Linda Stark is even more ebullient. “What makes Carlee stand out is that effervescent quality, a look-at-me charisma,” she says. “She is a dog that comes along once in a lifetime.”

“When the judge points to the winner on that special February evening, the price tag to get there is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.”

Dog owners who are in the show circuit cultivate that very magnetism in their own animals, and dream of the day that they—and their canines—will achieve what the Starks and Carlee now have: top dog status. The costs of this quest will no doubt far exceed any financial reward. Most shows, including Westminster, offer nothing but ribbons and trophies. Yet these proud owners persist, with training, grooming, breeding and a host of strategies that they hope will someday deliver the Best in Show title.

“It is difficult to place a price tag on a dog that is campaigned for Westminster,” says Danny Seymour, president of the American Pointer Club. “For that one dog that wins, you can guarantee that there have been years of hard work and countless dollars behind it. But when the judge points to the winner on that special February evening, the price tag to get there is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.”

When they are measured as investments, in almost every instance purebred canines are well dogs. To begin with, animals intended for the show ring or competitive field trials violate two primary para-meters for any investment: First, emotional attachment to the four-legged assets is virtually certain. Second, and even worse, dogs that routinely win also routinely lose money for their owners.
 
“I don’t think too many people showing at a high level have any intention of making money,” Richard Stark admits. “People spend an awful lot of money to win.”

Dogs are often shown for as many as 48 weekends a year, all over the country. “One hundred thousand dollars is nothing to campaign a dog in the show world,” says Dorothy Macdonald, a widely admired show and field judge from Carmel Valley, Calif.

Such costs often drive breeder-owners who come up with a superstar dog to partner with affluent backers who underwrite the costs necessary to show the animal. Sometimes a dog is syndicated to multiple owners. “In many cases that allows a dog of quality to be seen when [the original owner] wouldn’t be able to afford it,” Macdonald says.

The capital expenditure, however, far outweighs the potential financial rewards, even for part owners. The American Kennel Club (AKC) National event offers the biggest purse on the dog show circuit—a total of $225,000, with Best in Show winning $50,000. Meanwhile, professional handlers command fees of around $7,500 per dog, per show, and dogs are regularly campaigned at dozens of shows. The best ring handlers, such as Beth Sweigart and Michelle Ostermiller, Carlee’s handler at Westminster last year, earn even higher fees.

Owning even a reigning champion bitch like Carlee has very little upside and considerable downside. Breeding, training, veterinary and kenneling costs mount quickly. “People don’t understand the expenses involved,” Richard Stark explains. Judicious breeding can produce highly sought-after puppies, but the process is a slow one if approached cautiously and ethically. Hobby breeder-owners like the Starks might get a litter every two or three years—but six months after her Westminster win, Carlee had yet to be bred. Eventually her puppies might bring $3,000 to $4,000—more than the average purebred puppy, but hardly a windfall. Will Carlee ever provide a return on the Starks’ investment in her? “Oh, no,” Linda Stark laughs. “It’s a good way to spend money.”

VALUE JUDGMENT Even the most exalted canines—those named Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, for example—never return the capital invested to make them a champion. Yet their adoring owners rarely care. The pursuit of top-dog status in the show ring or in field trials is enough for both man and beast.

“No matter how famous your dog is, you are not going to make a living on it,” says Karolynne McAteer, a second-generation Irish setter owner-breeder in Westchester, N.Y.

Born to Be Wild
Even when resigned to losing money, owners can maximize their enjoyment of the sport by specializing in a breed that both fits their interests and provides a worthwhile chance of winning high honors. Carlee is a sporting dog, as defined by the AKC, a category of 28 breeds and varieties of hunting dogs originally bred to find or retrieve upland game birds and wildfowl. Despite their hunting credentials, these bird dogs, often called gun dogs, are among the seminal show dog breeds. When the AKC was founded in 1884, sporting was the original dog classification; all other dogs were categorized as nonsporting.

Today a pointer remains the mascot of the Westminster Kennel Club, the oldest and most prestigious of all American kennel clubs. But what a dog like Carlee may never do in her lifetime is the job she was bred to do—lead a hunter armed with a shotgun into the field. Though Linda Stark says “a sporting dog that can’t hunt is just a pretty face with no substance, a pretty useless dog,” her champion has never been in the field. “Carlee is pretty birdy, but she is so valuable that breeding is more important right now.”

Concern for the preservation of the natural instincts of sporting dogs has led to performance events, including competitions in the field that mimic the hunt under controlled conditions. Hunt tests are entry-level field events, while field trials seek to replicate the actual hunting experience with hunters on horseback and booming shotgun blasts aimed at real birds.

A dog that achieves championship status in both show ring and field is a dual dog, relatively common in breeds such as the Brittany and German shorthaired pointer. But duals are remarkably rare in other breeds. Only 19 Irish setters have achieved dual championships in the history of the breed, and the last golden retriever dual was in the 1970s.

However, McAteer cautions others not to make assumptions because owners focus on show or field with their dogs. “People should not confuse opportunity with ability,” she says. “The show dog rarely hits the trials, and the field dog rarely slips on a show lead, but they should be able to do so.”

That is a conundrum for some purebred owners, McAteer among them. Her Irish setter, Harmony, competed last year as a dog in the field, then went to the national breed championship “in full-body splendor” but with “her coat ripped out in the fields,” she recalls. “Some judges are now more accepting that this dog must have been doing some work, but, nonetheless, they like to see it with its prom gown on.”

Two retriever breeds—Labradors and goldens—remain the AKC’s two most registered breeds. Labradors alone accounted for nearly 147,000 of the 958,000 total AKC registrations in 2004. In contrast, German shorthaired pointers such as Carlee are 20th on the list of most registered breeds—only 12,269 registrations in 2004.

Yet, dog shows—also called conformation shows because they judge how well an animal conforms to its breed’s written standard of perfection—are not popularity contests. Wire fox terriers have won Westminster Best in Show 13 times, Scottish terriers seven times and English springer spaniels five times. Neither a Labrador nor a golden has ever won the Best in Show title.

That may be because these breeds do not have what Frei calls the show-business gene that more independent breeds do. “Terriers and pointers do their own thing, and that’s what makes them excellent in the show ring. They’re looking around thinking, ‘I’m hot stuff,’ while the golden is thinking, ‘What do you want me to do?’ ”

Photograph by AP Photo/Ron Frehm.

Richard J. Pietschmann, a Los Angeles–based author and journalist, is a regular contributor to Worth.

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