“You’re not going to like this, but this bitch is gonna blow,” said the man, looking downward. 

“You should stand back.”

Man gave names to things he thought were worthy of a story. The bitch below me was Devon, a Nederlandse Kooikerhondje. Later came Surprise, a border collie. Names around here swung from the gladiatorial (“D’Artagnan,” “Phire”), to the canonical and folksy (“Sparkle,” “Fido”), to Christian (“Steven”). Some of these dogs looked like they could pull covered wagons with their teeth. Others seemed easy to ball up with one hand and pitch over a fence. Most were handsomely groomed, well-insured, attempting penetration. But all dogs here, in all their combinatory combinations of rank, file, breed, and name, vesseled someone else’s plot. 

Devon’s master gazed at his dog’s act of lèse-majesté. As the man knelt to daub at the stain, Devon panted blankly into the distance until a schnauzer arrived to check if there was more where that came from. The schnauzer, now gently tailgating Devon’s anus, was part of the unbilled grand ritual—here at the Westminster Dog Show’s 2025 Canine Celebration Day—operating in the main hall of the convention center. By noontime, entire constellations of leashed dogs and their chaperones would collect, widen, contract, and circle one another in rings of ano-urogenital intervention and pleasant trade-talk, then explode and re-form under the hurtling impact of a new cluster seeking another orbit to join. In this brown heat, the masters—subdivided into either “handler” (the salaried dog-paraders), or “owner” (those who held the deeds to the dogs themselves)—approached one another with the same look. It was a cozy, moony sort of radiance, backlit by the pride that their human logic—their compulsions, resistances, days of sacrifice and migraine and prayer—authored whatever was bumbling below them. Look what I’ve written, they seemed to wordlessly say. Or, more broadly, look what I’ve done.  

---

“Now, go on and pee!” 

“Go ahead! Pee!” 

“You can do it! Pee!” 

Two women barked commands to each other from adjacent restroom stalls, laughing hysterically. The rest of us in line to the women’s room in the rear of Manhattan’s Jacob Javits Center trailed into the vast gape of what felt like an animal refuge, where each station marked its own perimeter of wild. Counterclockwise now, starting at the main gate, were the groomers (bending and trimming dogs like bonsai), a pasture titled “Agility” interning a frenzy of animal ballistics (dogs hurdling over hurdles, tunneling into tunnels), and the gilded, forklift-sized statue of the American Kennel Club’s English Pointer mascot, blazoned SENSATION (formerly Don), standing sentry before an eighth of a mile of typical human food (burgers, cake). Savannas of poodles, the mature and cosmopolitan breed, jockeyed for the attention of women and children. Chihuahuas shivered. Pekingeseses pooched out their stomachs. Most furniture wore a sort of eggplant satin sock. But deep inside this biodiverse dazzle—enjoying the same barnyard aroma I was—was the future winner, our Best in Show. 

Far out on the plain, a motel of kennels under a sign reading Obedience Benching served as a quiet haven for naps or lunch. Seated among the snuggery were a man and woman on lightweight camping chairs, both watching Kevin, their pug, address a deli container full of what looked like beef paprikash.

“I can fix you a bowl of that if you want,” said the man. He rose to extend his hand from the pocket of his fishing vest. “John.”

“Jessie,” smiled Jessie beside him. 

John and his wife, John explained, were both Kevin’s handlers and owners, a relative rarity in the field. John was a professional breeder, not unlike his father, who had bred dogs and horses before him, while Jessie—who had never finished her photography degree some thirty years ago—became a convert to the trade after seeing how John’s passion for animal husbandry could gel with her yen for the beautiful. Kevin, who was now nosing a silicone cube, had just won three awards in the Obedience divisions at a show in Arizona.“He’s my teeny tiny hero,” said Jessie. “My hardest worker.” 

Kevin was basically a small brown melon with a huge pair of nuts. Spectacular, velveteen, radiant nuts, suctioned to his groin like a little desert animal. In fact, as John cupped his hands to better illustrate, the meaty joggle of canine genitalia was all around us. Puny, disproportionate, testudinal, hairless—whatever the design, every pair was unornamental. Neutered dogs, according to John and the American Kennel Association, are disallowed to compete in dog shows (or, per official patois, “confirmation events”) like this one, “because the purpose of a dog show is to evaluate breeding stock.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

He was not. This was the whole point of Westminster. No genitalia meant no siredom, no balls meant no miracle of provenance, and any act of sterilization would foreclose any possibility that—just like in aristocracy, or eugenics—greatness could beget greatness only in a highly managed, painstakingly selected marriage of prizewinning egg and seed. 

