Pets

Delightful Days For Dog Lovers

Posted: 5/3/2010

Ch. Roundtown Mercedes of Maryscot ("Sadie"), a Scottish Terrier, won Best In Show at the 2010 Westminster Kennel Club.

Photo by Mary Bloom / Westminster Kennel Club

(NAPSI)-New dogs, it seems, can be up to old tricks.

If it's beginning to feel like The Westminster Kennel Club All Breed Dog Show has been with you your entire life, and unless you are older than 134 years of age, it has.

The show has survived power outages, snowstorms, a national depression, two World Wars and a tugboat strike that threatened to shut down the city. In the process, Westminster has become "America's Dog Show" as well as the second-longest continuously held sporting event in the country. Only the Kentucky Derby has been staged longer-but by just one year.

Then

In the early Westminster years, some interesting names showed up in the catalogs. In the first show, there were two Deerhounds that had been bred by the Queen of England. In 1889, the Czar of Russia was listed as the breeder of a Siberian Wolfhound entered and the following year, one of the entries is a Russian Wolfhound whose listed owner was the Emperor of Germany.

Philanthropist J.P. Morgan made the first of his many appearances at Westminster with his Collies in 1893. Famous American journalist Nelly Bly entered her Maltese at Westminster in 1894.

The most-coveted award in the dog show world, Best In Show at Westminster, was given for the first time in 1907. That year, and for the next two years as well, it went to a Smooth Fox Terrier named Warren Remedy. She remains the only dog ever to win three times.

Now

In 2010, the show had to compete against both the Winter Olympics and Fashion Week in New York City, yet it was entirely sold out at Madison Square Garden for the fifth year in a row.

Sponsored by Pedigree, the two-day show exhibits 2,500 dogs in seven categories: Sporting, Hound, Working, Terrier, Toy, Nonsporting and Herding.

The 2010 winner, a 4-year-old Scottish Terrier named Roundtown Mercedes Of Maryscot-or Sadie, for short-became the eighth Scottie to win Best in Show at Westminister-more than any breed other than the Wire Fox Terrier (13). The 134th Best in Show winner was raised in Michigan's landmarked Grand Hotel. Sadie's been on the dog show circuit for two years now and won top Terrier at Westminster last year. Sadie's next stop is a trip to California, where she'll live with her trainer's family and be bred, but she'll return home to Michigan to have her puppies.

Learn More

You can follow Sadie's life during her reigning year, and all the Club's canine activities all year long on Twitter at www.twitter. com/Wkcdogs, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/WKC DogShow, on Buzz at www.west minsterkennelclub.org/buzz and on the club's own Web site, www.westminsterkennelclub.org. Plans are already under way for the 135th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, to be held once again at Madison Square Garden on February 14−15, 2011.

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