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)

As the NBA trade deadline loomed last year, a star player reacted to the blockbuster trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers and Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks by saying the following:

“It’s a business. You have to understand this. Nobody’s safe. Nobody’s safe."

The player who said those words: Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo.

This season's deadline is fast approaching, now less than a week away, and it's Antetokounmpo who is the epicenter of the NBA trade universe this time. Speculation about his future — will the Bucks trade him or not? — will continue until he either gets moved or until the deadline hits Thursday afternoon. And if he doesn't get moved now, the rumors will almost certainly resume in June around the draft and the start of free agency.

Going into Friday, there was just one trade of note this season: Atlanta moving Trae Young to Washington earlier this month. There has been an average of 13 deals around the trade deadline every year for the last decade, so it certainly seems like teams are waiting to see how the Antetokounmpo domino falls — if it happens at all — before figuring out what they want to do.

“I think there’s a lot of dialogue going on around the league,” Golden State general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. said last week. “We talk to all these teams, everybody’s talking to each other, feeling each other out.”

Everything starts with Antetokounmpo, and it doesn't take much to set the rumor mill into overdrive. A photo — probably a decade or so old — was posted on Facebook this week, purportedly on Antetokounmpo's mother's page. It's of three people, including the Bucks star, standing on the side of the court that the Miami Heat call home.

Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it meant everything. It did get a whole lot of people talking. Such is NBA life at trade deadline time, and nobody is sure how to deal with the craze this time of year.

“I don't know the answer,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said Thursday when asked about how to handle the noise. “I've never known that answer. Every year, it's a different thing. It's so much tougher now. I've said that many times. When we played ... you had to go and buy the paper to read the paper.”

Is he obsessing over the thought of losing Antetokounmpo?

“Why think about something that hasn’t happened and probably won’t happen?” Rivers asked.

This much is certain: All 30 NBA teams have taken and made calls in the last few days and will continue doing so for the next few days, all to see what the market is and how everyone can improve their chances of winning now or improve their odds of contending in a couple years.

The Warriors are probably among the teams who want Antetokounmpo the most. Miami would be another. New York, too. Everybody — Milwaukee included — surely wants him on the roster, though most teams frankly don't have much of a shot.

It's a fun time of year, except for those who have to get asked about rumors every few hours.

“We don’t really give it any time,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, speaking generally about trade rumors and not any specific one. “The veteran players, they understand that so much of it is just conjecture. It’s just a bunch of BS. But it is part of our business. That’s what we all sign up for.”

The fact that teams have interest in Antetokounmpo is obviously no surprise; he remains one of the best players in the world. The question is whether the Bucks feel this is the time to let their longtime franchise cornerstone go, amid a disappointing season and with Antetokounmpo likely to be sidelined for the next several weeks with another instance of a calf injury.

And last week, Antetokounmpo may have sounded the alarm with these comments after the Bucks lost to Oklahoma City:

“We’re not playing hard,” Antetokounmpo said that night. “We aren’t doing the right thing. We’re not playing to win. We’re not playing together. Our chemistry’s not there. Guys are being selfish, trying to look for their own shots instead of looking for the right shot for the team. Guys trying to do it on their own."

The season is getting away from the Bucks, and some of their future draft capital is gone as well because of other moves they've made in recent years. They landed Damian Lillard, then watched him tear his Achilles and wound up setting him free so he could return to Portland. They're 18-28, 12th in the Eastern Conference. It'll likely require somewhere around a .500 finish to get into the postseason mix this year and that means Milwaukee would have to go 23-13 the rest of the way.

That doesn't seem likely. So, now, the Bucks have a decision to make. It should also be noted that Antetokounmpo — who spent part of Thursday at a celebration for Peter Feigin, who is stepping down as Bucks president after a 12-year run — is a few months from entering the final year of his contract.

“The main thing,” Dunleavy said, probably echoing the thoughts of 29 other GMs right now, “is we do the right thing.”

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

Milwaukee Bucks' Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) tries to get past Denver Nuggets' Spencer Jones during the second half of an NBA basketball game Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Milwaukee Bucks' Giannis Antetokounmpo, right, and Denver Nuggets' Zeke Nnaji battle for a loose ball during the second half of an NBA basketball game Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)