Hype, Money And Cornstarch: What It Takes To Win At Westminster

[Arawyn]

Hype, Money and Cornstarch: What It Takes to Win at Westminster

By DAVID SEGAL

Published: February 13, 2010

PORTLAND, Ore.

RAYMOND PITTMAN is wearing a jacket and tie and sweating slightly as he readies his bichon frisé, a white powder puff of a dog, for show time. He combs, spritzes and combs some more. The bichon, officially named PaRay’s Rime Time but known to friends and fans as Sloan, will soon glow like a frosted, 60-watt light bulb.

It’s two minutes before a best-in-breed competition at the Rose City Classic, a four-day series of dog shows held here in January, and Sloan has a glint in her eyes that says, “We both know I’m adorable.” Despite the perspiration, Mr. Pittman, a professional dog handler, looks just as confident.

“She’s the No. 1 bichon frisé in the country,” he says, daubing corn starch on the fur around Sloan’s snout with a paintbrush. “I’m not sure there’s a lot of competition here today.”

Ten feet away, the competition is lying down and getting some rest. This is Apollo, a bichon owned by Jerry Pound and Gay Culpepper, a married couple from Spanaway, Wash. They know that letting Apollo recline could curl his underbelly fur, and that won’t win points with the judge in what is, essentially, a beauty pageant. But they aren’t about to force the animal to stand up if he’s tired.

“Our dog’s a pet first and a show dog second,” says Mr. Pound, a retired Air Force engineer who is well over 6-foot-3. “They don’t even own the dog,” he says, gesturing toward Mr. Pittman and his assistant, who is holding Sloan’s hindquarters in an attention-getting grip that makes it impossible for her to sit. “I do it for the fun. They do it for the bucks.”

The bucks. They are the not-so-secret key to success at this and other top dog shows held every year. On Monday, when Madison Square Garden in Manhattan hosts the 2010 Westminster Dog Show, the most prestigious event on the thoroughbred canine calendar, money will quietly play a role in determining the winner, just as money quietly shaped the field of contenders — and just as money shapes almost every nook and cranny of the dog show business.

Among breeders, owners and handlers, it’s understood: you can’t just turn up with the paradigm of the breed, if such an animal exists, and expect a best-in-show ribbon. To seriously vie for victory, a dog needs what is known as a campaign: an exhausting, time-consuming and very expensive gantlet of dog show wins, buttressed by ads in publications like Dog News and The Canine Chronicle.

Seriously, ads. Lots and lots of them. They usually hype recent victories at local shows, with the hope of influencing judges at future competitions. “A top 10 toy dog!” reads a recent full-pager for Bon Bon the Pomeranian, listing an assortment of triumphs under a picture of the animal panting atop some logs.

The cost of a campaign can add up fast. You need a professional handler and cash for plane tickets and road trips to roughly 150 dog shows a year. (Yes, about three shows a week.) And you need to spend as much as $100,000 annually on ads.

Altogether, a top-notch campaign can easily cost more than $300,000 a year, and because it takes time to build momentum and a reputation, a typical campaign lasts for two or three years. Kathy Kirk, who handled Rufus, a colored bull terrier who won best in show at Westminster in 2006, estimates that the dog’s three-year campaign cost about $700,000.

“Money is important in everything,” says Ms. Kirk. “The Olympics, auto racing, everything. The big bucks wins.”

Most A-list dogs are owned by well-off patrons — groups of them, in many cases — who often leave pets with handlers for years at a time. Sloan, for instance, is in Year 2 of her campaign and lives with Mr. Pittman at PaRay Kennel in Orangevale, Calif.

Sloan’s owners are a married couple, Laura Rosio and Martin Winston. Ms. Rosio, who describes herself as a groupie for her dog, sits ringside at the Portland shows and happily explains what owning a marquee dog is all about.

“She’s incorporated,” says Ms. Rosio, nodding toward Sloan and beaming. Then she reaches into her purse and hands over the dog’s business card.

AMERICANS spend about $330 million each year traveling to and competing at dog shows, according to the American Kennel Club. The shows support a huge network of kennel clubs and exhibitors, and many are sponsored by pet food manufacturers like Eukanuba and Pedigree. To those companies, the shows are a way to connect with elite handlers, an important demographic known in the industry as “pet influentials.”

Westminster is the Olympics of this sport — or hobby, or whatever — attracting an audience of three million viewers on the Animal Planet channel. It is the culmination of some 1,500 dog shows in the previous year, a race that begins in January with shows like the Rose City Classic, held in the immense Portland Metropolitan Exposition Center. Here, recreational vehicles and trailers pack the parking lot. Exhibitors include fine-art dog portrait painters and the International Canine Semen Bank.

