- Colleen Durkin
- All dressed up for the IKC Dog Show
“Why do we have dog shows?” asks Debbie Manichelli, a dachshund breeder from North Carolina with a very loud voice who is serving as an official tour guide at the International Kennel Club of Chicago Dog Show over the weekend at McCormick Place.
“So it’s not really about the dogs at all,” ventures my female cotourist.
It probably goes without saying, but mutts and mixed breeds are not welcome here. “I’ve done two years of research to find who to breed my bitch with,” Manichelli tells us. “You know what it’s going to look like, and what its temperament is going to be. With a shelter dog, you just don’t know.”
An old English sheepdog named Swagger—destined to be Sunday’s Best in Show—stands on a table getting a blowout. Swagger is large. Swagger is hirsute. It takes three hours to dry him. “He’s done it since he was a puppy,” his handler explains. “He’s used to it.”
“If the dog has cataracts, you don’t breed it,” Manichelli preaches. “If it has poor hips, you don’t breed it.”
I meet Bebe, a terrier who won a ribbon not for breeding but for her performance in the Barn Hunt, an informal demonstration event. Dogs sniff around bales of hay until they find a rat or, rather, a closed PVC pipe with a rat inside. Bebe sniffed out her rodent in 20 seconds flat, says her owner Stephen Davis. Now it’s almost 3 PM, the end of benching hours, and both Bebe and Davis are ready to go home.
