Star dog handler hurt in wreck en route to Westminster show

Others had to be a bit more catch-as-catch-can. Janet Atkins and Charles Namey bathed and blow-dried their bearded collie, Moet, at a local pet store Friday, then brushed her and did other final touches Saturday on a table outside their minivan, with plastic sheeting for a canopy.

“You make do with what you can,” said Atkins, of Winter Park, Florida.

After flying in from Toronto on Friday evening, Irina Falk was up until 2 a.m. Saturday bathing and drying her Yorkshire terriers Tim Tim and Kenzo, then got up three hours later to get to the show, fix their topknots and try to keep their silky, flowing coats fresh on a humid morning on the Lyndhurst lawn.

“I had grass on the brush, on the coat, in my dress,” she said with a smile.

Four breeds are making their Westminster debut this weekend, including the Belgian Laekenois. “Congratulations — you made history today,” judge Sharon Ann Redmer told some half-dozen Laekenois and their human partners. The herding dogs are generally known as hard-working and driven, but Saffron is also “the happiest dog on earth,” says handler Trina Matteson of Silver Springs, Florida.

Jack Jack the French bulldog might not have made history. But being at Westminster is “a bucket-list item” for owner Kami Harris. She never pictured getting involved in dog shows until she got the dog as a pet, and his breeder suggested showing him.