Westminster 2025: Back Where It Belongs

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274 – March, 2025

By Sarah Montague

There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. “ Even if your breed is not the Cairn Terrier, you will be familiar with The Wizard of Oz, and its heroine Dorothy’s mantra, which transports her from magical Oz to her bed in Kansas.

But this is the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show we’re talking about, which means that home is both magical, and familiar. “We’re home.” That’s what was on everyone’s lips during Westminster week. At parties, at ringside, and everywhere in between, the sense of having regained a past, and the promise of a future, was strong.

It wasn’t until I began to interview people during the pandemic that I realized how symbolic the Garden, in particular, was. I am a sedate person and tend to avoid events that involve large groups of people screaming. I do not attend rock concerts, football games, revivalist meetings, or political rallies. But the minute the Garden’s behemoth sound system began to blare its combination of documentary, institutional message, and pop tunes; the minute I heard the announcer Michael Lafave reminding us that Westminster is the second oldest sporting event in America, the minute the dogs entering the ring (“May we have the Herding Group please…”) began to elicit wild cheers and whoops and whistles from the crowd in the bleachers, I knew I was, well—home.

We might borrow from another classic—Sleeping Beauty. The enchantment that traps her has also put a kingdom to sleep; and even before the show began, it felt like our particular kingdom was coming back to life. There were parties again, among them a Friday night reception in honor of Gayle Bontecou, a breeder, AKC registered judge, and key supporter of some of the Museum’s most important acquisitions. The museum’s curator Alan Fausel noted, “As the museum’s longest serving board member, Gayle has played a prominent role in shaping its collection and direction.”

An interesting side note I heard about at the reception was that the Museum has also started a sort of oral history project by interviewing handlers in the benching area and putting that content as well as information about the collection and forthcoming exhibits on the arts and culture app, Bloomberg Connects.

But even as the Museum’s gracious reception was underway, I could hear the murmurs about the next stop (“Are you going to the Poodle Party?). “The Poodle Party” was co-hosted by Karen LeFrak, Ellen Charles, Patricia Hearst-Shaw and Missy Galloway–all breeders and owners of top winning show dogs.

Three Judges

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274 – March, 2025

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Posted by AnthonyA on Mar 25 2025. 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.