Westminster Dog Show: Beagle advances, will it win?

A beagle named Miss P is our favorite in Tuesday night's Westminster Dog Show. She would only be the second beagle to win 'Best in Show' at the pooch pageant.

|
Mary Altaffer/AP
Miss P, a beagle, is shown in the rink during the hound competition at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, Monday, at Madison Square Garden in New York. Miss P won best hound.

Hound lovers, it’s true – a beagle is still in the running to win "Best in Show" at the famed Westminster Dog Show.

Miss P, a 15-inch beagle out of a kennel in British Columbia, Canada, took the Hound Group honors on Monday. She’ll compete with a shih tzu, a standard poodle, and an English sheepdog named Swagger, among other dogs, for top honors on Tuesday night.

Miss P, whose registered name is “Tashtins Lookin For Trouble,” triumphed over another crowd favorite, Nathan the bloodhound, to grab group honors. Sorry Nathan. Maybe one of the judges had bad childhood memories about McGruff the Crime Dog.

She’s the descendent of beagle royalty, as she’s the grandniece of Uno, the first and so far only beagle to ever win Westminster. Didn’t know there is such a thing as beagle royalty? Don’t worry, they don’t either – after Uno's 2008 triumph my own two beagles celebrated by snoring a bit louder from their perches on top of the back of the sofa.

Informed of Miss P’s win on Tuesday morning, these house beagles responded by not pausing a millisecond while devouring breakfast. At the moment they are back on those sofa cushions, sleeping off the excitement.

Uno’s win stands as a beacon, not just for beaglekind, but for normal dogs in general. Westminster seems dominated by breeds bred for show, not for petting. No Labrador has ever won – maybe they try too hard. Dalmatian, ditto. Chihuahuas are perhaps too small for the judges to see. Dachshunds are too busy looking for a bigger dog to try and bully. They’ve never won either.

Last year’s winner was a wire-haired fox terrier, which is a normal sort of dog – if you live in a 1930s detective movie. Before that it was an affenpinscher, which you won’t spot at the neighborhood play park.

Actually, the historical breed records for wins are pretty interesting. The real story seems to be that a relatively small number of breeds dominate Westminster’s Best in Show award. Of 192 breeds entered this year, only 47 have ever won. So Labradors, et al., are not alone.

Yet the wire-haired fox terrier has won an astonishing 14 times. (Lots of those were a long time ago, to be fair.) The Scottish terrier has won eight times. The English springer spaniel has won six.

On the other end of the spectrum, 25 breeds have only won once. A pug won in 1981, for instance. (His full name was “Dhandys Favorite Woodchuck,” one of our all-time favorites.)

A whippet has one win. So does a clumber spaniel. And a beagle.

Maybe Miss P will make it two.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Westminster Dog Show: Beagle advances, will it win?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2015/0217/Westminster-Dog-Show-Beagle-advances-will-it-win
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe