Still Winners: What Happens After Westminster?

by Sarah Montague

Being crowned Best in Show at Westminster is usually the pinnacle of a show dog’s career.  It’s like winning an Oscar.  You are an instant celebrity, and everyone wants a piece of you.   You and your exhausted but exalted entourage make the round of morning talk shows; open the Stock Market on Wall Street; dine at Sardi’s.  But after the Oscars, actors just go on to their next roles.  What happens to their canine counterparts, many of whom are still quite young when they leave the limelight?    As it turns out, they’re still winners.

An Old Soul

“He was definitely a dog who needed to be shared,” says Terry Patton of her late Springer Spaniel James, (Ch. Felicity’s Diamond Jim) who won at Westminster in 2007.  She calls him “an old soul,” who could be “exquisitely charming,” but who, most importantly, was a natural healer.  “He just instinctively knew who needed to be cared for,” she says.  Patton believes in a gradual start for her show dogs, so James had already worked as a therapy dog before starting his conformation career at three and a half.  And this was the life he returned to after winning Best in Show, visiting at hospitals and nursing homes.  “It wasn’t just the show ring he excelled in; it was being with a group of people who needed his tlc.” say Patton.

“Best therapy dog I ever saw working,” comments David Frei, whose program Angel on a Leash arranges visits for therapy dogs to New York’s Ronald McDonald House.  There, says Patton, James’ calmness and tranquility drew out children who had experienced a day of painful cancer treatments.    Patton cherishes her Westminster win, but says that James’ most important legacy (he died in 2011) was his therapy work.  Happily, she reports, many of his descendants seem to have inherited his gentle ways and his gift of giving.

Glamour Girl

No one looks to Oscar winners to start having children immediately after they leave the podium, but another important role for winning dogs is passing on their DNA.  Last year’s Westminster winner, wire-haired fox terrier Sky, (GCh. AfterAll Painting the Sky) recently had her first litter of puppies.

Co-owner Torie Steele still remembers the post-show whirlwind, and how much Sky thrived on it.  She says Sky is a good mother, but misses the glitz and glamour.  “She’s like a little prima donna that needs the attention; when she’s not getting the attention, she sort of mopes around and pouts.  I think it’s been a little bit sad for her.  Even though she wanted to be with her puppies, she just very much wanted to have the attention; and the second anyone would come over to be around the puppies, she would go ‘no, you don’t want the puppies, you want me’.”

Sky will be spending some of her retirement with another of her co-owners, Mary Olund, and Steele says that there’s been talk of her being trained for therapy work.  “I think she’d make a great therapy dog, because she loves people. I think it would be very sad if she just ends up sitting on somebody’s couch.”

Most Happy Fella

“There are quite a few dogs who like the pace of going all the time,” comments David Fitzpatrick, who handled the 2012 winner, Pekinese Palacegarden Malachy, to his Best in Show win.  Malachy, however, isn’t one of them.  “Even though he enjoyed the dog shows he’s really content to stay home; he likes running around in the yard, keeping an eye on all the other dogs; I don’t think he really misses it.”

Fitzpatrick keeps his former champion at home with his other up- and-coming show dogs, where he’s “like the king and everybody keeps in line because he’s in charge obviously.  You know he’s not an aggressive dog, but the other dogs certainly pay him a good deal of respect.”

Malachy, too, has been kept busy passing on his good qualities to several new generations.  Fitzpatrick is pleased to see that his champion’s good looks are showing up in his children and grandchildren: “the compact body, wonderful tail set, beautiful head on a short neck.”   But “most of all he seems to throw that marvelous temperament; you know, they have no fear, they are just very confident, very wise little dogs.”

A Reluctant Champion

“She couldn’t wait to get out of the limelight,” says Cecilia Dove of her Scottish Deerhound Hickory, (Ch Foxcliffe Hickory Wind).  Hickory floated off with Best in Show in 2011, but visibly shrank from the media scrum that followed, and was happy to return home to the Blue Hill Mountains of Virginia.  “Their favorite thing is being home with their companions,” says Dove.  “Deerhounds really enjoy being in family groups.”

Hickory, now nine, enjoys a brisk walk every day, with fifteen other dogs for company, including some of her own children and the family lurchers.   And she hasn’t forgotten her origins; on a recent walk, she spotted some deer (her usual treat is squirrels) and she was so excited that Dove had to put a collar on her.  “At her age!” laughs Dove.

Hickory is still a local celebrity.  She’s served as Grand Marshall of the town parade, and recently attended a book signing for Troubleshooting Your Dog, for which she’s one of the cover models.  She still gets regular massage and acupuncture treatments to help the aging process.

Hickory may be retired, and retiring—she was a stay-at-home mom to two litters—but she still has a strong sense of entitlement, says Dove.  “She demands to be petted for at least an hour every evening.”

All the owners agreed that what made their dogs’ Westminster wins so important was that it was shared with other people—family, and friends, and the general public who embraced them—and that in retirement, they are still giving joy to their communities, large or small.

And dogs don’t measure time the way we do.   So for these former winners, their fifteen seconds of fame (in Andy Warhol’s famous phrase) is just part of a continuum.  They are a legacy unto themselves.

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Posted by chesliepickett on Feb 14 2015. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.