The Dog Show

I was watching the Eukanuba Dog Show on Animal Planet last night and all I can say about dogs is this: they are ridiculous. Wonderfully so. Their enthusiasm knows no bounds. They are so KEEN on everything. Bright eyes, wagging tails; attentive and earnest. Ridiculous.

Dog handlers, of course, are ridiculous in their own right – and it is here, with the handlers, where The Watching Of Dog Shows becomes truly entertaining. Handlers are usually completely inappropriately dressed (and don’t even get me started on the judges in this regard) for the task at hand – running with their dogs to show off the breed’s best gait. (Which invariably isn’t the handlers’ best gait.) It’s very hard to watch the dog when you have some heavyweight dowager in gold brocade and sensible shoes trying to run next to him. Very hard. There is entirely too much stuff bouncing up and down. And these are people who have devoted their lives to an individual dog that they train with, and groom, and fuss over. So how do they manage to misjudge how tall the dog is and hold the lead up so high that the poor dog, trying so hard to do his best, is forced to run with his head and neck cocked at an odd angle? And what do handlers have in their mouths that they keep passing on to their dogs in tiny bits? Yuck. Between that and the business with having to constantly hold up the dog’s tail, Handler isn’t a job I think I’d want. (Besides, I don’t own any gold brocade and wouldn’t know where to get any.)

The Best in Show judge is also fun to watch – and has to have the easiest job. There is obviously NO criteria by which a logical or informed decision can be made. So the job must be to simply stay upright long enough to go through the paces with each dog/handler and then point randomly at 4 of them at the end. It is all a matter of appearing to judge, since there is no real basis for judging the best dog of 7 or 8 completely different breeds. Just listen to the explanation that the announcer is trying to give of the process if you don’t think this is true. And watch the judge’s expression, of course.

Great entertainment.