NEW YORK (AP) — They’re on the prime of their sport. They run, weave and go airborne. They usually’re going all out to win the championship this weekend.
Sorry – no, they’re not the Chiefs or the Eagles. They’re the agility canine on the Westminster Kennel Membership present, which started Saturday by showcasing numerous canine sports activities.
Canine people usually name Westminster the Super Bowl of canine reveals, and the comparability is likely to be particularly becoming this yr. The USA’ 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 at all times stated I needed folks to name the Super Bowl ‘the Westminster of soccer,’ ” quipped canine skilled 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? Nicely, Westminster is 90 years older than the Super Bowl, in spite of everything.
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 successful at Westminster in 2022 and was a finalist the next yr. (Many different NFL gamers even have canine for enjoyable, if not for present, together with Kansas Metropolis quarterback Patrick Mahomes.)
Nonetheless you wish 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 by no means thought we’d be right here. And now we’re right 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 all dogdom’s hottest sports activities. Westminster added it in 2014, marking the primary time any a part of the occasion had allowed mixed-breed canine because the 1800s. Final yr noticed the primary mixed-breed agility winner, a border collie-papillion combine named, appropriately, Nimble, who’s competing once more this yr.
She’s an intentional mix of two breeds that do effectively within the sport. However it additionally attracts rescue canine equivalent to 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 at all times thrilling – he does ridiculous issues,” she stated as he intermittently leaped into her arms throughout what was ostensibly down time between agility runs Saturday. “We’ve got enjoyable, regardless what occurs.”
Whereas some canine do agility to burn off power, 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 fantastic Dane 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 thing is to be the 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’s for purebreds solely, however mixed-breed canine additionally have been eligible for Saturday’s obedience competitors, an occasion that Westminster added in 2016. This yr’s win went to a Belgian Malinois named Cookie, dealt with by Jennifer Weinik of Pipersville, Pennsylvania.
So which was extra thrilling: the Super Bowl or Westminster?
“Seeing you win first place,” stated her Eagles-sweatshirt-wearing associate, Steve Wesler. “Since I do know we’re going to get first place.”
The canine present additionally featured Westminster’s first demonstration of flyball, a canine relay race. Canines run down a line of jumps, seize a tennis ball and pace again to the beginning line, the place a teammate then takes off.
“It’s loads of organized chaos,” Hillary Brown stated with a chuckle after competing along with her Boston terrier, Paxil, and his teammates: a typical poodle, a border collie and a whippet-border collie combine. Their squad, Clear Break, is predicated in York, Pennsylvania.
“It’s a blast. The canine adore it,” Brown stated.
