“It takes all your time, all your money, everything you got. If you’re lucky you might win enough money to get across the George Washington Bridge.” — Owner of a Chow Chow, in the benching area at Westminster, 2010

The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, held every February, is and has always been the most famous and important dog show in America. It is a vast and overwhelming two-day affair that brings nearly 3,000 dogs and exponentially more breeders, owners, handlers, salespeople, psychics, dog masseuses, and hairstylists to New York City, where they take over Madison Square Garden for two days while living on take-out and chablis across Seventh Avenue at the Hotel Pennsylvania.

The 1700-room Pennsylvania, a slightly dowdy grande dame that is the city’s fourth largest hotel, transforms itself for the occasion into the world’s most dog friendly hotel, complete with “his and her relieving areas” — the boys’ room is the one with plastic fire hydrants, in case you are confused — the world’s largest “doggie spa,” and a makeshift “Paw Mall” of vendors hawking treats, leads, combs and dog-imprinted gear. The Pennsylvania’s PR machine loves to promote all of this, celebrating the “five paw service” overseen by doggie concierge Jerry Grymek, who spends 11 months concocting puns that he wields liberally in person and in press releases. Jerry is fully to blame for all the quotation marks in this section.

The ostensible purpose of Westminster, according to the Kennel Club’s by-laws, is “to increase the interest in dogs, and thus improve the breeds, and to hold an Annual Dog Show in the city of New York.” All of those things remain true. It’s the one time each year that cab drivers will talk about dog shows, and will be able to explain the origins of the Norwegian Buhund between conspiracy rants, thanks to live coverage on the USA Network. The show has been on TV since 1948, but has really become a cultural touchstone since it began airing in primetime on USA, where it is one of that channel’s most watched specials. In 2009, David Frei, the club’s director of communications and the voice of Westminster to millions of Americans — he’s the droll one who explains the derivations of the Buhund — celebrated his 20th year on the air, or as the official press release called it: “140 years (oops, that’s dog years).”

TV is one reason Westminster is such a big deal. The other is that it is a champions-only show and an invitational; the top 5 American dogs in each breed are automatically eligible to compete. The remaining entries are accepted via lottery and only finished champions are eligible to enter.

The nation’s top dogs begin to arrive on the Friday before the traditional Monday start and by mid-day there are stacks of crates teetering on the sidewalk outside the Pennsylvania. Inside, bemused Europeans in orange clogs and unseasonably short pants snap pictures and ogle the various breeds wandering the lobby.

Placards advertise the Skybark VIP Pooch Event in the Sky-top lobby (VIP, by the way, stands for “Very Important Pooches”). As noted, these and other puns are the work of Jerry Grymek, a thin Canadian with a small silver loop on his upper ear.

Jerry, whose hotel badge actually reads “Doggie Concierge,” said that 460 dogs were scheduled to arrive, with another 360 due the following day, most during the 1pm to 3pm dog check-in. In total, he was expecting between 800 and 1000 to experience “our five paw” service. Three of the last four Best in Show winners, he was pleased to report, stayed at the Pennsylvania.

Jerry’s tasks include managing the vendors, acting as liaison between owners and the hotel, and generally facilitating dog comfort, which often means handing out special cookies that bulge from his pants pockets like nuts in the cheek of a squirrel. Though it’s not something he advertises, Jerry will occasionally fulfill more unusual requests for returning customers. “We don’t have room service but sometimes a guest I know really needs something for an upset dog,” he said. “I’ve gotten meatballs with extra sauce, pizza slices, and cheeseburgers hold the onions.”

No dog is too big for the Pennsylvania — “We took a bull mastiff that was 220 pounds” — but handlers who bring multiple dogs will be asked to book more than one room.

"You see that bloodhound,” he said, pointing across the lobby to a dog waiting its turn on a stage where David Frei was running a satellite media tour for local TV affiliates. “That dog” — whose name, I later learned, is Harvey— “is a contender for the record of world’s longest ears. His late grandfather, who recently passed, currently holds the title.”

