1,600 Dogs Strut Their Stuff for Owners, Judges, Audience

The 1,600 animals on exhibit at the Ventura County Fairgrounds’ dog show Saturday displayed impeccable conduct--they patiently sat on grooming tables for hours, followed their owners around and hardly ever barked.

It was some of the humans at the Ventura County Dog Fanciers Assn. competition who exhibited rather unusual behavior.

Standing in the middle of a ring, Judge Louis H. Harris repeated the following ritual with hundreds of dogs: He called on the canine contestants to step forward. Then he pried their jaws open and peered into their mouths, squeezed their heads, slid his hand down their spines and cupped their private parts.

“He looks at their teeth, checks out their bone structure and makes sure they haven’t been neutered,” Jaree Gregory of Simi Valley said as she waited in line with a puppy named Dalie.

Gregory looked at Dalie and, dreamy-eyed, described their relationship: “He’s my pet, he’s my children, he’s my lover. I love him to death.”

Dalie remained impassive.

Nearby, trainer Bruce Schultz put a chunk of solid dog food in his mouth to free his hands so that he could brush down a shaggy white dog called Shad. The dog didn’t even look up to see if Schultz had swallowed his ration.

“He’s one of the best,” said Shad’s owner, Sylvia Thomas of Riverside, nodding toward Schultz, who wore a brown tweed jacket, matching tie and black jogging shoes. “That’s why I pay him to show my dog.”

Groomer Brian Cordova of Perris, Calif., shampooed, trimmed, blow-dried and smothered half a dozen poodles with Faberge Grand Finale hair spray.

“We’re not supposed to use hair spray in shows,” he said, blushing. “But everybody uses it.” While Cordova worked on one dog, the others took naps on their grooming tables.

Cordova said it takes him eight hours to get the dogs ready to compete: “The blow-drying alone takes three hours.”

So it went at Saturday’s competition, the latest stop in the Southern California dog show circuit.

To the uninitiated, the dogs’ antics paled in comparison to those of their masters.

As hundreds of spectators looked on, dog owners and professional exhibitors trotted their pets around giant rings while stone-faced judges filled their score cards. On the sidelines, dogs were combed, brushed and dried with vacuum cleaners. To improve their posture--one is told--their legs were being constantly spread apart.

In display booths around the fairgrounds, vendors peddled everything from sweaters with furry dog faces to dog hats to ceramic dogs to dog shampoo and conditioner to, of course, dog books.

Then there’s the business of the applause. All the dogs seemed quite capable of trotting, yet some received applause and others didn’t.

It’s the oldest trick in the dog show business, breeder Betty Burnell said. “If a judge takes an extra look at your girl and seems to like her, you start clapping, and the people around you start clapping too. It doesn’t hurt to give your dog a hand.”

Dog owners enjoy the competition and the camaraderie at the shows, Burnell said. They also use the exhibits to scout potential mates for their animals, she added.

“Let’s say you have a girl with a really nice head and nice feet, but her shoulders and her coat is so-so. So there’s a couple of things you want to improve. You try to spot a dog with really big, beautiful shoulders, great angulation and a nice coat. I put that bitch and the dog together and hope I get what I want.”

While the Ventura show is highly rated and well-attended, next month’s Westminster Show in New York’s Madison Square Garden is the dog breeders’ Super Bowl.

On Saturday, however, most breeders said they wouldn’t make the trip. “I don’t like Westminster,” said Marie Peterson, a breeder for 39 years. “It’s too crowded and too political.”

She was one of many owners who bought Barry Harvey’s Rollover Dog Food, a four-pound, vitamin-enriched sausage made of cow organs. (Suggested feeding for a normal dog: 1 1/2 to 3 3/4 inches a day.) Harvey, a native of New Zealand, said he owns three retrievers, but never brings them to dog shows.

“I use them for hunting,” he said. “Dog shows are too political and there’s too much human interference. Natural selection is gone by the wayside.”