The Metro Specialties See Increased Entries

By Amy Fernandez

The difficult thing about showing dogs is that it demands so much micromanagement. And nothing puts that exhausting fact into HD res more than the dreaded annual pilgrimage to NYC. So far, this year has been a luxury cruise so don’t even think about whining about the cold weather.

My point is that our endless intense focus on perfectionist details makes it easy to overlook the big cogs that keep this delightful week rolling along. Case in point, the Metro Specialties over at our flagship hangout, the good old seedy, quirky Hotel Pennsylvania.

As we know the Penn has hosted dog shows since…jeezzz way back before any of us were trucking crates up Seventh Avenue. And this particular specialty cluster has been coordinating the weekend events since 2011. By now it’s a truly seamless operation,

good enough for us to take this group for granted and focus our bitching on stuff like slow elevators, windows that don’t open, and $10 hand stamps.

Despite those hardships, we seem to like it okay. According to club treasurer Viola Burgos, “Our total entry is up 50 dogs this year, which is good because our rent also went up $5000 this year.” Friday’s Progressive Dog Club and this two-day event, comfortably spread over the eighteenth floor’s Penn Top and Sky Top Ballroom facilities, clocks in for a combined rental rate of $39,000. Burgos admits that it can be a hardship for some of the smaller clubs to absorb their share of the cost.

The tradeoff, of course, is a supremely convenient, surprisingly spacious area of the show featuring a large grooming room and three deluxe size rings with great natural light and ideal sightlines for ringside spectators.

This year’s roster included nine specialties each day, running from early morning to late afternoon. Frenchies, Bostons, Chihuahuas and Cavaliers all drew hefty entries both days. Cresteds and Min Pins, however, were at the other end of the scale with rather dismal specialty turnouts for the weekend.

According to Burgos, it was so far so good. As day two was winding down, everything was running smoothly; the only glitch being the last minute judge replacement when Dr. Anthony DiNardo was a no show. Metro President Dr. John Ioia took over his Boston Terrier assignment and, as always, Metro’s troopers had everything under control.

The Metro Specialties are a wonderful prelude to the crescendo of Westminster.

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