Jerry led me down some stairs and into the Paw Mall (which, frankly, could use another pass by the pun committee), where we had just missed Annie Germani, the pet communicator, currently out to lunch. Jerry pointed out the “his and hers canine loo,” (that’s Canadian for bathroom) as well as the rather luxe display by the DogPedic memory foam mattress company, which sells beds in 3 sizes, and which can be purchased in two payments of $19.99, plus shipping and handling. If I come back in a day, Jerry said, I could meet Montel Williams, DogPedic’s celebrity endorser, and one of a surprisingly large and fervent community of famous dog show enthusiasts.

“We call this Dog-tors corner,” Jerry said, and I must have looked confused because he clarified. “Like doctors. Only dog-tors.”

He meant that this would be your therapeutic zone, which included Annie Germani, as well as masseuse Debbie Zimmerman, a graduate of the Ojai School of Massage and a specialist in animal massage, preventative sports massage, Vet Orthop Manipulation (VOM), as well as obedience and agility training, behavior training, and crystal healing. Debbie charges $1-per-minute and said that typical massages range from 20 minutes of sport work in the case of dogs prepping for agility competitions to a more comprehensive 30 to 40 minute rubdown for the conformation dogs that is meant to help them loosen up.

“I remind people that they need to stretch their dogs,” Debbie said. Over the course of the weekend, she estimated she’d do 85 massages and that she could easily do more “but I don’t have enough hands.” Because like humans (including this one), not every dog finds massage all that relaxing, Debbie also wields “Chill Out” aromatherapy spray, a pleasant mist that includes essence of lavender and chamomile.

“It helps calm them down,” Debbie said, and as if I had just stepped into a commercial-in-progress, a woman lingering nearby interjected: “It really works.”

I wasn’t sure what if any of this stuff Jack would use — though, certainly the Chill Out spray is worth a test — but I could imagine Kimberly might want to use the roomy bathing tubs, if not the whirlpool. He would definitely enjoy the Jog-A-Dog treadmills, which like all products targeting this market, come in three sizes. An older golden retriever with wisps of gray in his face was plodding along effortlessly on the largest size, looking as if he could do this for days.

How long have you been doing this? I asked Jerry.

“For a dog’s age,” he answered. “Easily 7 years.”

Obviously, a single show can’t occupy his entire year.

“360 days a year I’m in public relations,” he clarified. “Five days a year it’s pooch relations.”

I must have had the look of someone who’d just been bludgeoned by one too much clichés because he smirked and said, “I have so many more.”

How many?

“How much time you got?” he said. “You know how I write them down?”

He reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a pencil with a rubber dog head for an eraser.

***

If you have ever been to Madison Square Garden for a basketball game, circus or concert, you would likely not recognize it during the two days of Westminster. The arena’s floor has been covered in green carpeting, on which six show rings have been roped off, all of them surrounded by the throngs of spectators who invade each other’s personal space for eight hours of Best of Breed competitions, commencing at 8am sharp.

But that’s just part of the experience. Westminster is one of the last surviving bench shows, and thus all of the dogs showing on a particular day must be benched — on display — with their breeds, from open to close, so that the 15,000-plus spectators in attendance for the day session can cycle through, stare at, photograph and, with permission, pet them. Not that people always ask for permission; it’s pretty common to witness a dog owner scolding someone’s child for reaching out and petting a dog’s face. This seems mean, and certainly people could be nicer about it, but the owners are (mostly) looking out for the child’s well-being. Dogs are often tense with strangers and if you don’t give them a chance to sniff some part of you first, to gain their trust, they might snap at an unfamiliar thing thrust into their face, especially when this takes place in a hot, crowded tunnel jam-packed full of humans and canines. Bench shows are very popular with crowds, but owners tend to hate them. Whereas once they were common, today there are only six benched shows a year.

Professionals like Heather and Kevin get a bit of a break. One section of the labyrinth under the Garden is set aside for multi-breed handlers, so that they can have all of their dogs in one location and not have to scramble through the crowds to retrieve dogs when it comes time to get them ready for the ring.

Heather’s day started with Shumba, a shy Rhodesian Ridgeback who practically cowered on the grooming table. This being Westminster, Heather was dressed a bit more formally than usual, in a sparkly ivory blazer with intentional crinkles in the fabric, a black skirt and a pair of nice but sensible black Geox shoes.

Rhodesians were the second largest entry in the field, after Aussies, and 43 of these long, lean tannish-red dogs with the raised hair along their spines (that’s the “ridgeback”) were crammed into the ring for a first pass by Dr Richard Meen, a solidly built man with slick gray hair and a bow tie who looked like an Oxford economist or the guy who’d play the stern Dean of Students in a Hollywood movie about fraternities.

