Setter Marguerite, named after the heroine from the opera Faust. She adds that Marguerite loves the dog show life because of all the new admirers she meets. “Where else do you go and have people tell you how gorgeous you are?” Surely, wherever it is, this place has better treats.