When the Dog Show Bug Bites, Big-Time
Little boys dream of playing in the World Series. Young performers wonder if they’ve got the chops to make it on Broadway. What a high -- to have a passion for something and then ride it all the way to the top.
Debi Sidebotham is daring to think like that, and it’s making her nutty. In a good way, that is.
First, the passion. From childhood, she loved dogs. Her earliest memories are of wanting a cuddly Yorkshire terrier. She’d leave notes in her mother’s makeup kit, saying, “I want a dog.” At 13, she got her first, a German shepherd.
Dogs became her obsession. In the way boys memorized baseball stats, she memorized breed characteristics.
As a young woman, the passion matured. She became more aware of dog shows and knew, of course, that the end of the rainbow was the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York.
“I had always dreamed of being in that world,” she says, “but I didn’t even begin to know how to get in.”
Over the years, she and her husband had an English springer spaniel and a couple of Yorkies. When they died, the Sidebothams bought a Maltese and, in the early ‘90s, a Bouvier des Flandres, a herding dog. The pup, they learned, was of championship lineage.
Having befriended breeders, Debi came to believe that maybe, just maybe, she could show a dog. “The bug was biting me.” Once bitten, she entered Cleo at competitions. Her first was a puppy competition at the Los Angeles County Fair. Cleo won first place.
“As bold and forward as I am, I’m still very shy,” Debi, 47, says. “To be in the ring ... I never liked attention brought to me. I don’t go seeking it. So, it was very nerve-racking ... and the heartbreak is tremendous. If the dog fails, you feel you failed. You failed as a team. It’s an emotional roller-coaster.”
Debi entered Cleo in a few more shows, but then stopped because of the time and travel required. Westminster barely entered her mind. “It was one of those fantasy dreams. I told myself, ‘It would be nice, but I know I can’t do that. I’m not at that level of competition.’ ”
When Cleo died a few years ago, “I mourned her for 2 1/2, three years,” Debi says. Too distraught to get another Bouvier, she planned to replace Cleo with a German shepherd until her husband gently nudged her toward another Bouvier.
Two years ago, the Sidebothams met Reba and Rick Donnelly, Orange County dog breeders for 40 years. Wanting a female, Debi instead fell in love with a male in the 10-pup litter, telling her husband, “This one has my heart.”
They named the dog Kobe and brought him home as a house pet. Six months later, however, Debi says, “I looked at the dog and said, I’ve got something special on my hands. It was like a lightbulb going on.”
A series of competitions confirmed her belief that Kobe had star potential. This week, Debi returned from Mt. Olympus -- the Westminster show at Madison Square Garden. People who had seen Kobe told Debi he could have copped the prize for his breed. “I thought, my dog could take this competition,’” Debi says. “Oh my gosh, it’s unbelievable to fathom that thought.”
She’s close to signing on with professional handlers who’d take Kobe on the road for a year, to test his mettle. No longer is it unimaginable for Debi to picture him at Westminster, to picture herself there with him.
Well, maybe a little.
“There’s nothing like being there,” she says. “TV doesn’t portray the excitement of what goes on in that arena. If my dog were to get to that point, it would be absolutely awesome.”
After a lifetime of dog-loving, this was her first trip to the Westminster show.
But, she’s quick to add, “it won’t be my last.”
Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.