NEW YORK (AP) — They’re on the prime of their sport. They run, weave and go airborne They usually’re going all out win the championship this weekend.
Sorry — no, they don’t seem to be the Chiefs or the Eagles. They’re the agility canines on the Westminster Kennel Membership present, which started Saturday by showcasing varied canine sports activities.
Canine folks usually 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 Tremendous Bowl, which options the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. The uncommon coincidence comes after each competitions’ dates shifted lately.
“I always said I wanted people to call the Super Bowl ‘the Westminster of football,’ ” quipped canine professional 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? Properly, 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 finish Morgan Fox co-owns a French bulldog who got here inside a smushy-nose size of profitable at Westminster in 2022 and was a finalist the next 12 months. (Many different NFL gamers even have canines for enjoyable, if not for present, together with Kansas Metropolis quarterback Patrick Mahomes.)
Nonetheless you need to analogize it, being at Westminster is a triumph for Guster the rescue pug. Proprietor Steve Martin by no means did the game earlier than Guster signaled he was : He 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 never thought we’d be here. And now we’re here,” Martin, of Austin, Texas, stated as they readied to compete Saturday.
Saturday’s contest featured about 350 hopefuls that have already got reached a championship stage in agility, one in every of dogdom’s hottest sports activities. It was added in 2014 to the Westminster present, marking the primary time any a part of the occasion had allowed mixed-breed canines for the reason that 1800s. Final 12 months noticed the primary mixed-breed agility winner, a border collie-papillion combine named, appropriately, Nimble, who’s competing once more this 12 months.
She’s an intentional mix of two breeds that do properly within the sport. But it surely additionally attracts rescue canines reminiscent of an Australian cattle canine combine named Sawyer, or Soy Sauce for brief.
His proprietor, Dr. Amy Ondeyka, has a sophisticated 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’s always exciting — he does ridiculous things,” she stated as he intermittently leaped into her arms throughout what was ostensibly down time between agility runs Saturday. “We have fun, regardless what happens.”
Whereas some canines are steered to 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’s excited to go to agility courses and competitions, proprietor Carla Rash stated.
Saturday’s canine opponents have been a spectrum of dogdom, from a statuesque tough collie to a seven-pound (0.9 kg) papillion. They navigated an impediment course of jumps, tunnels, ramps and different options as handlers gave hand and voice alerts. The item is to be quickest, with out making errors.
The agility winner will emerge from a remaining spherical Saturday night.
Westminster’s conventional, breed-by-breed judging occurs Monday and Tuesday, capped by the coveted greatest in present prize Tuesday evening. That is for purebreds solely, however mixed-breed canines additionally may enter Saturday’s obedience competitors, an occasion that Westminster added in 2016.
Saturday’s occasions additionally featured varied demonstrations, amongst them Westminster’s first go at flyball, a canine relay race. Canines 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’s a lot of organized chaos,” Hillary Brown stated with a chuckle after competing along with her Boston terrier, Paxil, and his teammates: an ordinary poodle, a border collie and a whippet-border collie combine. Their squad, Clear Break, relies in York, Pennsylvania.
“It’s a blast. The dogs love it,” Brown stated.
