NEW YORK – They’re on the high of their sport. They run, weave and go airborne. They usually’re going all out to win the championship this weekend.
Sorry — no, they are not the Chiefs or the Eagles. They’re the agility canine on the Westminster Kennel Club show, which started Saturday by showcasing numerous canine sports activities.
Canine folks typically name Westminster the Tremendous Bowl of canine exhibits, and the comparability is likely to be particularly becoming this 12 months. The US’ most prestigious canine competitors opened on the identical weekend as professional soccer’s Super Bowl, which options the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. The uncommon coincidence comes after each competitions’ dates shifted lately.
“I at all times mentioned I needed individuals to name the Tremendous Bowl ‘the Westminster of soccer,’ ” quipped canine knowledgeable David Frei, who has a foot in each worlds: He used to work in publicity for the Denver Broncos and the San Francisco 49ers.
The Westminster of soccer? Nicely, Westminster is 90 years older than the Tremendous Bowl, in any case.
And there have been another connections between the gridiron and Westminster’s inexperienced carpet. Los Angeles Chargers defensive end Morgan Fox co-owns a French bulldog who got here inside a smushy-nose size of successful at Westminster in 2022 and was a finalist the following year. (Many different NFL gamers even have canine for enjoyable, if not for present, together with Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes.)
Regardless of the analogy, being at Westminster is a triumph for Guster the rescue pug. He and proprietor Steve Martin took up agility after Guster began wagging his tail and tilting his head whereas they watched the Westminster agility contest on TV a number of years in the past.
“We by no means thought we’d be right here. And now we’re right here,” Martin, of Austin, Texas, mentioned Saturday.
The competition featured about 350 champion-level contestants in one in every of dogdom’s hottest sports activities. Westminster added it in 2014, marking the present’s first event with mixed-breed dogs for the reason that 1800s. Final 12 months noticed the first mixed-breed agility winner, a border collie-papillion combine named, appropriately, Nimble, who competed once more this 12 months.
She’s an intentional mix of two high agility breeds. However the sport additionally attracts rescue canine comparable to an Australian cattle canine combine named Sawyer, or Soy Sauce for brief.
His proprietor, Dr. Amy Ondeyka, has an advanced work schedule as a New Jersey emergency room physician and EMS medical director. However she made time for agility after realizing she’d adopted a super-energetic canine who opens cupboards, unzips issues and in any other case causes home mayhem when bored.
“He is at all times thrilling — he does ridiculous issues,” she mentioned as he intermittently leaped into her arms throughout what was ostensibly down time between agility runs Saturday. “Now we have enjoyable, regardless what occurs.”
Whereas some canine do agility to burn off vitality, the game helps others come out of their shell. Tully, a lanky, shaggy, mostly-Labradoodle combine, was once “afraid of the world” however now could be excited to go to agility courses and competitions, proprietor Carla Rash mentioned.
Saturday’s canine opponents have been a spectrum of dogdom, from an excellent Dane to a seven-pound (0.9-kg) papillion, and so they included such lesser-known breeds as a big Munsterlander and a Danish-Swedish farmdog.
They navigated jumps, tunnels, ramps and different obstacles as handlers gave hand and voice indicators. The item is to be the quickest, with out making errors.
The agility winner will emerge from a closing spherical Saturday night at New York Metropolis’s Javits Heart.
No matter scores, some canine received cheers from spectators. There was a bichon frise with its tail dyed blue, a normal poodle that took a leisurely trot throughout an A-frame ramp, and a curly-coated combine that apparently had second ideas concerning the weave poles, circled round and went by means of them once more.
Westminster’s conventional, breed-by-breed judging occurs Monday and Tuesday, capped by the coveted finest in present prize Tuesday evening.
That is for purebreds solely, however mixed-breed canine additionally have been eligible for Saturday’s obedience competitors, an occasion that Westminster added in 2016. The highest prize went to Willie, an Australian shepherd who additionally received in 2022 with handler Kathleen Keller of Flemington, New Jersey.
Steve Wesler sported a Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt as he cheered on companion Jennifer Weinik and Cookie, her Belgian Malinois. They got here away with a ribbon, which Wesler deemed extra thrilling than the Tremendous Bowl — as a result of he was assured the Eagles would prevail.
The canine present additionally featured Westminster’s first demonstration of flyball, a canine relay race. Canine run down a line of jumps, seize a tennis ball and velocity again to the beginning line, the place a teammate then takes off.
“It is lots of organized chaos,” Hillary Brown mentioned with a chuckle after competing along with her Boston terrier, Paxil, and his teammates: a normal poodle, a border collie and a whippet-border collie combine. Their squad, Clear Break, is predicated in York, Pennsylvania.
“It is a blast. The canine find it irresistible,” Brown mentioned.
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This story corrects that the canine named Cookie received a ribbon, not the general prize, in obedience..
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