The rule of thumb is that a judge takes two minutes per dog over the course of a particular show, so 75 minutes had been allotted for the Rhodies, from 8:30 to 9:45.

Shumba looked much less nervous in the ring and got the competition off to a good start for Team Bremmer. Meens chose a male, then pointed to Shumba as Best of Opposite, giving her a coveted second place in breed at the country’s biggest dog show. At Westminster, second (or third, or fourth) is not a disappointment; on the contrary, it is a career accomplishment for most dogs.

Jack, meanwhile, had some time to kill. To save money, he and Kimberly had been staying at the Affinia, another nearby hotel that welcomes dogs, where they were sharing a room with two friends from Pennsylvania and their Pyrenees Shepherd, as well as a junior handler who sometimes worked with them. It was a crowded house. The Affinia also hadn’t embraced its four-legged guests with quite the élan that the Pennsylvania had — and with no Jerry of its own, how could it? Most notable, there were no sawdust-lined his-and-her canine loos, and Kimberly said that by the time she checked in at 3pm, the patch of rooftop Astroturf set aside for dogs “already reeked of pee.”

Instead, she walked Jack a few blocks to the Pennsylvania to use the potty. Jack, like many dogs, preferred a soft, “natural” surface to the concrete of Manhattan’s streets and sidewalks. They went back again the morning of the show both to use the facilities and to get him on the Jog-A-Dog. This served two purposes. One, it allowed him to burn off some nervous energy and also to have some fun — Jack loves treadmills. Two, it helped speed up his digestion. “You really want them to have a b.m. before a show,” Kimberly explained. (As opposed to during a show.) “He’s had some issues,” she said, then was quick to add: “They all do.” She’d learned that one way to avoid the issue was to get him running shortly before the show. It’s like clockwork. “You start moving and things get moving.” So she took him to the treadmill and sure enough, he crapped.

This being Jack’s first Westminster, expectations were low. No matter how well he’d been doing, even after the big weekend in Wildwood not even two weeks earlier, Kimberly wasn’t so delusional to think her dog was ready to contend for the best Australian Shepherd in America.

She hadn’t necessarily even wanted to enter Jack — he was still so young (the second youngest Aussie in the field), and the combined cost of entry and handling fees was over $1000 — but Heather talked her into it. The idea being that he could gain valuable experience in the big, chaotic atmosphere of a major show and, anyway, what the hell? He gained entry into the world’s most famous dog show, so why not give it a shot? “I have to admit it’s pretty cool to say my dog is showing at Westminster,” Kimberly said, as we stood ringside.

Are you nervous, I asked her.

“My stomach tells me yes,” she answered. “But I don’t feel nervous mentally.”

I pointed out that it should help that expectations were low; she didn’t come expecting to win anyway, not with 50-some Aussies, many of which had been campaigned for more than a year.

Kimberly started to agree and then stopped. “Heather would tell me, ‘You always come to win’ but I don’t expect him to win. If he makes at least one cut I’ll be happy. If he doesn’t make any cuts I’ll be demolished.”

I asked how Jack was taking to New York.

“You know how hyper he is? He walks around Manhattan so calm. He could be a city dog.” She glanced up at a clock. “Okay, I have to go wash my dog’s feet.”

“I think I’ll wear pink tomorrow,” Heather said, as she fluffed the fur on Jack’s rear in the moments before heading to the ring. “The sparkles are working well.” So far she and Kevin had shown three dogs, and two of them had been rewarded with Best of Opposite ribbons. Already, the show was a success.

Kimberly and I walked out toward Ring 4, where the Aussies would assemble. “Let’s go up to the seats so I can just get rid of nervous energy,” she said.

Because of some late scratches, the actual number of Australian Shepherds entered turned out to be just over 40, most of them black tris assembled in front of Mrs. Lynette Saltzman, a regal woman with dark hair and a necklace of pearls. Kimberly pointed Jack out to a curious spectator sitting nearby and breezed quickly through his biography. “It took him two months to get to 13 points, then another two months to get the major because we couldn’t find one. Then he showed once in December, then at Wildwood and then here. He’s not been around the block much.” Jack was actually the second youngest dog in the field, and most of his rivals were a good year or two older.

