Why the Westminster Dog Show made me appreciate mutts

I SPENT THREE YEARS AMONG DOGS WITH BLOODLINES like British royalty.

- TOMMY TOMLINSON

Great Danes during the 147th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in Queens, N.Y., on May 9, 2023

In our world, they would be earls and duchesses. Their names are in stud books that go back many generations. They are the product of centuries of careful breeding to make them the most perfect versions of themselves.

Eh. I like mutts better.

It’s not that I didn’t like the dogs I met at dog shows around the U.S.—including the most prestigious of them all, the Westminster Dog Show. They were beautiful specimens: athletic, combed to a high sheen, well behaved.

In fact, the dogs on the dog-show circuit—a never-ending tour of big cities and small towns all over America, a rolling caravan that I came to think of as “Dogland”—have to meet brutal guidelines just to step into the ring. Each of the American Kennel Club’s 200 recognized breeds has a written standard that outlines what a prime example of the breed can and cannot be. Some breed standards run thousands of words.