At least the athlete was able to walk into the medical tent on his own four legs.
Earlier, when he had faced the broad jump during his Masters Obedience Championship trial at the Westminster Dog Show, Finn, a six-pound toy poodle, had tried to settle into his normal pre-takeoff sit position. But he wriggled uncomfortably, struggling to hold something in.
Sensing disaster, his human, Abby Cooper, swooped him up, managing to get him out of the ring just before he vomited and pooped on the sawdust.
Off to the veterinarian tent they rushed.
Official dog competitions typically include a standby vet. But Westminster, perhaps the premier elite canine event in the country, demands a crack medical squad of another order altogether. Special dogs need special docs.
Finn was monitored by Dr. Christopher Frye from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, an assistant clinical professor in the new area of sports medicine and rehabilitation. Also on the 15-member team from Ithaca and its satellite specialty office in Stamford, Conn. were a radiologist and a theriogenologist, who specializes in reproduction — of keen interest to breeders of show and performance dogs.
Throughout Westminster Week, they would be fielding questions from spectators and owners as specific and general as their practices: about breed genetic problems; refractive eye tests (is my Boston terrier nearsighted?), stem cell injections for aching joints; clinical oncology trials; how to care for a first puppy.
Westminster is famous as a gathering of spectacular dogs, with all the people and products attendant with canine beauty pageantry: sprays, mousses, gels, conditioners, curlers, straighteners, bows, hair implants (I’m looking at you, Standard Poodles!) and mascara (flutter those lashes much, Papillon?).
But in the last few years, Westminster has added competitions in agility and obedience, events that bring in a very different crowd — jock dogs and their humans. (“Vanish is not just some Barbie collie,” Aaron Kirzner said of his border collie, which is both a breed and agility champion.)
Those athletes are attended by a throng of health and wellness specialists, including canine acupuncturists, massage therapists and chiropractors, along with vets like Dr. Frye.
Over the last few days, the vets’ cases have included: a broken toenail; a sore toe (stuck in the crate during a long car haul); lots of nauseous anxiety (planes, crowds); a flopped ear (inflammation); and rash (the quality of the hotel sheets disagreed with one top show dog).
Finn was fine, by the way. Dr. Frye excused him from the show and sent him home. “‘Home’ is his pillow on my knee,” Ms. Cooper said, during a relieved telephone call from her hotel room.
Massaging strains and stress
The sign was parked before a quiet, curtained corner of the hall: Dog Massage.
Marisa Schmidt, a certified canine massage therapist from Hazlet, N.J., had all her agility-day slots booked for months. But throughout the day, owners and dogs were lined outside her curtain, pleading to be squeezed into her schedule.
Kyan, a border collie, was on the table. “She has some knots,” Ms. Schmidt informed Deborah Salerno, Kyan’s owner. She leaned into the dog’s spine, lifted a hind leg, working an inner thigh muscle. Kyan’s eyes rolled blissfully.
“These dogs are in incredible shape,” Ms. Schmidt said. “Their owners take care of them like any professional athlete. Would you believe this dog is 12 years old?”
Nope.
One challenge, she said, is that dogs can almost love the sport and their commanding owners too much. “Dogs are so resilient that they will run through the pain,” she said, “and sometimes we may not know right away that they’re injured.”
The athletes warm up
For the Masters Agility Championship, 330 invitation-only elite athletes raced over a course of jumps, tunnels, seesaws, A-frames and weaves. Before each round, the humans were allowed to preview the course once, walking it to memorize the series of hand signals they would give their dogs, which would not be permitted to sample the course. Spitting out rapid-fire voice and hand signals for about 30 seconds, the humans would direct their dogs through the course, the two moving as one, a mind-meld team.
Athletes never compete with cold muscles. Here is the warm-up routine for Chelsea, a gleaming, champion six-year-old black Labrador retriever that, with her teammate Dr. Elizabeth Dole, a veterinarian, has competed for the United States in European agility trials.
