Westminster Kennel Club dog show
Tennis, or terriers? US Open’s home hosts famed dog show
By JENNIFER PELTZMay 7, 2023
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A handler and her dog walk past a photo of Billie Jean King on their way to compete in the agility preliminaries at the Arthur Ashe stadium during the 147th Westminster Kennel Club Dog show, Saturday, May 6, 2023, at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
NEW YORK (AP) — They’re at the top of their sport. They’re primed to run down tennis balls. So perhaps it’s perfectly natural that about 3,000 top-flight canines are converging on the grounds of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, where the Westminster Kennel Club dog show began Saturday.
It’s a new venue for the nearly 150-year-old event, now back in New York City after a two-year, pandemic-induced sojourn in the suburbs.
As the show began Saturday with an agility competition and other events, there were a few double-takes, if not double-faults.
Barks, not the pock of tennis balls, were heard across the sunny, 40-acre (16-hectare) grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Westminster’s traditional green carpet had been rolled out in Arthur Ashe Stadium for fleet-footed — but four-footed — competitors.
Bradie, a corgi, competes in the dock dive competition during the 147th Westminster Kennel Club Dog show. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Dogs relaxed in their crates on a tented practice court. The fan-friendly South Plaza was set up with a 27,000-gallon (102,200-liter) pool for a canine dock-diving demonstration. Turn in any direction, and a dog of some sort was likely to pass by.
“It’s kind of weird to see them out and about at a place where you don’t usually see dogs,” spectator Haili Menard said as she watched in the dock diving to pick up pointers for her Dalmatian back at home in Bristol, Connecticut. Menard had been to the U.S. Open but never to the Westminster show.
“The sport of it is highlighted” by the environs, she said.
Meanwhile, Fletcher the Malinois took the plunge.
“We’re never going to get to Westminster any other way,” laughed owner Jenine Wech of Schellsburg, Pa. When not doing dock diving or other sports, Fletcher works as a bedbug-detection dog.
Stella competed in agility in 2021 but was back Saturday as dock diving, her favorite blow-off-steam sport, got a toe in the Westminster water.
A handler and his dog compete in the agility preliminaries inside Arthur Ashe stadium during the 147th Westminster Kennel Club Dog show. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
“The experience is so neat, to get to come with your dog ... and to even just show a healthy bulldog,” said owner Lucy Hayes of Dayton, Ohio, who taught Stella to swim years ago (she dives in a life jacket for safety).
For most of its history, Westminster was held in Manhattan, where generations of best in show dogs were anointed at Madison Square Garden. In order to hold the event outdoors during the COVID-19 crisis, organizers moved it to the grounds of an estate in suburban Tarrytown, New York, for the last two years.
The club sought to return to New York City, while assessing factors including construction plans at a Manhattan pier building that formerly hosted part of the show. The tennis center emerged as an alternative.
Besides hosting one of tennis’s Grand Slam tournaments, the facility in Queens has been trying to position itself in recent years as a flexible, festive event venue. It has welcomed wrestling, video gaming and BIG3 3-on-3 basketball competitions and embraced letting dogs have their day.
“From the biggest stars in tennis to the biggest stars in the canine world,” said Chris Studley, the facility’s senior director for event services. Westminster President Donald Sturz was equally upbeat about the prospect of “an iconic dog show event in an iconic venue.”
To be sure, Manhattan offered a certain allure to some participants who travel from around the country. But the spacious tennis center allows for holding all the events in one place, adding new ones and giving dogs and people more elbow room.
While dogs aren’t usually the main attraction at the tennis center, there are plenty of players known for bringing their pooches on tour.
Ken McKenna, of Boston, Mass., shows his bulldogs in the Breed Showcase area during the 147th Westminster Kennel Club Dog show. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Serena Williams had a pooch courtside in Arthur Ashe Stadium when she practiced ahead of last year’s U.S. Open, her final event before retirement. Her older sister, Venus, also has been spotted with a dog at tournaments. Bianca Andreescu’s pet, Coco, is often found with Andreescu’s mother in the stands during matches. Alexander Zverev adopted a dog while in Miami ahead of the Miami Open a few years ago.
Some vendors had tennis balls on hand Saturday, but dogs like Leslie Wilk’s had other activities on their minds. The border collie-Staffordshire bull terrier mix rocketed through the agility course as if determined to live up to her name, Champion.
“Every time she steps up to the line,” said Wilk, of Camarillo, California, “she just gives it her best.”
Look at it that way, and the human and canine athletes of the tennis center aren’t so different.
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AP Tennis Writer Howard Fendrich contributed from Washington. New York-based Associated Press journalist Jennifer Peltz has covered the Westminster dog show since 2013.
