Old Trainer: The comedy and pure lunacy of dog shows

Dear Old Trainer: Isn’t it time for another column on dog shows? My fraternity brothers and I think they are the funniest columns around.

Carter, Palo Alto, Ca

Old Trainer: Thanks, but why do I get the feeling you smart college boys are trying to get me in trouble?

Dear Old Trainer: Your columns on dog shows are having a real effect. This year the Westminster show added agility competition. Keep up the good work.

Erin, Henderson, Nevada

Old Trainer: Yes, the dog show folks are on the run. They resisted change for years, and when they finally added the agility contest it blew up in their faces.

It reminded the public of how magnificent dogs are when allowed to be dogs, and how dated the idea of self-appointed “judges” awarding trophies to each other based on goofball “breed standards” is when compared to reality. The more seriously they take themselves the more comedy they provide.

Comedian and director Christopher Guest lampooned them in his comedy, “Best of Show.” Now the public laughs every time they watch a dog show because it’s impossible to tell the difference between the comedy and the dog show. As Guest said afterwards, “it’s not easy to make a parody of something that is already a parody.”

Steve Martin has a segment in his concerts where he goes to a pet store to buy a Poodle and insists, “the length of body measured horizontally from the breastbone to the point of the rump must equal the perpendicular distance from the highest point of the shoulders to the ground...” He doesn’t have to write comedy material, he just reads from the AKC Breed Standards for a Poodle.

Jimmy Kimmel has a recurring segment called, “Dog Shows Without the Dogs” where they digitally alter the video to show the humans doing their famed run-with-arms- straight-at-their-sides without the dogs.

Google the title and I guarantee you will laugh at the lunacy.

And a dog show is pure lunacy. A bunch of people groom their dogs all day, then go into a ring and sit around a while, then walk around the ring one time, and then the Bull Goose Loony — thank you Ken Kesey — says, this is the best dog, even though I never petted it, walked with it, or touched it, except to make sure the horizontal equals the perpendicular.

No one except the dog show types take it seriously and dogs are so noble the public watches just to see them steal the show.

But there is a darker side, and that’s the reason it’s time for the people who currently control the dog show business to move on.

This story was originally published March 29, 2020 at 5:00 AM.