Most of the dogs here are handled by weekend hobbyists, known as owner-handlers, and among them you detect a certain fatalism about their chances.

“It’s political” is the euphemism you hear time and again. That can sometimes mean that a certain judge is known to have specific prejudices for or against a certain dog, usually based on aesthetics but occasionally based on considerations that seem — sorry about this — more catty.

One handler said that an owner had refused to send him and his much-garlanded charge to Westminster this year because the owner was feuding with the judge who would appraise the breed.

Most of the time, though, “it’s political” refers to a widely perceived bias in favor of professional handlers and campaigning dogs, known to insiders as “specials.” Nobody thinks the outcomes are rigged. But it’s assumed that the playing field is far from even, especially at major events.

Suffice it to say, nobody can remember an uncampaigned dog prevailing at Westminster. About the closest thing to a surprise was last year’s winner, Stump, a Sussex spaniel who had been retired for four years. But Stump was far from unknown. Before his retirement, his handler showed him at more than 100 shows in one year.

“We didn’t come here expecting to win,” says Chris Jones, who is standing beside his wife, Glenda, and a Newfoundland, preparing for the Portland competition. Like all owner-handlers, the couple think their dog is stunning, but she’s young and her rivals include some specials.

“It’s because the professional is in front of judges all the time and they’ll say, ‘Oh, if Andy is showing that dog, the dog must be really good.’ ”

That sentiment highlights how tricky it is to pinpoint the influence of money at this dog show and others. Only promising dogs are campaigned, so it’s hard to know whether their success is a cause or an effect of the cash spent promoting them onto winners’ stands.

And because prominent handlers have their pick of dogs and wouldn’t want to risk their reputations with a stinker, it would make sense for a judge to assume that these handlers have brought standouts. In addition, the pros are generally better at presenting a dog.

“You hear from owner-handlers often that there is a supposed advantage for professionals at shows,” says Mr. Pittman, whose lifelong passion for dogs began with his first word, puppy. “But I think that’s an excuse. The professionals know what they’re doing. They groom well, present well, manage the ring well. There’s a reason that they became professionals.”

Judges deny any kind of favoritism, though they acknowledge just how subjective their choices are. This show, like Westminster, is a conformation competition, which means the winner is the dog that most closely embodies the breed standard as defined by the American Kennel Club.

The standards are highly specific. The one for the basset hound, for instance, is more than 900 words long and includes guidance on size, coat, gait and head. (“The lips are darkly pigmented and are pendulous, falling squarely in front and, toward the back, in loose hanging flews. The dewlap is very pronounced.”)

Still, deciding which basset hound is the basset houndiest isn’t easy because every judge brings his or her own priorities and preferences to the task.

To the lay person at a dog show, distinctions seem impossible because a group of, say, golden retrievers all look alike. But judges and professional handlers say that once you know the breed, the problem is that all the dogs look different. The hard part isn’t telling them apart. It’s figuring out which version of excellence to favor.

“There’s 95 golden retrievers here today,” says Tracy Tuff, a professional breeder and handler from Canada, who was preparing several dogs for Rose City . “They all have different colors, different size, different bone structures. With 95 of them, that’s three hours’ worth of judging just golden retrievers. A judge can get a little lost in that. They start to go golden blind.”

The presence of a pro, she says, offers a cue that many judges find invaluable.

“By showing up, judges seem to say, ‘Thank God you’re here because I don’t know what to pick,’ ” says Ms. Tuff. The owner-handlers, of course, are less excited to see her. “I hear a lot of four-letter words. A lot of ‘oh, you’re here,’ ” she says, imitating a crestfallen rival. “Yeah. Sorry.”

IN the lead-up to the bichon frisé competition, the owner-handlers Jerry Pound and Gay Culpepper are standing in one of two hanger-size rooms where all handlers prep. Their operation is little more than two small tables and a blow dryer, plus their dogs, Apollo and Dreamer.

At moments, they sound mildly irked about the perceived advantage that professionals take into the ring. Mr. Pound has measured his dogs and found they fit the standard almost to the letter, whereas he and his wife find the PaRay Kennel dogs — Sloan included — a little on the square side.

“These guys are supposed to be more rectangular,” Ms. Culpepper says, pointing to Apollo. “But a standard is very subjective.” Then again, the couple marvel at the skills of the PaRay professionals, particularly when it comes to presentation.

Mr. Pound calls Paul Flores, who grooms Sloan, an artist, saying “he’d be a sculptor” if he wasn’t working with dogs.

You have to wonder: Why do the thousands of owner-handlers compete if they believe that the fight isn’t totally fair?

“It’s gets us out of the house on the weekends,” says Ms. Culpepper. “We don’t sit in front of the TV. We travel and we get to socialize with people who care about the same things we do.”

“And we win just enough to keep our interest,” adds Mr. Pound. “We have beaten PaRay in the past.”

The more time you spend at the Rose City Classic, the more unpredictable the results seem. The universe of winners is dominated by specials, but it is one random universe. Dogs have just as many quirks as judges. On some days, they’re engaged and alert. On others, they cower from judges, a major no-no.

So somehow, elite dog shows seem both overdetermined and surprisingly arbitrary. And it’s the sense that anything can happen that explains the otherwise perplexing tradition of doggy advertising.

The ads are a bit like those “for your consideration” campaigns for Oscar nominees, and they’re bought for essentially the same reason: to sway decision makers in a realm in which there is debate about what is “the best.” Lobbying for a St. Bernard, for instance, wouldn’t work if everyone agreed about what constitutes a great St. Bernard. And if St. Bernard greatness were the sort of thing that could be measured with a ruler and calipers, you wouldn’t need judges. A computer would suffice.

But there is no unanimity about St. Bernards or any other breed, and judges are human. So at magazines like Dog News, the ads keep pouring in. Often called the bible of the dog show world, Dog News is a weekly published by Harris Publications out of an office on Broadway in Manhattan. Other titles in Harris’s eclectic stable include Guns and Weapons, the hip-hop title XXL and the comic book Vampirella.

Most magazines are struggling with a downturn in ads. Not Dog News. It’s about 75 percent ads and runs as long as 600 pages in issues coinciding with big shows. Prices vary from $250 for a full-page black-and-white ad to $4,000 for the cover.

Yes, the cover is an ad.

“I don’t have a single staffer to solicit ads,” says Matthew Stander, publisher of Dog News. “They come to us unsolicited.”

Judges are the main target — they are sent the magazine gratis — and they star along with the dogs in most of the ads. There’s a tradition at shows of taking a photograph of winning dogs along with the judges who selected them, and most of the ads are little more than that photo and a cutesy tag line.

“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” reads a recent ad for Prissy the dachshund, “Love me because I’m a weinner!” The judge usually gets a shout-out, too. (“Thank you Judge Mrs. Bonnie Threlfall.”)

Not surprisingly, it’s hard to find a judge who says the ads work. One said she browses out of vanity, to see if her outfit looks good enough to wear again. One Portland judge, Betty-Anne Stenmark, is slightly more generous.

“Do the magazines influence some judges? I’m sure they do,” she says. “Do they influence everybody? No. Do I see a dog who looks great in the magazines and think I’d love to judge that dog? Yes.”

Professional handlers and owners say they wouldn’t write the checks if the ads didn’t get results. There are thousands of specials in any given year, and in a realm this competitive, the ads elevate you above the pack, they say. Just by buying them, you announce that you’re playing to win.

WHAT do owners get back for their rather substantial investments in these dogs? Not money, and woe unto the foolish reporter who suggests that money might be a perfectly reasonable reward. (Only indie rockers and physicians are more sensitive to questions about profits.) By every account, a show dog is a sinkhole. Even for a Westminster champ, the stud fee is a few grand. Rufus will die before he makes a dent in the sum spent on him.

Pet food companies like to brag about the number of Westminster group winners who eat their product. But Nike they are not. The best handlers are courted, but with nothing more valuable than the occasional hat, tote bag and coupons for discounted chow. When Uno the beagle won best in show at Westminster two years ago, his owners weren’t paid even when Purina featured him in a full-page USA Today ad.

No, the strange and inescapable truth is that people drop hundreds of thousands of dollars in this realm for one reason: they love dogs. Or, rather, they love a specific breed or dog and they are willing to part with a small fortune proving that their breed or dog is better than yours.

“In this building alone, I can name you three millionaires who don’t breed dogs; they’ve never bred a litter in their life,” says Tracy Tuff, the handler from Canada. “They just like to throw money at people like us to show good dogs.”

The owners come from so many different backgrounds and professions that they are hard to categorize. Mr. Winston, Sloan’s co-owner, is in nuclear medicine, his wife, Ms. Rosio, said. This is their first campaign, and their reasons for competing are very personal.

“It’s like having a child in middle school and you realize that kid can play baseball,” says Ms. Rosio, “and for the next two or three years you do everything you can for the kid to play ball. It’s the same thing. We have four kids and they’re grown now. This is our new baby.”

