The Beagle Has Landed

...The scene, nationally televised, is now familiar: the Garden fi lled to the rafters with fans, in evening dress clutching high-priced tickets, while ladies and gentlemen parade their dogs, and judges squeeze testicles and fold back ears for close inspection (of the dogs...

...BY PHIL TERZIAN Along with ballroom dancers and Civil War re-enactors, dog show aficionados constitute an interesting subculture in American life...

...Needless to say, certain breeds—particularly of the delicate, long-haired, extravagantly barbered classes—have dominated the proceedings, and with wearisome regularity...

...Beyond that brief description, I am disinclined to go—except, perhaps, to recommend the exceedingly amusing Best in Show (2000), the Christopher Guest “mockumentary” that offers an affectionate glimpse into the rarefied world of purebred breeds, their owners, trainers, judges, and admirers...

...He’s the most perfect beagle I’ve ever seen,” he said at a news conference...

...It’s a genuine tradition: The Westminster show has been held annually since 1877, and “Best in Show” has been awarded to one fortunate purebred each year since 1907...

...Uno bayed more than once as Jones looked him over—a swift disqualifi cation in most instances, but endearing this time...

...The fi rst, and most prosaic, may be that the judge for the fi nal round was J. Donald Jones of Marietta, Ga., a retired Emory psychologist and dog fancier whose elderly demeanor and port-wine southern accent suggested someone who had grown up with hounds, and retained happy memories...

...and when he won, the spectators roared and stood in ovation...

...It is, perhaps, a little unfair, but over the decades the Westminster show has tended to conform to stereotype...

...Uno, who is nothing if not typical, is the lucky benefi - ciary of this great awakening...

...No, the only plausible explanation is the obvious one: After 132 years, the venerable Westminster Kennel Club came to its senses, and recognized the beagle as the extraordinary creature that it is...

...From an anthropological standpoint, past (female) judges had visibly recoiled from hounds—beagles, bassets, harriers, and foxhounds especially—but Dr...

...Once a year, however, and only for an instant, dog shows are news in the larger culture, when New York’s Westminster Kennel Club holds its competition at Madison Square Garden...

...Look at his face, you melt right away...

...Considerably more TV viewers tuned in to Westminster this year, Uno has been making the rounds of the chat shows, the Internet is still pulsing with excitement, and hundreds of rapturous comments are posted on the YouTube.com video of Uno’s triumph...

...This is not to say that Uno’s path to fi nal victory was clear —the last year a hound won Best in Show was 1983—but it did suggest that, in the purebred world as in the Democratic party, change was in the air...

...By now, of course, readers are aware that, on the evening of February 12, Uno prevailed...

...And in the 24 hours between Uno’s emergence and fi nal judging, the story exploded on the wires and cable TV, clogged the web, and generated national interest in the West minster show beyond all experience...

...There are two or three possibilities...

...but it would have required collusion and deception by Dr...

...That is, until last week...

...It’s an interesting theory, and if true, seems to have worked...

...Another, more cynical, reason might be that the Westminster powers-that-be had calculated that yet another maltese or miniature schnauzer or shih tzu was not likely to awaken the slumbering masses, and that some sort of revolutionary gesture —a beagle!—might be necessary...

...On February 11, a fetching 15-inch male beagle from Columbia, S.C., named Uno won the competition within the hound class, and all hell broke loose, for this was the fi rst time a beagle had won in its category since 1939...

...Jones, which seems unthinkable...

...Why...

...On May 30, 2005, describing my years of beagling in the northern Virginia countryside, this author wrote of the “ears fl apping, tails wagging, and singing in the unmistakable baying voice of the hound that is music to a countryman’s ears...

...Against a fi nal field of competitors that included not one, but two specimens of sculpted poodle, the beagle was awarded Best in Show to the evident delight of the audience...

...From Snoopy of Peanuts to LBJ’s White House pack to last year’s sleeper Underdog ($43.7 million box office revenue) beagles—in all their tri-colored, fl opeared, sad-eyed, short-haired, musicallyvoiced glory—are, for one year at least, America’s dog...

...It is no accident that Uno’s recognition triggered a joyful response among his fellow citizens, arising from somewhere deep within the national consciousness...

...There is a preponderance of well-bred, well-fed female owners and trainers, and exquisitely groomed male handlers, and the lucky dogs chosen for Best in Show have had a tendency to resemble the humans surrounding them...

...This is not the fi rst time that the virtues of what Uno’s handler calls the “merry little hound” have been extolled in these pages...

...When the finalists were called upon to prance around the ring, the cheers for Uno were conspicuously louder...

...Jones seemed quite taken with Uno...