Unmoored from Westminster

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342 – June, 2022

By Amy Fernandez

We had an unusual situation here recently, if that’s how you would describe a typical show. More precisely, several specialty shows drifted into town, unmoored from their traditional Westminster ballast. Confusing for sure, but that’s been an ongoing theme since the arrival of COVID.

Just to recap, Westminster 2021 was rescheduled outside of NYC last June. It was a great success. But moving forward, as New York state mandates lifted and shots became routine, the dog show biz slowly regained momentum and predictability. Right on schedule, Westminster announced its 2022 judging slate along with a change of venue and new date, shifting things from February to January. A little different but whether January or February, it’s still midwinter NYC. Then, in December Westminster announced they were again postponing the show. The MSG website, normally a packed roster of events, confirmed that instantly.

Westminster will take place in June at last year’s venue, the Lyndhurst Castle grounds. However, Westminster is a big, clunky truckload of stuff. Canceling the centerpiece of the week triggered a cascade of complications for everything scheduled around it. Needless to say, over the years, it has attracted extra events like a lint brush.

I don’t need to reiterate the excruciating job of show planning. AKC maintains a very strict statute of limitations concerning every aspect of it. Approving judges, show locations, trophies on offer, everything must be corralled and approved months in advance. And of course, each one comes with a price tag, sometimes nonrefundable. Clubs are accustomed to this routine and generally run their show planning like a business, investing their resources carefully with the expectation of recovering them after each successful show.

Click here to read the complete article
342 – June, 2022

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Posted by AnthonyA on Jun 19 2022. 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.