“They need their equipment,” John nodded. “Now, if you can believe this, I knew a guy who had his dogs fixed with implants in his genitals after he got them neutered.”

John was referring to “Neuticles,” the only patented testicular implant for pets. As its tagline (“It’s Like Nothing Ever Changed”) promises,¹ the brand offers bovine, canine, and feline testicle prostheses, in USA-made rigid and soft polyprophylene, to give “neuter-hesitant pet owners an option when altering their beloved pet.”

“Damn,” I said.

“That’s what I said,” said John, his voice wavering not out of passion but because he was rooting around in his jeans for a granola bar. “He couldn’t stand to see those things go. But I pulled him aside once and I said: look bud, do it if you want to, but this is your vanity at stake. This is your pride happening.”

Jessie jerked to scoop Kevin up and squeeze him to her chest. “I don’t want my balls snipped, Daddy!” she went, ventriloquizing the dog with the same tone of voice most adults use to address infants. She brought Kevin to John’s face and used his paw to softly whap her husband, making Kevin’s scrotum dance. “You’d never hurt me!” she cried. “You wouldn’t!”  

---

First placed on earth as wolves, then domesticated as a sort of gift from mankind, to mankind, the non-dog-show dog is an obvious human benison. Today, they serve a role not unlike children, with all the typical hallmarks of those of our species aged 0–3 (occasional tantrums, eternal neediness, financial toll, effluvia), without the ensuing journey to personhood that eventually pries child and parent apart. A dog will not threaten to go to college in a different state, will not disappoint you by burning your curtains, stealing your liquor, marrying a moron; will not struggle with calculus, home ownership, suicidal ideation. Any dog owner is seeking the companionship of a terminally illiterate and devoted sponge. 

“Yes,” boomed the announcer, watching the lagotto paw at the box. “Notice how dogs will come into odor and change their behavior.” 

Off to the side of the main room, under signage that read Scent Work (or on alternate signage, Nose Work), a headsetted employee was translating the alien arrangement before us. A green turf, bearing one visible dog and one invisible smell—the latter hidden in an aromatic cotton token deep inside an artificial field littered with boxes, ramps, plushies, tubes—held the standing audience in waves of trance or thrall. 

At the blow of a whistle, each dog, one at a time, was let out onto the grounds and on its doggy way, snuffling the grooves and crevices of the obstacle course in the hunt for a swab doused in an herbal essential oil. The dogs moved evenly, steady as magnetic north, until they appealed to their handlers with glances that functioned like code. This dogsperanto—a language of punctuation marks, canine body cues in expressions of “?” or “!”—met human encouragement in a surrealist covenant between trainer and trainee. Woof begat nod, nod begat pursuit. The lagotto came to a halt at a traffic cone. 

“Yes, folks, now what you’re looking at is called ‘fringing.’ Fringing is when a dog is noticing a smell a little too early,” the announcer announced. 

I knelt to knead a spaniel at my ankles. The spaniel—a dog with a ramen-noodley curl pattern, a nice hamster warmth, and a tiny heart about two inches deep inside her, which at this second was appreciably whizzing—let out something like a cough. 

“Her behavior chain is off,” went the announcer. “Let’s see . . . ah, she’s got it. It’s in the box. There it is. Folks, let’s give her a round of applause.” 

The spaniel’s owner shifted above me. “Muffin loves to get pet,” she cooed. She lingered proudly on Muffin before tapping my shoulder and pointing her index finger up at the sky. I looked up, squinting at the ceiling lights. 

“No—up,” she went. “Get up.”

I rose. The owner, bending slowly with her knees, gently lifted her dog and held her out before her like a roast pulled from a low oven rack. 

“I think she smells so fresh,” she said, whiffing Muffin’s coat. “See for yourself. She’s super addictive.” 

Two adult men behind me took photos of Muffin before they asked to join. Together, the three of us locked eyes as we leaned in to inhale the dog in unison. She had the heartbreaking, iron-rich aroma of a child just returned from recess, plus the tang of shampoo.

