The air was heavy with sweat and dog as suited men shoved back a mob of camera-wielding canine enthusiasts to make room for a wedding ceremony. "Get back! Get back, dammit!" A curious woman stood on a table meant for her Rottweilers, sipping a cup of beer, to get a better look. "Hey, get offa there, now!" a security officer barked. "They'd better be buying drinks for everyone," she grumbled. In a few seconds, the wedding would be over. "I got a number one dog, a number one girl: life is good," groom Brad Slayton said, avoiding the pens of sawdust and dog poop to share a glass of champagne with his new wife.
Watching the Westminster Dog Show from home, one gets the impression of a stuffy, prim, and highly choreographed affair: a sea of green becomes the tranquil canvas on which sprightly (but not too sprightly) dogs trot. This is the reality on the floor, but the "benching area," where the dogs and their owners mingle with a glut of dog gawkers, is equal parts chaos and pungency.
Picture Penn Station on December 23, and replace half of the weary commuters with the best-bred dogs in the world. Move too fast through the crowd and you are sure to step on someone's tail. Each dog has a fan in their face to combat the oppressive heat, and some are happy to let passersby pet and shower them with praise. Others sit afraid in their kennels, overwhelmed by the crushing masses of humanity and dogdom (a word we heard used several times).
Does your fluffy, adorable investment need to pee? In the ultimate example of "dogs doing people things," a long queue forms in front of several stables that are filled with sawdust and mulch. Handlers chat while their dogs sniff one another before heading in to the pens to take care of business.
We didn't witness any outlandish Best in Show behavior, but there is no question that the dogs are treated like progeny. An angry shoving match broke out between two men when one accused the other of bumping into his dog's cage. Nevermind that both dogs were protected in their respective cages, this was rage usually reserved for a kids' T-ball game: "He hurt my fucking dog!"
When Debbie Parsons and Brad Slayton were married amidst the chaos of the benching area, Slayton's Tibetan Mastiff sat in between the two as they kissed. "I didn't know this was going on until about seven days ago," Slayton told us inbetween slugs of champagne in MSG's stark, grey press room. Why get married in the benching area? Why not on the pristine green floor? "Well, we did the best we could with the time we had. Besides, that's where we met five years ago." Slayton's dog, Major, won Best in Breed that day, which struck us as awfully perfect.
"Brad! Brad! Over here!" Two guys and two girls, claiming to be with New York Magazine, had snuck into MSG's press room and were ingratiating themselves with the groom. "It's a Valentine's Day adventure," artist Jeanette Hayes said, explaining why they chose Westminster and not, say, anywhere else. "We were under the impression that these people were marrying the dog," her friend Matt Sukkar deadpanned. Westminster: New York City's hottest destination for ironic transgressions.
Moments before the final judging began (and a Pekingese would be controversially crowned) a man in a tuxedo herded the press into a corner of the auditorium. Asked how he was holding up after a manic two days of living and breathing dogs, he shook his head and replied, "My drugs have kicked in and I'm ready to go."
