Call it the bowl of dogs. Westminster Show canrees get their Super Bowl weekend piece

New York (AP) – They are at the top of their sport. They run, weave and go in the air. And they did everything for the championship this weekend.

Sorry – No, they are not the chiefs or the eagles. These are agility dogs at Westminster Kennel Club Showwhich started on Saturday by presenting agility and other dog sports.

Dogs often call Westminster the Super Bowl of dog exhibitions, and the comparison could be particularly appropriate this year. The most prestigious canine competition in the United States opened the same weekend as professional football Super bowlpresent The Chiefs of Kansas City and the Eagles of Philadelphia Sunday. The rare coincidence comes after the dates of the two competitions have moved in recent years.

“I always said that I wanted people to call the Super Bowl” The Westminster of Football “, joked the dog expert David Frei, who has a foot in both worlds: he worked in advertising for the Broncos de Denver and the 49ers of San Francisco.

The Westminster of Football? Well, Westminster is 90 years older than the Super Bowl, after all.

And there were other links between the Gril and the Westminster Green Carpet. Los Angeles Loaders End Defensive Morgan Fox co -owner a French bulldog who came to a SMUSHY nose length of winning to Westminster in 2022 and was A finalist the following year. (Many other NFL players also have dogs for fun, if not for the show, including The quarter of Kansas City Patrick Mahomes.)

Whatever the analogy, being in Westminster was a triumph for Guster the Rescue Pug. He and the owner Steve Martin took the agility after Guster started stirring his tail and tilting his head while watching the Westminster agility competition on television several years ago.

“We never thought we would be here. And now we are here, “said Martin, Austin, Texas on Saturday.

A Border Collie named Vanish won the competition, which included around 300 canines at the champions level.

“She is very intuitive, very natural – probably more intelligent than me,” said Emily Klarman mastery of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to a Fox interviewer in the ring. While Klarman said that the victory had initially left his speechless, Vanish had a lot to say, barking with enthusiasm.

A special prize for the best competitor of the mixed breed went to Gable, managed by Kayla Feeney from Lima, New York.

Westminster Added agility in 2014marking the first of the show event with mixed dogs Since the 1800s. Last year has seen The first winner of mixed breed agilityA Border Collie-Papillon mixture named Nimble, who has participated again this year.

It is an intentional mixture of two higher agility breeds. But sport also attracts rescue dogs such as a mixture of Australian checks named Sawyer or soy sauce for short.

Its owner, Dr. Amy Ondeyka, has a complicated work schedule as an emergency doctor in New Jersey and EMS medical director. But she took time for agility after realizing that she had adopted a super energetic dog that opens cupboards, decompressible things and causes domestic chaos differently when it is bored.

“He is still exciting – he does ridiculous things,” said Ondeyka while he was jumping intermittently in his arms during what was ostensibly downtime between agility races. “We have fun, no matter what’s going on.”

While some dogs make agility to burn energy, sport helps others get out of their shell. Tully, a tagged mixture, shaggy, mainly Labradoodle, was once “afraid of the world”, but is now delighted to go to lessons and agility competitions, said owner Carla Rash.

Saturday competitors were a spectrum of Dogdom, from a large dune to a 7 -pound butterfly (0.9 kilogramg), and they included less known breeds like a large munsterlander and A Danish-Swedish farm.

They sailed jumps, tunnels, ramps and other obstacles while the managers gave signals of hands and voices. The object is to be the fastest, without making mistakes.

Regardless of the scores, some dogs have won an acclamations of spectators. There was a frize bichon with its complexion blue, a standard poodle that took a quiet trot on a frame ramp, and a curly mixture that apparently had a second thought on the weaving posts, bypassed and again.

The traditional judgment of Westminster, breed by race takes place on Monday and Tuesday, crowned by the price of the coveted show prize on Tuesday evening.

It is for pure breed only, but dogs with a mixed breed were also eligible for the obedience competition on Saturday, an event that Westminster Added in 2016. The first prize went to Willie, an Australian shepherd who also won in 2022 with the manager Kathleen Keller in Flemington, New Jersey.

Steve Wesler sported a Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt as he applauded the partner Jennifer Weinik and Cookie, his Belgian Malinois. They left with a ribbon, which Wesler considered more exciting than the Super Bowl – because he was convinced that the Eagles would prevail.

There is no cash price in Westminster, but the winners of agility and obedience can each direct a donation of $ 5,000 to a training club or to the American Kennel Club Humane Fund.

The show also presented the first demonstration of Westminster from Flyball, a canine relay race that involves recovering a ball.

“It’s a lot of organized chaos,” said Hillary Brown after competing with his Boston Terrier, Paxil. His teammates in a team based in York, in Pennsylvania called Clean Break, were a standard poodle, a border collie and a mixture of Collie Whippet-Trontraire.

“It’s an explosion. Dogs love it, “said Brown.

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This story corrects that the dog named Cookie has won a ribbon, not the overall price, in obedience.