There were a few familiar dogs, including Beyonce, a black-tri bitch who was America’s number-one Aussie, and Spooner, Summer’s father. To make the most of the limited space, Judge Saltzman split the dogs by sex, so that Jack first matched up against all the boys. The numbers were randomly assigned, but the randomness had been fortuitous for Jack, who was stacked in a group of black tris — three on either side of him, so that his unique look stood out even more than usual. Heather’s black and white ensemble matched him perfectly. A man sitting just in front of us pointed him out to his son and said, “Look at that one. He’s beautiful.”

Told that the dog he fancied was Kimberly’s, the man asked about his temperament. “He’s a love,” Kimberly said. “And he’s great with kids. He herds kids. He tries to herd my son, who is 17.”

Behind us, another guy chimed in. “That’s a pretty dog.”

The judge must have agreed. Jack was the first dog picked out of his group, meaning he was in the top six males selected out of the larger pool of 29, including many top champions. Saltzman dismissed the dogs from the ring to make room for the bitches.

“I can go home happy now,” Kimberly said. “Top 6 – out of the top 29 in the country! And he’s not even 2!”

One of the men wanted to know what Kimberly’s plan was for Jack and I too was getting a little caught up in things. Here, on the country’s biggest stage, her dog was already among the best in his breed. Kimberly was trying not to get swept up in the excitement. “My son’s going to college,” she said. “I have to have priorities. He already thinks I love the dog more. If I said you can’t go to college because I need to show Jack, well — then he might not love Jack as much.” She smirked.

The odds are certainly better if you’re showing a bitch. Once the boys had left, only 12 females were left to face the judge, including Beyonce and her handler, Jamie Clute. Beyonce was the first bitch pulled, and led the group of five that would join the six males in the final judging of the show’s biggest breed.

All around us, buzz began to swell over Jack. A woman asked where he came from, then pulled out an envelope and wrote down the kennel name as Kim told her: “It’s Wyndstar with a Y.” A man with a New York accent as thick as cream cheese said, “I love that dog.” Kimberly didn’t even try to disguise her pleasure at all the attention — not because it validated her, exactly, but because these people were affirming what she already knew to be true of Jack: He’s a very special dog.

“Did I tell you my kennel name?” she said to me, quietly, and I was surprised to hear it, seeing as she had never bred a single dog. “Jackpot. Because Jack is the cornerstone. I hit a jackpot with him. And if you buy one of my dogs you hit the jackpot too. And I work at the casino.” She giggled. It’s good, I said, but you’re lacking two important pieces: puppies, and the space to raise them.

It wasn’t hard to tell which dogs Saltzman preferred and after watching a down-and-back and then a free stack — in which Jack froze and fixed on Heather’s hand like he’d been doing this for years — Judge Saltzman was clearly favoring both Jack and a red-tri from Louisiana named Rowan. She re-ordered them for a final jog around the ring, putting Jack in front, which seemed to indicate that she was leaning toward choosing him. Kimberly was practically bouncing in her seat.

Then, mid-way around, Saltzman re-ordered the dogs, putting Rowan the red in front of Jack. Still, Jack looked great — confident, happy, beautiful — and moved smoothly at the end of Heather’s lead until she stopped him one last time for a final look by the judge. It was very obviously between Rowan and Jack at this point; Beyonce seemed to be out of the running. Saltzman fixated on the two males — back and forth, back and forth. Later, Heather would tell us that the tension was palpable.

She made her decision: It was Rowan, a dog who’d been exhibited and advertised for at least a year. I don’t know this for sure but I have to imagine that when it comes time to break a difficult tie, you might tend to choose the dog you know from the advertisements. And you could hardly fault her if that was the case.

Because second place always goes to the opposite sex, the Best of Opposite was given to Beyonce, but it was clear to everyone watching that Jack was Saltzman’s second favorite dog. Anyway, he was given the first Award of Merit, in the largest group at his first-ever Westminster, and by hesitating so long to make her choice, Judge Saltzman had really told everyone watching that either of these two males could have won Best in Breed.

