The show is spread out over 2 days, so Nick got tickets for the second night, where they judge 3 breeds and then pick the best in show to cap off the event. Being 11 weeks away, we thought that would give our Mom plenty of time to make arrangements for a trip down to NY, seeing as she doesn't work anymore and that she has a rather light schedule these days.
Unfortunately, Mom wasn't feeling that well come February 14th, so Nick and I were stuck with these two tickets he had purchased way back in December. We thought she'd make the drive down, but she cancelled the trip the night before. We didn't have enough time to post them on craigslist or sell them, and nobody we knew was free and/or interested in going to a dog show on Valentine's Day night. Not wanting to eat the tickets entirely, I called 5 or so people to no avail and decided just to go on my own. I love dogs, too, but it turned out to be a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be.
After work, I walked 2 blocks south to the Garden, and I saw all these owners and handlers walking around with their dogs outside- all the nearby hotels were booked solid with owners, handlers, and canines. I stood outside for a few minutes, wondering if there was any way I could scalp my second, unused ticket, but I had no luck. There were a few creepy-looking scalpers roaming around, but they didn't seem to be that successful, so I gave up quickly andf went inside.
The cool thing about going to this show is you don't just find your seat, sit down, and watch the judging. The Garden's open all day long while each Best of Breed competition is going on, and they let everyone walk back into the doggy clubhouse where the dogs nap in their crates, where the handlers groom them relentlessly, and audience members can schmooze with the owners and find out how to buy a dog just like that one in the show. It was literally like walking into a live version
of 'Best In Show.' I bumped into every character from that movie 10 times over.
It felt like a giant sociology petrie dish in this "benching area." Owners actually sitting inside the crates with their dogs while reading a paperback novel to kill time (there's a LOT of waiting around), loads of gay men, blow dryer and brush in hand, quibbling over how to comb their dogs hair, and loads of midwestern women in the 40-55 age range, some dog owners, some paid guests like myself.
These dogs were treated better than most people. Every dog had their own personal fan attached to their crate.
At one point I found myself in a sea of 15 borzois surrounding me at every angle. I know they're just dogs, but those big fellas with their long, horse-like faces give me the willies, especially seeing so many at once.
I know it was a dog show, but for me it turned into more of a perverse people-watching show, the unintentional comedy scale being upended and broken again and again.
Once I found my seat inside the arena at 8pm, the show began and I was treated to more wacko characters sitting in front of me and behind me. When the golden retriever won best of group (man, middle america sure does love golden retrievers, pugs, and german shephards. I mean, how mainstream can they get? This golden retriever could have had one eye and two legs and this crowd would have fainted with praise over it.) A woman and mother of 2 in front of me started crying with joy and her two kids jumped up and down like it was Christmas morning. She had a girl and a boy, and the boy was 11 or 12, just on the cusp of puberty. In a year or two he'll be listening to Puddle of Mudd, contemplating drugs and obsessing over girls, but for tonight he's jumping up and down with his mother and younger sister, yelling in a hihg-pitched voice bound to start breaking any day. Were they the owners? No, they just had a golden retiever at home and liked them. It's like watching a passionate crowd root for their favorite team at a football game, except here they're all cheering on supremely-groomed canines.
Most annoying of all throughout the night was this middle-aged woman sitting directly behind me with her daughter. She was either the owner of or had something to do with the Australian cattle dog in the competition. She didn't stop yapping about how great this dog "Rebel" was the entire night, and she was talking to anyone around her that would listen, directlyu into my ear. The coup de grace was when she referred to the dog as her grandson and then broke into a tale about her great-grandson. This was, at most, a 45 year old woman. Some confused elderly woman with a southern twang sitting a few seats away to he right was puzzled. "Now, are you talking about a person or are you talking about the dog?" because we were all a little confused. Ultimately we could have cared less, but we were confused nevertheless. Of course, she stopped her yapping when old Rebel didn't place in the hearding group. She actually started crying foul and saying the judges were too
narrow-minded, that one day Australia would get its due, and that the olde english sheep dog winning was so blah and 5 years ago. This woman also brought along her 5-year-old daughter with her, and that back-and-forth dialogue, as exasperating as it was, was pretty funny. In my head I kept thinking, "This is great stuff! I should be writing it all down!"
As the hound group competetion was about to begin, some nerdy, heavy-set guy way up in the back screamed out for the entire Garden to hear, "Release The Hounds!!!" and it got a huge laugh. I laughed, too, but for all the wrong reasons. I think there were some high-fives shared afterwards between the screamer and his circle of hound-lovin' compatriots.
The crowd was ready to tear the roof off for that retriever in the finals, but the colored bull terrier (not a particularly attractive dog, but I'll admit he was very steady and poised) ended up taking home the crown.
I know Best In Show already did a great job lampooning this subculture, but this was a treasure trove for untapped unintentional humor, and I was only there for a mere 5 hours. You really have to see it and experience it to believe it. As cynical as I may come across in this recap, I ended up enjoying myself and having a much better time than I had originally anticipated, even though I was there solo.
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