---

Purina Pro Plan, the official performance dog food brand sponsoring the show, had “fueled 17 out of the last 18 Westminster winners,” though its ambassadors had charmingly little grist for any curious show-goer. What, for instance, was the 18th dog fueled by? 

“I’m actually not sure,” the ambassador said.

“Do dogs have immune systems like ours?” I asked. 

“Yes.”

“Can they be arrested?”

“Yes?”²

“Can we marry them?”

“Are you married?”

“Do you have a dog?” That was the sales representative stationed at the nearby stall for DogTV, the 24/7 television network available for $74.99 a year. 

“Her name is Baby,” I lied. “Dr. Baby.” 

“Get over here,” she smiled. 

Behind the sales associate was a slow silent film playing in synchronized duet on twin 40″ LCD televisions. The camera first tracked mellowly across a terrier staring at a TV. The next scene showed a pair of blonde child actors sharing a bucket of popcorn, now flanking the same terrier on a loveseat. The final shot, panned at the pace of a screensaver, had the terrier seated before an empty bowl, alone. 

“Let’s say you have to leave Baby at home,” she said, frowning. “It’s always sad. What we do here is give Baby something to watch when you’re gone. You can just put this on and have her relax.”

DogTV, developed in 2012 by a writer for the Israeli version of The Amazing Race, has a similar texture to Planet Earth or any animated film engineered to hush a baby: comforting for the pre- or non-verbal, hypnotic when stoned, and nice to stare at for at least some minutes while standing idle in a living room with the remote in your hand.

“The colors are optimized for a dog’s vision,” she explained, sliding a laminated card with a free one-month membership code and a pair of cardboard glasses across the table. One cellophane lens of the glasses was tinted blue, the other lemon. “These aren’t really supposed to show you what a dog sees,” she added, before I could ask. “They’re just for show.” 

Her own poodle, Genevieve—aged 13—was at home with her DogTV on. Genevieve had a bad leg, cataracts, was on the verge of blindness. “She’s my third,” she said. “Third poodle. I gave them all French names.” 

Her previous two had suffered painful, costly, vision-related decrescendos by their tenth years. This loss was notwithstanding the volume of dog trainer fees she’d hemorrhaged across the lives of both, the accrued mountain of preventative heartworm medication she’d snuck into their dry and wet food twice daily, nor the all-sweeping psychological expense that paid for the kingdom of maintenance necessary to her Poodledom. Would she enlist a fourth when the bell tolled for Genevieve? Would she ever consider a less fraught breed, or even get a cross-breed to care for? Could she do a Westiepoo? A Pomapoo? A Labradoodle?

She smiled, shaking her head yes, no, no, no, no. The screen behind her now held a scene of a duck blabbing its way out of a pond. “Why mess with perfection?” she shrugged. 

---

“This is you,” said the usher. 

Before me was a pair of nurses in matching beagle-patterned scrubs, and far further, the whole of Madison Square Garden, converted into a moisture-absorbent lagoon of astroturf. The Toy category of dogs was mid-parade, and here from the altitude, the contenders appeared like puff pastries, petit fours, and dollops of whipped cream, shuttling in an oblong loop on the green. 

THE TOY SPANIEL DOES NOT LIKE HOT WEATHER, read the chyron on the 20-panel television hanging above us. 

Cameras sailed across zip-lines above the arena like toy funiculars. As the second-longest continuously held sporting event in the country, the dog show final was proudly broadcast by FOX, where its presenters were dressed in the channel’s house style: floor-length strapless ballgowns and eyeshadow for the women, bowties for the men. 

“THE ORIGIN OF THE CHIHUAHUA IS STILL A MYSTERY!” boomed the announcer. 

Westminster’s presenters are obligated to hold their final smiles for two or three seconds longer than seems natural, to ensure that the camera never clips a grimace at the wrong second. This smile fermata, paired with the ceaseless discharge of facts and statistics from the baritone announcer, the LCD screens dotting every other row in the budget strata, and the old-school advertising (ointments, joint health supplements, root beer), overflowed the eyes and monsooned the ears. The men before me both wore sets of noise-cancelling air traffic control headphones until one of them unhelmeted to burrow his head in his seatmate’s lap. 

“TRY PET TURF—THE LAND OF YOUR PET’S DREAMS! FIELD TURF’S DRAINAGE SYSTEM ALLOWS LIQUID WASTE, LIKE URINE, TO PASS THROUGH EASILY!” 

