DOG SHOW!!!!

I just finished watching the 135th Westminster Dog Show. It was fucking awesome!

Really, it was, and not just because of the dogs. It's the people who are involved in this elitist activity that are worth the price of admission. The crowd includes some of the whitest people on the planet with lots of money, roman numerals after their name, and the common usage of a last name for their first name.

The dog owners are a breed unto themselves. They spend a gazillion dollars a year training and primping these animals and give them names that should require that the owners be put to death at the hands of a hungry pack of crossbred pit bulls who have been trained to dislike white folks.

Now, for a real treat, focus on the dog handlers. The owners do not ever walk their dogs in the ring. They have professional dog handlers. The female handlers, almost to a handler, are chubby (I'm being kind), horribly dressed, plain, or even ugly women who don't look good in clothes - no matter how expensive the clothes might be. The real fun begins when the judge tells them to run the dogs. To watch these lovelies run is not a very pretty sight.

The male dog handlers are also mostly grossly overweight and get laid only when they pay big money to a pro of another kind. Some of these guys make the appraisers on Antique Roadshow look like members of the Packers. There was one guy who was handling some kind of lap dog - the lap dogs paw was straighter than the guys wrist. Hey, they are who they are and any kind of love is a beautiful thing. I'm not making any value judgments - I'm just telling it like it is.

Then there are the judges - a group of prima donnas who are treated like rock stars by the crowds to the point where they get standing ovations. You can't even imagine Dana DeMuth getting a standing O at the Bank but at the Garden tonight, the Best Of Show Judge Paolo Dondini was given an intro like he was a Roman Consul. They gave the guy the spotlight thing and read his credentials like Michael Buffer would read the record of a champion heavyweight. Dondini, a silver-haired gentleman with a wife half his age strutted to the center of the ring and bowed to the crowd as if he was a great tenor. The first time he saw the final 7 dogs was when they were brought in to the ring by their handlers.

For the Best Of Show Round, the winners of the 7 groups entered like a sports team would at an all-star game. You know, "playing 1B for the National League, Ryan Howard" - followed by Howard running to the NL baseline. Here, the dogs are introduced the same way and they enter one at a time under both a spotlight and an ovation.

The whole event is produced like a sports event. There are two anchors, a ring announcer, and a sizzling hot sideline reporter - so we can say that the dog people have their Pam Oliver. The anchors do a play-by-play of each dog being judged, and one acted like he was John Madden. This blue-blooded asshole had cutesy stories about the dogs and knew more than any man should know about lap dogs. After the Best of Show was awarded, they even had interviews with the winning handler (like they did last week with Mike McCarthy) and the owner - a real prune-faced wasp who loves animals and probably hates people.

There were some really cool dogs at the show. Some of my favorites were the Chinese Shar Pei, the Bull Terrier, the Boxer, and the St. Bernard. They all live better than many people I know. America, what a country [editor's note - in Soviet Russia, dog walks you blah blah blah].

I howled when the Scottish Terrier was described as having a strong sense of fair play. Huh? Excuse me, but it's a dog. It may be a very expensive dog, but it is a fucking dog and dogs don't know a thing about fair play. If they did, they would not only realize that the only fair thing to do for the people who feed it would be to open the door, walk itself, and use the scooper and plastic bag the way you have to. That would be fair. The real scary thing to me is that the announcer who said it seemed to believe it. A dog with a sense of fair play - give me a break.

The Best of Show Winner was a Scottish Deerhound. They come out of the beagle group even though they are big enough to allow a child to ride them. They are mostly grey with a lean muscular frame and, when standing on their hind legs, can reach 6 feet. They are truly magnificent dogs. There is a lady who lives near Cobbs Creek Park who owns and walks three of them twice a day. She is a slightly older white woman and one of the few who never ran away when black families moved in. She lives in the house she grew up in on Spruce St and uses the park and the Rec Center ballfields to exercise her dogs. Everybody knows that the dogs are very protective of the woman and they will give you a snarl if you get too close. Nothing is more clarifying than having those dogs snarl at you - it kind of makes your life flash before you. Hell, I've seen the meanest Pit Bulls cower behind their owner's leg when they see the three deerhounds who get their name from being bred to chase, catch, and kill deer.