I spent a couple of evenings this week watching the annual American Kennel Club dog show in New York, Westminster, on television. Here are a couple of delightful but also very real books about what goes on in the dog show world:

My main response to the Westminster Dog Show was an admiration for all the well-trained dogs there. They are all socialized to the point where they can be around countless other dogs and people. They are all groomed to within an inch of their lives, of course, and there is a lot of training in that.

Then there’s the matter of presentation. How do they relate to the handler and how does the handler relate to them? In many cases, especially with the more professional handlers, this was very smooth and took its natural place in showing off the way the dog looked when running or whatever.

Do the dogs enjoy it? I am sure that most of the successful ones love the attention and the playful and learning aspects of it all. More than once, when a dog won its group, it was bouncing around happily. The dog who was Best in Show, obviously enjoyed it a lot.

I’ve never taken part in dog shows and don’t expect to start now. When my husband Kelly and I bred llamas, I learned to my surprise that I wasn’t very good at seeing subtleties of conformation… Kelly was way better. So the whole idea that a judge can compare a dog to a mental picture of what the breed should look like is as much beyond my skills as is playing the piano. (Chopsticks, anyone?) And then the people who judge the groups and the best in show competition have to compare each dog to its own breed standard, and quickly too!

But the training that every one of the dogs there must have received is noteworthy. I have no idea how many of the contestants were taught using positive dog training methods, but whatever the percentage, I do expect it to increase over time. Positive methods work, but so do traditional ones. Positive methods yield dogs who have more joy about them, and that gives them just a little more at dog shows, where a little edge can matter a lot. We catch Westminster most years on television, right around Valentine’s Day. Well worth watching!