The role of money doesn’t seem to bother anyone other than the owner-handlers, perhaps because campaigns have been extremely pricey since the ’70s.

David Frei, the public face of the Westminster Dog Show, sounds mostly unbothered by the sums. Well, he is disturbed by rare reports of people mortgaging their homes to show their dogs. And now that so many dogs have multiple owners, he is done trying to read all of their names during the telecast.

“People say to me, ‘Why didn’t you read off the names of all the owners?’ ” he says. “Well, if the dog has six different owners, that’s the only thing I’d get to say about the dog.”

With luck and a stellar performance, Sloan might be a name that Mr. Frei utters when it’s time to announce the winners. She trotted to a rather quick victory over Apollo in Portland, padding around the ring with a champion’s poise, a tiny snowbank on paws.

When the show begins in Madison Square Garden, she’ll have everything she needs to take home top honors: wealthy patrons, an esteemed handler and an expensively won reputation — to put it in dog-fancier terms — as a terrific little bitch.

[SpikesPuppy]

Aren't I glad I'm not trying to show in the USA LOL. Big business there However I'm trying to convince a NY friend of mine (non-doggy) to pop in and chat up some Border people dunno if she'll do it...

[poodlefan]

Glad this comment made it into the article:

No, the strange and inescapable truth is that people drop hundreds of thousands of dollars in this realm for one reason: they love dogs. Or, rather, they love a specific breed or dog and they are willing to part with a small fortune proving that their breed or dog is better than yours.

Thanks for posting it Arawyn - it was a good read!

[whippets]

Glad I don't live in the USA anymore. I wouldn't be rich enough to have a top dog . Australia IS like that but on a smaller scale......much smaller. Instead of paying 100k a year, you'd have to pay 5k

[poodlefan]

I'd love to go watch.

[Sheridan]

So, would I, poodlefan, but have you seen the Westminster rings? It's a wonder the judges can tell how the dog moves. Take a couple of steps with a big dog and you'd be around the ring twice.

[poodlefan]

So, would I, poodlefan, but have you seen the Westminster rings? It's a wonder the judges can tell how the dog moves. Take a couple of steps with a big dog and you'd be around the ring twice.

I'd probably go to Crufts or the World show if I was to choose one - but I'd still love to be at Westminster.. must be a real rush for the exhibitors.

[mona]

Thanks for posting . Would definitely check Westminster out if we were over in NY at that time ...

[Diva]

I'd probably go to Crufts or the World show if I was to choose one - but I'd still love to be at Westminster.. must be a real rush for the exhibitors.

Next year the World Show is in Paris pf. I'm thinking of going again, come along!

[poodlefan]

I'd probably go to Crufts or the World show if I was to choose one - but I'd still love to be at Westminster.. must be a real rush for the exhibitors.

Next year the World Show is in Paris pf. I'm thinking of going again, come along!

Let's talk. Not sure if I can do next year but I think its in Salzburg the year after.

[Diva]

Of course if we went next year we could do the Borzoi international conference in Switzerland as well. You could pretend they were big hairy whippets (well aren't they? )

Edited February 17, 2010 by Diva

[poodlefan]

Of course if we went next year we could do the Borzoi international conference in Switzerland as well. You could pretend they were big hairy whippets (well aren't they? ;) )

I'll consider them as foundation stock for my Silken Windhound breeding program

[Diva]

I forgot you were DeShonko!

[poodlefan]

I forgot you were DeShonko!

I've been challenged to see if I can register Deshonko as an ANKC approved breeder prefix.

Ah.... no.

[Trisven13]

Glad this comment made it into the article:

No, the strange and inescapable truth is that people drop hundreds of thousands of dollars in this realm for one reason: they love dogs. Or, rather, they love a specific breed or dog and they are willing to part with a small fortune proving that their breed or dog is better than yours.

Thanks for posting it Arawyn - it was a good read!

Agree completely. I was reading it and thinking how different it was to Australia in terms of bucks etc and then I read this part and smiled

[lappiemum]

How interesting - thanks for the post I have to say when I first started reading it, I thought 'crazy americans' (sorry to any US DOLers! LOL) but then I read further and started thinking, while the $ pool is far smaller and the professional handler thing isn't anywhere near the US situation, I do some freelance graphic work for a dog related publication and the comments re campaigning and advertising is not too disimilar to what happens here - again, just on a smaller scale.

[whippets]

I forgot you were DeShonko!

I've been challenged to see if I can register Deshonko as an ANKC approved breeder prefix.

Ah.... no.

I want to see a "Crapadoodles R US" for a puppy farmer.