Westminster – Paradise Revisited

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108 – September, 2022

By Sarah Montague

There’s a great song by Jerome Kern (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics) in the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie Swing Time, which has the refrain “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.” In the movie, the subjects are dancing—and in love. But the verse serves well to describe the grace and pluck of the Westminster Kennel Club. Plans were already in motion to return the 2022 show to Madison Square Garden, after its forced, if elegant, exile to the Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown in 2021. Then, the Co-Vid Omicron variant surfaced, and the Club, guided by its aptly named Show Chair David Helming, picked itself up and prepared for a return to Lyndhurst.

I had the pleasure of profiling Helming for this magazine [June 2022] and had an opportunity to visit the estate during the preparatory stages for the show. So it was with a more knowing eye that I took in this year’s event.

As might be imagined, it was an easier time in several respects: the Club, Lyndhurst staff, and competitors knew what to expect, and thankfully, the threat of Co-Vid had receded sufficiently to dispense with vaccination or testing requirements.

The complete show was scheduled over four days, with the Masters Agility Championship on Saturday June 18th, Masters Obedience and breed judging for the Hound and Herding breeds on Monday the 20th, judging for Toy, Terrier, and Non-Sporting breeds, and Hound, Herding, Toy and Non-Sporting groups on Tuesday, and Sporting and Working breeds and groups, Terrier group and Best in Show, on Wednesday.

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108 – September, 2022

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Posted by AnthonyA on Aug 10 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.