Group after group of dogs—taxonomized according to style and historical function of breed—were ferried around the central pasture before being rounded up against their judges. The Working Group, spanning dogs that used to guard property, pull sleds, and perform water rescues (Great Dane, Burmese mountain dog, et al), capered gingerly out onto the field to showboat their gait and ancient features. Few words were spoken out there on the concourse, just smiles, glances, nods of approval. Judges gesticulated to their top selections by blading their hands in the direction of the dog’s faces.

BLACK RUSSIAN TERRIER, read the chyron on Madison Square Garden’s GardenVision video display.Beneath: THEIR ONLY COLOR IS BLACK.

The house was nearly full, and attendance swelled by the hour. We were sucked utterly into the landscape of perfection the breeders had prepared for the judges, and unprepared, a little poignantly, for the vagueness of the competition. It was something called “breed standard”—an encyclopedic and infrequently updated system of metrics that describe a given breed in its supposedly ideal form—that every dog vied for. Size of hindquarters, topquarters, temperament, coat, skull shape—the list is a phrenologist’s paradise. We were dumb to it all. 

“That is one super-foofy samoyed,” said a man to my left. His partner laughed. 

“Foofy,” he repeated. 

“It’s not so much that Sheena can sleep in my bed,” said another woman, rotating her head to speak to the family seated behind her. “It’s that she lets me sleep in hers.” She took out her phone to share her lockscreen: a portrait of a retriever on a pool deck. 

A sudden hush. Chesty XVI, the French bulldog mascot of the US Marine Corps, waddled toward the center of the arena, closely behind a human Marine. The twenty-panel screen filled with the dog’s face.  

CHESTY THE SIXTEENTH EMBODIES THE SPIRIT OF THE US MARINE CORPS, read the chyron. The arena boomed with eight bars of “Yankee Doodle.” 

“That is actually Corporal Chesty,” went the FOX hostess, sidling up to the Marine, who kept his stare focused on a point a few inches above the camera. “He’s tough and stubborn, is that right?” 

The Marine straightened. Chesty, staring dead at the lens, looked like he was trying to explode us with his mind.

“Yes ma’am,” he replied. 

The contest was an easy one, running smoothly and right. Nowhere was the gap between the less perfect dog and the most perfect dog discernible. Those at home with their own dogs—especially the muttish ones with their mixed breeds, their genetic salads—could watch unburdened by the knowledge that the judge for the black Russian terrier was looking for, per standard, a “back skull slightly longer than the muzzle” in “an approximate ratio of 5:4,” or that the “preferred shape of an undocked tail resembles a sickle or saber.” This was no sport. This was no space for human or creaturely standoff—this was an arithmetic competition in the pursuit of human proof. 

Freddie, an English springer spaniel named after the mustached frontman of Queen, detonated a blast of applause when declared winner of the Sporting Group. The FOX announcer plunged her microphone in Freddie’s handler’s face. “You had to beat out thirty-four other dogs. Tell us: what really made this dog stand out tonight?” 

Freddie’s handler’s eyes, irises now up on every screen, clouded with moisture. She nodded briskly and leaned into the mic. “Thank you. Freddie is the dog that I’ve worked my whole life for,” she responded. “I bred him, so he’s the one for me. He’s my once-in-a-lifetime dog.” 

Freddie licked lightly at her feet. Having nothing but gut sensation or animal cunning to feel the formless magic of his success, I admired Freddie. He was as beautiful as a well-tended crop. But to understand what winning meant, how it worked, and whether it was earned, would Freddie have cared? Out of the question. Here to deepen her landscape, change her sense of time, let his vast speechless strangeness commune with her devotion—how could he? What was Freddie but her sacred text? 

“SIR WALTER SCOTT DUBBED THE DEERHOUND ‘A MOST PERFECT CREATURE OF HEAVEN!’”

As the rest of the Sporting Group jogged homeward toward the exit, the video display held Freddie in full. He was as faultless, as ignorant, and about as real—especially now, covering his eyes with his ears—as a poem.

1. Alongside prosthetics, a pair of dangling earrings are available for $129.99 on the Neuticles website, fashioned with .63” Chihuahua-sized Neuticles. ↩

2. No. Dogs are legally designated as property. In 2025, owners are liable in twenty-nine states if their pet causes any harm with hundreds of exceptions and specifications per state law. ↩

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