Across town from show dogs, a labor to save suffering ones
By JENNIFER PELTZMay 7, 2023
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Melanie, one of the dogs being cared for at the ASPCA adoption center, sits behind a treat hole in her kennel at the ASPCA, Friday, April 21, 2023, on the Upper West Side neighborhood of New York. While the Westminster Kennel Club crowns the cream of the canine elite on one of tennis' most storied courts next week, another 19th-century institution across town will be tending to dogs that have had far more troubled lives. New York is home to both the United States' most prestigious dog show and its oldest humane society, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Their histories entwine: Some proceeds from the very first Westminster dog show, in 1877, helped the young ASPCA build its first dog and cat shelter years later. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent afternoon at a Manhattan animal hospital and adoption center, a pit bull mix called T-Bone, rescued after being tied to a utility pole, gazed out at visitors from his tidy room. Trigger was recuperating from a stab wound, a large incision still visible on his side.
Pert little Melanie had been abandoned at one of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ community veterinary clinics. Tip’s owner had been overwhelmed by six dogs and four cats. Friendly, retriever-like Rainbow, surrendered by someone who could not care for him, snoozed in the adoption office.
While the Westminster Kennel Club crowns the cream of the canine elite on one of tennis’ most storied courts this week, the ASPCA’s facility across town will be tending to dogs that have had far darker lives.
New York is home to both the United States’ most prestigious dog show and its oldest humane society, the ASPCA. Their histories connect: Some proceeds from the inaugural Westminster show, in 1877, helped the young ASPCA build its first shelter years later.
Westminster, being held 10 miles (16 km) east, feels like worlds away.
“We have different priorities, different visions,” said ASPCA President Matt Bershadker. “The dog shows are focused on breed and composition and movement. And we’re focused on the heart and the inside.”
Westminster stresses that it aims “to create a better world for all dogs,” and the club donates thousands of dollars a year to individual breeds’ rescue groups and to pet-friendly domestic violence shelters. Still, the show draws protests every year from animal-rights activists who argue that spotlighting prized purebreds leaves shelter pets in the shadows.
Bershadker, for his part, says ASPCA leaders “don’t have a problem with purebreds, but we want them to be responsibly bred.”
At the adoption center, there’s little reference to breed or might-be breed. Instead, staffers try to characterize dogs by, well, characteristics.
During a recent visit, Sauce (“great on a leash,” in adoption center leader Joel Lopez’s description) was paired with Gordon (“likes hot dogs!”) in the airy, windowed training room.
The two young adult males with gut-twisting histories — Sauce had been stabbed, Gordon starved — were there to learn to play and be around other dogs in a city of shared spaces. They sniffed each other and ran around on leashes, with occasional interventions from staffers when the interactions began to intensify.
Elsewhere in the Upper East Side building, a terrace gives a taste of the outdoors to dogs that may seldom have been there. There’s even a mock living room where volunteers can bring animals to get used to just hanging out at home.
“Regardless of where these animals are coming from, these are great pets. They just need a little bit of help to just get them over the hump and get them into the rest of their life,” Lopez said.
That help is part of a $390 million-a-year organization that responds to disasters and large-scale animal cruelty cases nationwide. Its wide-ranging work includes a Miami vet clinic, an Oklahoma City horse adoption initiative, a Los Angeles-area spaying and neutering service, a behavioral rehab facility in North Carolina, and more.
Established in 1866, the ASPCA is familiar to many Americans from its fundraising ads featuring woebegone animals, particularly a 2007 spot that featured singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan and ran for years. The charity spent over $56 million on advertising and promotion alone in 2021, the last year for which its tax returns are publicly available.
Bershadker says the organization affects hundreds of thousands of animals annually, and its marketing communications form “an essential part of the ASPCA’s lifesaving work” by increasing public awareness and action.
On another end of the dog-rescue spectrum, the all-volunteer Havanese Rescue Inc. takes in an average of about 30 Havanese each year and finds new homes for many within two to four weeks, according to group leaders.
Getting $5,000 from the Westminster Kennel Club this year is “huge” to a group with a $60,000-a-year budget and dogs that have come in needing $10,000 surgeries, President Jennifer Jablonski said.
Westminster also is giving $5,000 apiece to the Newfoundland Club of America, which has a rescue arm that found new homes for 67 Newfs last year, and to Lagotto Romagnolo Dog Rescue.
At the ASPCA, the New York animal hospital alone treats 9,000 to 10,000 patients a year. In late April, there were at least 50 animals apiece in the adoption and recovery centers and about 100 or more in foster care, with kitten season looming.
There are numerous animal shelters and rescue groups in New York City, and the ASPCA isn’t the go-to place for stray and lost dogs and cats. (The city largely directs such inquiries to Animal Care Centers, another nonprofit group.)
The ASPCA’s charges often come through its work with police, but also from clinics, a food bank partnership and other efforts to connect with people struggling to support their pets because of financial, health or other problems.
While the group helps police to build criminal cases, that’s not the only outcome.
One small dog in the recovery area in late April was to be reunited with its owner. What had seemed like abandonment turned out to be a pet-sitting foul-up, but the owner also needed help with some veterinary issues, said Kris Lindsay, who oversees the recovery center.
“This,” she said, “is one of the cases that we like.”
This one, too: Rainbow has a new home — with a Connecticut man who had adopted dogs before.
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New York-based Associated Press journalist Jennifer Peltz has covered the Westminster dog show since 2013.
