A year ago I moved to South Carolina. The first thing I noticed was that every other car had a large decal of an orange paw print on the rear window. I was in heaven—I had, or so I thought, moved to a town of dog lovers. It took a few weeks for a native to clue me in that it was not a dog-paw print but a tiger foot, the symbol of nearby Clemson University. I was crushed. I am still looking to move to the utopian dog land.
Until I find my dream town, I can sit back in my recliner with my two canine pals on my lap and read a charming new book called Dogland, an ode to the dog-show circuit as well as an homage to the awesome wonder of plain old dogs, or, as the author rightly calls them, “dawgs.”
To me there is no better story than that of a “know-nothing” tiptoeing into the closed world of a subculture. Such a fish-out-of-water tale is at the heart of Tommy Tomlinson’s book. As an unabashed innocent who likes dogs (but owns a cat), Tomlinson decides to spend a year following the dog-show circuit.
If this sounds like a fun way to spend your leisure time, now imagine following a cross-country tour of Cirque du Soleil combined with Navy SEAL tactical maneuvers. The dog-show circuit is exhausting and expensive, filled with covert rules, ancient traditions, alleged conspiracies, and flaunted attitudes. At the end of a show (big or small) there is but one Best in Show winner, and the losers (handlers, owners, breeders) are likely to be pissed off, broke, and wondering why they bothered. That is, until the next day and the next show in the next town, when the fever for the fancy starts again.
For those of you who have seen the faux documentary Best in Show (2000), this peek behind the scenes will be familiar, but Dogland adds fresh insights and curious, delightful trivia scattered throughout. Breaking up the chapters are lists in which we learn that A Friend in Need, the kitsch masterpiece of the “Dogs Playing Poker” series, is the No. 1 most popular canine painting, and, to no one’s surprise, that Charlie Brown’s Snoopy is the all-time favorite cartoon dog.
The world of dog shows is indeed a rich and often overwhelming banquet. I have owned many dogs, shown a few (with no great success), and written a book about my own experience on the show circuit following a bullmastiff whose owner was hungry for the big blue ribbon and gleaming silver cup. Reading someone else’s experience in this strange world is fascinating and refreshing. The writer does all the grunt work, and the reader just goes along for the ride.
The main character of Tomlinson’s book is a giant white Samoyed named Striker, from Toronto. “Striker” is what dog-show people refer to as his “call name,” as in “Striker, do you want a treat?” His “show name” is MBIS MBISS CAN CGH AM GR CHP Vanderbilt ’N Printemps Lucky Strike. The alphabet soup at the beginning of his name is shorthand for all the championships and titles he has won.
As Dogland progresses, we understand why Striker is such a formidable creature. Tomlinson is wonderful at portraying this dog’s appeal, spending enough time on the splendor of the dog’s white coat to make it appear almost supernatural, as if Striker could be dropped into a coal mine and light it up like Times Square.
Tomlinson is also adept at explaining the finesse it takes for a handler to situate the dog to its best advantage in the ring. As in any beauty contest, some contestants just stack up better than others. We are reminded that it is a feat for dogs to hold a pose and not look around, bark, or poop. If you have ever tried to get a six-year-old child to stay still and smile for the camera, imagine the near impossibility of getting an evolved wolf to do this.
If I have any qualms about this book, it would be a certain forced ignorance that I have seen in other popular southern writers as well. While some (such as Florence King) use their native geography to both applaud and destroy, others seem willfully claustrophobic and small-town. Dogland occasionally wanders into this morass.
In the first few pages, Tomlinson declares the Westminster Dog Show in New York (where much of his book takes place) to be “the most famous and important dog show in the world … [with] more than three thousand dogs [appearing].” In fact, the most famous and important dog show in the world is not Westminster but Crufts, held each March in Birmingham, England.
This year, Westminster has 3,000 top-notch dogs entered, while Crufts, which took place in March, had 18,000 canines representing all 200 purebred breeds. Crufts, which debuted in 1891 under the auspices of the dog-loving Queen Victoria, is today a sprawling four-day event, covering acres of indoor show rings and arenas. To ignore it is like being a passenger on the deck of the Queen Mary 2 and looking fondly at a yacht in the distance.
Despite being puzzlingly ethnocentric, Dogland remains a star-spangled tribute to the enduring magic of dogs.
Jane Stern has written more than 40 books on food and dogs, has won five James Beard Awards, and is a prolific magazine writer. She had a movie made about her life, Ambulance Girl, starring Kathy Bates