At ringside, Kathy Glaes, a reporter from the breed’s specialty magazine, the Australian Shepherd Journal, asked Kimberly if she could set up a time for an interview about this unknown dog that nearly won the breed. “He’s an up-and-comer,” said a woman who’d been eavesdropping. Jack was a total unknown—to date he had not appeared in a single ad—but people responded to him. He got a reaction. And to think, Kimberly briefly considered not bringing him.

“You know what the lesson is,” Heather’s mom Sue said, as she congratulated Kimberly with a hug. “Always listen to Heather.”

Handler and dog posed for their win photo and then joined us. “He was losing focus at the end,” Heather said. “I was getting upset with him. When I had to free-bait the last time” — free-baiting is when the dog must stop and stack with no help from the handler, who is not allowed to touch the dog or re-set its feet — “I was nervous. I was losing him. That other dog has been campaigned.”

I pointed out that even though I still had no real idea what was going on out there, I could see that Jack had uncommon flair.

“That thing he has—he loves it—that’s the best thing you can ask for with a show dog,” Heather said. “But it’s also his weakness. The more he’s out, the better. Wildwood was huge, I think. To get those five shows under his belt — Oh my god, that was huge.”

Kimberly looked dizzy. “I came here with no expectations,” she said. And yet that’s not entirely true. Yes, she didn’t expect to win. If I’d told her Jack was going to win an Award of Merit before the 44 Aussies assembled in the ring, she’d have laughed at me. But this is emotional business. It’s not exactly like someone subjectively judging your child in a spotlit ring surrounded by spectators, but it’s not far from that.

Because Heather believed in Jack, and understood that Kimberly wasn’t rich, she seemed willing to negotiate on price, but it wasn’t just benevolence at work. Both of Heather’s campaign dogs — Rita and Tanner — were scheduled to come off the books for the summer and she was in the market for a new dog to take to the top. That dog, she hoped, was Jack.

“I can get him to Top 10,” she said. “I would say top 5 but you just never know at that point. There’s so much that goes into it.”

***

Like those orange-jacketed attendants who direct pilots parking their planes at airport gates, show judges communicate mostly through gestures — two hands up, palms out, means stop. A sweep one way is meant to direct a down and back and a twirl of the finger indicates once more around the ring. When a judge has completed an inspection, he’ll give the dog a little pat on the side or rear to send it on its way.

Kevin showed Rita to a handsome blonde woman who looked like a librarian. Despite some slip-ups — at one point Kevin tossed a treat to Rita and it bounced off her nose and onto the ground, where another dog snatched it up — it went well, and Rita was given Best of Opposite, continuing the couple’s hot streak.

I found Kevin back at the stand, red-faced and wiping away sweat.

“Four out of six is a pretty good show,” I said, meaning that Jack, Shumba, Rita, and Trader had all been among the top dogs at the world’s best show. Any owner with realistic expectations would be thrilled with such a result.

“Not bad,” he answered, and as a professional you can understand why he might see things differently. “But no wins yet.”

Hopes of an appearance live on national TV, under the lights at night in the groups, rested on the final dog in the truck: Tanner, who stood quite happily on the grooming table while Heather finished up his primping. En route to New York, he had eaten an entire bag of Purina Carvers dog treats that Dawn had accidentally left near his crate and had slowly but surely been puking them up ever since. “Let’s hope the last one doesn’t come out in the ring,” she said.

“No accidents yet,” I said and immediately realized that everyone was looking at me as if I’d just poked Tanner in the eye.

“You can’t say that!” Dawn said, kind of laughing but in a way that made it clear she wasn’t actually amused. “It’s like when the announcer says ‘He shoots 95% from the line. He never misses.’” She paused a beat. “He always misses.”

When judging began, both Heather and Kevin were forced into duty. Heather with Tanner, of course. Kevin with Roxy, a young female bred by Dawn who was to become a featured dog in the coming months. She was at the Garden mostly for practice and was still quite green, something that was very apparent when, mere moments into the judging, she fulfilled prophecy and took a giant dump that neither the judge nor the ring attendants seemed to notice. The crowd, however, was fully aware, and as the handlers maneuvered around the steaming pile, a buzz grew.

“Do you get points off for that?” a man sitting nearby asked. The buzz spread to the desk where the ring steward sits, overseeing the schedule and the judge’s book, and frantic pointing ensued as one handler after another just barely dodged the crap. Finally, a good 4 or 5 minutes later, the cleaning crew arrived and the two-man team — one with dustpan and broom, the other with a mop — took care of business, much to the delight of the crowd, which erupted in a huge cheer.