Walk: three to five minutes. Pee. Trot.
Stretches: loosen neck and spine by bringing muzzle to hip, both sides. Play bow. Weave between Dr. Dole’s legs. Spins. Back up. Come forward.
Work that core! Sit pretty in a begging position, paws up, hold it, hold it. Release.
More stretches: Dr. Dole leaned on a table, extending a treat. Chelsea put her paws on the table, head up, legs splayed. Hip flexors, shoulders, laterals, obliques.
Dr. Dole pulled out a toy. Tug, release, tug, release. “It’s to give her some excitement but also some control,” said Dr. Dole, who has worked in agility competition for 18 years.
“Some dogs need to be in the optimum arousal state,” she said. “But Chelsea is already so eager to play that we want her to be more thoughtful, so when she walks in the ring she’s not over the top.”
A basset hound?
Dr. Frye took a break from the vet tent to watch some of the agility trials. He makes canine prosthetics, studies gaits, manages pain. He sees the world of canine sports as vast and varied, having worked with athletes ranging from sled dogs to racers to dock divers.
Like any sports fan, he stood in the thick crowd, whooping as the dogs sped in a blur through the obstacles. The crowd racket matched the dogs that barked and yelped as they raced along, in sheer excitement. Unlike the conformation — the formal name for the sport of showing purebreds — agility and obedience welcome mixed-breeds, here simply called All American dogs. That’s because these sports are fundamentally a celebration of the human-canine bond.
Because the obstacles are adjusted for height classes, all sorts of breeds were competing: dachshunds, Papillons, Havanese, pugs, corgis, rat terriers, Nova Scotia duck tolling retrievers, Berger Picards, Belgian Malinois and Doberman pinschers.
Well, maybe it’s not suitable for all dogs. “Sometimes the giant breeds, like the Great Pyrenees and St. Bernards, can’t quite squeeze into the tunnels,” Dr. Frye said.
Border collies, with their laser focus and pliant, quick-cut, low-slung bodies, tend to dominate.
Dr. Frye had a soft spot for one unlikely agility athlete: a basset hound. “It was like a cartoon of itself,” he said. “There’s nothing about a basset hound that’s made for this course! But I loved watching that dog navigate and figure it out.”
And good for humans
Lou Avant, all but vibrating on an endorphin high at the conclusion of her agility trial, bounced out of the ring with Whimsy, her gorgeous Borzoi (tail dyed purple for the festivities).
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“Wasn’t that frigging awesome?” she shouted. “How did the universe put me together with this dog?”
Dr. Avant, a veterinarian from Atlanta, has taken Whimsy and other large dogs for years to many sports, including dock diving, barn hunting, obedience and tricks, where she meets up with a regular circuit of passionate large hound dognoscenti.
“I like running with the big dogs,” said Dr. Avant, 63. “I’m not ready yet for some little old lady dog!”
Emergency!
On Sunday, Tyson, an eight-year-old-miniature American shepherd from Minnesota, needed to go to the vet tent.
Tyson is an obedience champion. He is also an anxious flyer with a sensitive stomach. After arriving in New York, he started vomiting. And kept it up, almost hourly. “I thought, where are we going to find an E.R. vet?” said his owner, Shannon Wacker, who was there with her 17-year-old daughter, Mara. “I was heartbroken for my daughter. They had worked so hard to get here.”
Mother, daughter and dog found the Cornell vet tent, who ministered to all three. “They were a godsend,” Mrs. Wacker said. “And they didn’t bill me!”
A vet gave Tyson a 24-hour anti-nausea injection, which calmed his stomach.
By Sunday afternoon, Tyson was good to go. He did not win a ribbon, but Mrs. Wacker and Mara were thrilled. “Considering all that happened with him, we’re tickled,” Mrs. Wacker said, saying that Tyson had pushed through his misery out of devotion to her daughter.
“We just needed to get his nerves untangled,” she said. “He’s just such a little overachiever!”
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