ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 5, 1996 TAG: 9608050109
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
At this competition, you could have measured the preparation work in the hundreds of thousands of brushstrokes, if not more.
Combs flew at the New River Valley Kennel Club dog show Sunday. Happiness was a spray from spritzer bottle. By the time it was over, fur balls littered the Salem Civic Center.
The dog owners came from Roanoke, from New England and as far away as California, some dog experts and some not. In their motor homes and minivans, they came with 1,179 dogs, give or take a few.
They unloaded the dogs in crates and cages and touched up days or weeks of grooming begun at home, combing right up until it was time to pose and prance for the judge.
Waiting in the wings, pint-size Chihuahuas chirped from cages, as Irish wolfhounds rested their 150-pound bodies on the cold concrete floor. All the major and minor breeds were represented, 129 in all.
"They look like little statues, almost, little porcelain statues," said Doris Bernsen of Virginia Beach. She was admiring her poodle with its shaved hips and legs and anklets of white hair. The haircut harkens back to days when German waterfowl hunters strategically shaved their poodles for maximum swimming and retrieval ability, she said.
Winners of the event's major categories each received a folding camp stool, storage bag and carrying strap. The top dog's owner received a handpainted basket. Those were the material prizes.
These winners and those who won various lesser honors earned the recognition of peers, competition points toward American Kennel Club honors and a near-celebrity status that goes with achieving success in the dog showing world.
Why, even comedian Bill Cosby reserved a place for a dog that he co-owns. The Lakeland terrier didn't make the event, however. A no-show by a champion dog - Cosby's canine is the highest ranked dog in the nation - usually means the owner's handler begged off based on the strength of the competition to preserve the dog's high accumulated point count, according to Dennis McCoy, a handler who showed the fourth-highest ranked dog.
McCoy wasn't implying his dog scared off Cosby's dog. No, it was some other dog or maybe a sense that a particular judge didn't favor Lakelands, he said. Those strategies are too complex to be guessed at. The show's top honor in fact went to a Welsh corgi from Alexandria.
Cosby wouldn't have shown up. But he does make the biggest dog show in the country, which is held each February by the Westminster Kennel Club in New York City.
Cosby is in a position to put a lot of money behind a dog. "You can spend $25,000 a year," said Nancy Templeman, chairwoman of the show. She doesn't personally know what Cosby spends, but she knows the business. The wealthiest players pay a handler to lead a champion dog from ring to ring, picking up titles.
"We call that campaigning. Just like the politicians are on the road all the time," Templeman said.
Most people who show dogs just love dogs, she said.
They are people like Donald W. Shafer, an architect from Coraopolis, Pa. He and his wife, Charlotte, drove down for Saturday's Roanoke Kennel Club show at the civic center and then Sunday's show, at which their miniature wirehaired dachshund took a ribbon for being the best of its breed. At the next stage of competition, the group, it didn't place against all winning hounds. Seeing this, Shafer tore up his paper armband, threw it in the trash and walked out.
Losing "is part of the dog game," he said, calling himself frustrated even though the nearly 5-year-old pooch is decorated. "You want the moon and you know you're not going to get it, but you keep trying."
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADYStaff. 1. Andrea Ross and her Tibetan spaniel,by CNBJackie Kennedy, practice (above) for the New River Valley Kennel
Club dog show Sunday at the Salem Civic Center. 2. Andrea later
gives Jackie a congratulatory hug (right) after the spaniel wins a
first prize. color.