“It’s like the Zamboni guy,” said one young woman. To which her friend answered, curtly: “Well, everybody poops.”

Westminster is so different from the other shows that it can be a bit of an equalizer. It takes certain dogs way outside of their comfort zones. They spend their day cooped up in stuffed aisles, show in front of a crowd of thousands, and then exit the building into a loud and intimidating city with virtually no grass.

Considering the lack of open space, David Frei told me that it’s “kind of amazing that we don’t have more accidents in the ring than we do. And when we do, everyone in our world understands that’s it’s no big deal.”

Unless it happens on national TV. He said that a few years back, in the Sporting Group, a dog “just stopped dead center of the ring with camera on him and took a dump.” Frei, working the broadcast, said that the camera didn’t linger for too long, but that there’s not much you can do to distract the thousands in the audience who are naturally going to fixate. “Roger [Caras, the show’s announcer] on the house PA said, ‘Well, it is a dog show’ and everybody cheered and went on with the show.”

Frei can’t remember how that particular dog finished, but he distinctly recalls that after she finished, “she went flying around the ring like a different dog. She’s like, ‘Ok, I feel great. Let’s go.’” No judge is going to punish the act because they’ve all been owners and handlers themselves, “and it’s happened to them,” Frei said. “It’s happened to me. Once, the judge moved around to the back of my dog and was feeling down the haunches when my dog scooched up and took a dump, almost right in his hands.”

Dawn probably has many of these stories herself, as surely do Kevin and Heather. Tanner, meanwhile, didn’t even seem to notice Roxy’s faux pas. He was cool and collected and trotted around the ring like he was pulling a cart to market.

Heather’s mom was a helpful cheerleader and led a boisterous cheering section that was buoyed by circumstance when the golden retrievers — quite possibly the most beloved breed of all — entered the ring next door. At that point, the judge had set the dogs in the order that appeared to be her favorites, with Tanner in the lead, followed by a bitch named Dallas who was one of his main rivals. I looked over and saw Dawn leaning forward, practically chewing on her hands. She put a hand on her son Andrew and then, just as they were trotting around, the judge reset the dogs, and moved the bitch to the front. She pointed: “Best of breed!” Then to Tanner: “Best of opposite.”

I could read Heather’s lips as she looked up at Dawn. She said, quite clearly, “Shit.”

Though no handler likes to have defeat snatched from victory at the very last minute, for any other dog in Heather and Kevin’s menagerie, this would have been a victory. Tanner, however, was the country’s top Berner. This was his ring to win.

Dawn looked deflated and walked down to the floor to greet her dog. “Tanner Banner!” she said, some light returning to her face. “What did you do?” She gave the big bear a hug.

“It’s still best of opposite at the Garden,” Heather said, trying to convince herself, quite unconvincingly, that this was okay.

“If this is the worst thing to happen…,” Dawn said. “I mean, I hate to be mad…” Neither statement was finished.

“She put him first,” Heather said. “She loved him. I could tell. He moved well, he free stacked well.”

“She put him first and I grabbed my son’s hand and said ‘We’re gonna do this!’” Dawn said. “And then she put the bitch first. I hate this show.”

By this time, Tanner’s co-owner Georgeann has come by to commiserate. “The judge did the same thing with the Great Danes,” she said. “She likes the bitches. And that’s a showy bitch.”

Now Dawn was no longer pretending to be happy with her second place. “I’m immensely disappointed. Immensely,” she said. “I’m a terrible loser.” She nodded at Heather. “She’s devastated.”

Heather rejoined the circle, removing her sparkly jacket. “She put me in front and I’m thinking ‘I need to go back to the hotel! I need a new outfit! Maybe I’ll get a new outfit!’” She shook her head. “Never do that!”

“That’s the thing with dog shows,” Dawn said. “There’s no point in getting your hopes up.” A friend asked Dawn about her Best of Opposite ribbon — if she was really going to keep this one, implying that she typically does not.

Do you really throw them away? I asked her.

“Yes. I told you I’m a terrible loser.” She laughed one of her hearty Dawn laughs. “I need a drink.”

***

Buy Josh Dean's "Show Dog: The Charmed Life and Trying Times of a Near-Perfect Purebred".