The Westminster dog show is turning 150. Here's what has — and hasn't — changed over time

NEW YORK (AP) — When some Gilded Age gentleman hunters organized a New York event to compare their dogs, could they have imagined that people would someday call it the World Series of dogdom or the Super Bowl of dog shows?

Of course they couldn't. The World Series and the Super Bowl didn't exist. Nor, for that matter, did the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty.

But the Westminster Kennel Club's dog show did, and still does. With the 150th annual show set to start Saturday, here's a then-and-now look at the United States' most famous canine competition.

“The trappings, the window dressing, you know, changes over time. But what’s at the core, what’s the heart of it, which is the love of dogs ... that has been the same,” says club President Donald Sturz.

It comes from the Westminster Hotel, where the show's founders liked to belly up to the bar and brag about their dogs. The hotel is long gone. The moniker stuck.

The club's “First Annual New York Bench Show of Dogs,” in 1877, was no small thing. It featured about 1,200 dogs of a few dozen breeds, ranging from pugs to mastiffs. They included an English setter valued at $5,000, at a time when an average laborer in New York made about $1.30 a day. The Associated Press reported that “the bulldogs are represented by a number of noticeable delegates,” and a family of “Japanese spaniels” was “highly amusing.”

It wasn't the first U.S. dog show, but it wowed and endured. Among U.S. sporting events, only the Kentucky Derby has a longer history of being held every year.

This year's Westminster show boasts 2,500 dogs, representing as many as 212 breeds and 10 “varieties” (subsets of breeds, such as smooth vs. wirehaired dachshunds). Some likely hadn’t made it to the U.S. in 1877. Others didn't exist yet anywhere.

But many are much the same as they were in Westminster’s early days, Sturz says. Some details — the length of muzzles, the thickness of coats — have shifted in this breed or that, and better canine nutrition may have led to “a little bit more size, or a little more bone” in some, he said.

Today, all the canines have champion rankings in a formalized sport with a complicated point system and official “standards” for judging each breed. They compete for best in show, a trophy that Westminster added in 1907. Earlier shows had no overall prize.

Hundreds of other dogs now vie for separate titles in agility and other sports, which kick off this year's show on Saturday.

When Westminster started, the dogs weren’t the only ones with a pedigreed air.

“Everybody was fashionably dressed and wore an air of good breeding,” The New York Times said of the 1877 show — and the paper was talking about the spectators, not the animals. Not to be outdone, some canines also were gussied up in lace collars and ribbons.

Over the years, the event drew entries from foreign royals, American tycoons and modern-day celebrities including Martha Stewart and Tim McGraw. A decades-long list of pro athletes have cheered on their animals, from baseball’s Lou Gehrig and Barry Bonds to the NFL’s Morgan Fox.

Westminster has carried a whiff of bygone, clubby gentility into the 21st century — handlers wear suits and dresses, upper-round judges black tie — and the competition is hardly casual. Many top contenders come in with hired professional handlers and a show record built on near-constant travel, with buzz built through dog-magazine ad campaigns.

Still, many people handle their own dogs and work or are retired from policing, medicine, the military, corporate jobs or other fields. Some of the animals also have jobs, including bomb-sniffing and search-and-rescue.

“It’s an elite event, but it’s one that we want everyone to feel that they can access and be a part of,” says Sturz, a clinical psychologist and retired school district superintendent.

Westminster debuted at Gilmore's Garden, a precursor to today's Madison Square Garden. Nearly every subsequent show has been in some iteration of the building, even after part of it collapsed and killed four people, including a Westminster official, shortly before the 1880 show. Next week's semifinals and best-in-show finals, set for late Tuesday, will be held in the present-day Garden.

From the start, the show has drawn thousands of spectators in person — and many more on TV since the late 1940s, with still more via streaming.

Of course, that's not the only way Westminster has been portrayed on-screen.

Yes, we're talking about “Best in Show,” director-writer-actor Christopher Guest's cult-classic 2000 mockumentary about obsessives and oddballs competing at the fictional “Mayflower” dog show in Philadelphia. Guest attended Westminster during his extensive research for the film.

Is it really like that? As with any satire: sort of. Circulate at Westminster, and you'll certainly see some wound-up people primping and presenting animals, but you'll also see some competitors cheering for each other, sharing expertise and playing with cherished pets.

Show folk had mixed feelings about the movie. But it helped expand Westminster’s audience, says David Frei, who hosted the show broadcast from 1990 to 2016.

“They didn't make fun of the dogs,” Frei said. “They just made fun of the people.”

As Westminster's prominence grew, it became a magnet for complaints that dog breeding puts looks ahead of health. As far back as 1937, some show-goers questioned whether collies' narrow heads and long noses were healthy, according to an AP story at the time.

In recent years, animal welfare activists have sometimes infiltrated the ring or demonstrated on the sidelines. This year, PETA has put up billboards near the venues about the breathing problems of flat-faced dogs, and oxygen-tank-carrying supporters plan to demonstrate outside.

“Westminster has had countless opportunities to evolve, yet it clings to an outdated obsession with aesthetics,” a PETA staff writer said in a recent op-ed distributed by the Tribune Content Agency.

Sturz said the club “has a longstanding history of showing its commitment to dog welfare.”

He notes that the organization has donated to veterinary scholarships, pet-friendly domestic violence shelters, rescue groups and other canine causes. Those ties go all the way back to 1877, when some proceeds from the first Westminster show helped the nation's oldest humane society, the ASPCA, build its first shelter.

FILE - Four Russian wolfhounds arrive by limousine with chauffeur Jim Colby at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden in New York, Feb. 13, 1956. (AP Photo/Jacob Harris, File)

FILE - A security worker wraps up a protester during the best in show competition at the 148th Westminster Kennel Club dog show Tuesday, May 14, 2024, at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, File)

FILE - Guemart Limited Edition, a Yorkshire Terrier from Mexico City, is groomed by Jesus Guerrero backstage prior to competition in the 131st Westminster dog show Monday Feb.12, 2007 at Madison Square Garden in New York.(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

FILE - Kirby, a male Papillon, and his owner John Oulton react after winning best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club 1999 Dog Show at Madison Square Garden in New York Tuesday, Feb. 9, 1999. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

FILE - The Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, left, holds Ch. Pugville's Golden Victory during judging of the pug class during the Westminster Kennel Club Show at Madison Square Garden in New York, Feb. 13, 1956, as the dog's owner, Arnold Canton, far right, and dog breeder Harriet Smith, look on. (AP Photo/Jacob Harris, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — March’s persistent unseasonable heat was so intense that the continental United States registered its most abnormally hot month in 132 years of records, according to federal weather data. And the next year or so looks to turn the dial up on global warmth even more, as some forecasts predict a brewing El Niño will reach superstrength.

Not only was it the hottest March on record for the U.S., but the amount it was above normal beat any other month in history for the Lower 48 states. March’s average temperature of 50.85 degrees Fahrenheit (10.47 degrees Celsius) was 9.35 F (5.19 C) above the 20th century normal for March. That easily passed the old record of 8.9 F (4.9 C) set in March 2012 as the most abnormally hot month on record — regardless of the month of the year — according to records released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The average maximum temperature for March was especially high at 11.4 F (6.3 C) above the 20th century average and was almost a degree warmer than the average daytime high for April, NOAA said.

Six of the nation’s top 10 most abnormally hot months have been in the last 10 years. This February, which was 6.57 F (3.65 C) above 20th century normal, was the tenth highest above normal.

“What we experienced in March across the United States was unprecedented,” said Shel Winkley, a meteorologist with Climate Central, a nonprofit science research group.

“One reason that’s so concerning is just the sheer volume of records, all-time records that were set and broken during that time period,” Winkley said. “But also this is coming on the heels of what was the worst snow year. And the hottest winter of record.”

April 2025 to March 2026 was the warmest 12-month period on record in the continental United States, according to NOAA.

On March 20 and 21, about one-third of the nation felt unseasonable heat that would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, Climate Central calculated.

More than 19,800 daily temperature records were broken for heat across the country, according to meteorologist Guy Walton, who analyzes NOAA data. More than 2,000 places set monthly records for heat — harder to break than daily records — Walton calculated. That’s more March heat records set just last month than in entire decades in the past.

All those broken records “tells us that climate change is kicking our butts,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections.

“January through March period was the driest on record for the contiguous U.S. So not only was it hot, it was record dry as well,” Masters said. “And that’s a bad combination for water availability, for agriculture, for river levels, for navigation.”

The European climate and weather service Copernicus and NOAA are both forecasting a “super” strong El Niño to form in a few months and intensify into the winter. Meteorologists expect that to increase already warm temperatures across the globe, likely pushing past the hottest year mark set by 2024.

An El Niño is a natural temporary and cyclical warming of parts of the central Pacific that alters weather across the planet. An El Niño is formed when a specific part of the ocean is 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 F) warmer than normal. It is considered moderate at 1 degree Celsius and strong at 1.5 degrees Celsius. Both NOAA and the Europeans are forecasting this one to be well above 2 degrees Celsius into an area that is informally called super sized and perhaps rivaling records set in 2015 and 2016.

An El Niño releases heat stored in the upper ocean into the air, which causes global temperatures to rise, but with a few months lag time, said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini.

“A strong El Niño could plausibly push global temperatures to new record levels in late 2026 and into 2027,” Gensini said.

Super-sized El Niños often trigger a “climate regime shift,” which pushes normal conditions into a different pattern for years or decades, according to a study last December in the journal Nature Communications. The study said after the 2015-2016 El Niño, the Gulf of Mexico jumped to a new sustained level of warmth that may have contributed to stronger hurricanes along the Gulf Coast in the years after.

Growing research seems to indicate that a warming world from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas could be making El Niños stronger, but climate scientists said that’s not quite a consensus yet.

“Global warming is supercharging El Niños and the atmospheric warming they drive,” said University of Michigan environment dean and climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck. “We saw this in 2016 and more recently in 2023. We’re likely to see another jump in global temperatures if a strong El Niño develops later this year as being predicted.”

El Niños tend to tamp down hurricane activity in the Atlantic, but ramp it up in the Pacific and could help ease the southwestern drought, Masters said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

FILE - Juan Olmedo, left, and his wife Alejandra Delgado use an umbrella to shield from the sun while on a walk at Shoreline Park in Mountain View, Calif., March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

FILE - A jogger runs past as a man sunbathes on a hot day at Crissy Field in San Francisco, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

FILE - A baseball fan tries to shield from the sun during the fourth inning of a spring training baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Athletics, March 17, 2026, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)