Couples at the Westminster show bond over dogs, and each other

NEW YORK (AP) — Must love dogs. Really, really love dogs.

The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show spotlights the bond between people and dogs. But reaching the United States' premier canine event also can be about another kind of love.

“For me, it would be very hard to do this without somebody who was as vested in it as I am,” said two-time Westminster-winning handler Bill McFadden, who's half of a dogdom power couple. His wife, Taffe McFadden, handled the second-place winner in 2019, and she and Bono the Havanese were among past finalists who appeared Monday evening in a special tribute to Westminster's 150th annual show.

Yes, the McFaddens — who met at a dog show in the late 1970s and married in 1985 — have faced and sometimes beaten each other at various shows. And no, there are no hard feelings.

“I think some of my best memories are watching Taffe win best in show,” Bill said Saturday while the couple readied for Westminster. “If one of us takes the big ribbon home, it’s awesome. Doesn’t matter which one.”

After starting with agility and other sports on Saturday, the storied show got down to its traditional business Monday. Dogs ranging from teeny Chihuahuas to towering Irish wolfhounds started competing in the multi-round, breed-by-breed competition that leads to the best in show award Tuesday night.

Some finalists were chosen Monday, starting with Zaida, an Afghan hound who has twice won the World Dog Show, a major international showcase. She'd never gotten this far at Westminster before, and handler Willy Santiago told the crowd he'd been waiting for “this day for all my life.”

“She’s the dog that makes me feel everything can happen,” he said, choking up.

Also advancing was Cookie, a Maltese who pulled off a significant upset in the toy dog semifinals, besting two-time prior Westminster finalist Comet the shih tzu.

Two more of this year's finalists were to be chosen Monday night, and another three on Tuesday.

The dogs hoping for a finalist nod include a Lhasa apso named JJ, who won the massive AKC National Championship show in December.

"He's a show dog all the time,” said breeder, handler and co-owner Susan Giles of Manakin Sabot, Virginia, who has had Lhasas for 53 years. JJ is everything the breed is supposed to be, though he departs from one norm for a breed that’s generally reserved with strangers: “He’ll talk to everybody,” she said in an interview after his first-round win Monday morning.

A number of veteran Westminster handlers are married couples, and no wonder.

The McFaddens, for instance, travel the country to 150 to 200 dog shows a year and share their home with a varying cast of canines that need feeding, exercise, grooming and training.

“I can’t even imagine trying to date and explain to somebody, ‘Now, I’m going to be gone five days a week, and I’m going to have like 20 dogs with me,’” said Bill McFadden, who largely credits his wife “for any semblance of order that we have” at their home on five acres (two hectares) in Acampo, California.

The key is “being with someone you can actually coexist with — constantly,” said Bill McFadden (who's aware of the 2005 romcom “Must Love Dogs” but doesn't recall seeing it). Like many top handlers, they also have assistants, he notes.

Then there are couples such as Randy and Andrea Huelsemann of Prairie Du Sac, Wisconsin, who juggle breeding and showing their own French bulldogs with their full-time jobs. He’s a 911 dispatcher, and she’s a dental hygienist.

“We do it for just the love of it, for something to do together,” Randy said while waiting to bring their dog Ollie into a first-round ring Monday.

“It's a great hobby for the two of us,” allowing for travel together, Andrea added.

Not handling but no less enthusiastic were Lydia Hearst and Chris Hardwick, who cheered and whooped for their otterhound, Zoltar. He didn't win his breed, but he probably got the most decibels.

“I die a lot in horror movies, so I can scream for a long time,” Hearst said with a laugh. She and her husband, who hosted AMC's “Talking Dead,” are both actors and grew up with dogs — pets in his case, and show dogs in hers. Her mother, newspaper heir and longtime Frenchie owner Patricia Hearst Shaw, was on hand to see both Zoltar and her dog Sassy in Monday's competition.

Wilbur the beagle had his own Hollywood connections. The dog, who appears in the new Netflix police drama “The Rip,” starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, was squired Monday by Charlotte Jones, 13, in a competition for junior handlers.

It was difficult to bring one of the family's dogs to New York from Charlotte's home near Honolulu, so her family connected through beagle circles with Wilbur's owner, Mary Cummings, who has long trained dogs for both the show ring and show business.

Which does Wilbur prefer?

“Everything,” said Cummings, of Binghamton, New York. “He likes anything that involves food and getting attention.”

A handler brushes his tiny Maltese at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Contestants stand with their borzois in the demo ring at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Bill McFadden, center, a seasoned handler, socializes at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Wilbur the beagle, a blue triangle beagle canine actor known for his role in "The Rip," jumps onto his handler's legs at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

A black toy poodle walks in the demo ring at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Dogs prepare to walk through the demo ring during the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

A pug named Petunia Pugdashian rests at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Bill McFadden, a seasoned dog handler, socializes at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

FILE — Handler Willy Santiago competes with Afghan Hound Zaida during breed group judging at the 148th Westminster Kennel Club Dog show, in this May 13, 2024 file image, at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, File)

A show dog named Valli gets groomed at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

BEIRUT (AP) — When the Israel- Hezbollah war broke out in early March, Hussein Shuman fled the heavy bombardment of the southern suburbs of Beirut, but he didn’t bother trying to rent an apartment elsewhere.

In areas deemed “safe” because the Lebanese militant group has no presence, he feels that Shiite Muslims like him are not welcome. Residents regard them with suspicion as potential Hezbollah members, and landlords charge exorbitant prices to rent to displaced families.

Instead, the 35-year-old, who works at a perfume company, headed to central Beirut where he set up a small tent where he has been staying, along with his wife, 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.

Shuman even rejected an offer from a friend who invited him to bring his family to the Christian mountain town of Zgharta. He preferred to remain in his tent, even though it has flooded twice in the past two weeks.

“By staying here I have my dignity and respect,” Shuman said, sitting on a chair near his tent as a barber gave him an open-air hair cut. “We will not stay in a place where we are going to be humiliated.”

In a country full of suspicion, the more than 1 million people — most of them Shiite — displaced as a result of Israel’s evacuation orders and airstrikes have limited options.

Some landlords in Christian areas refuse to rent to Shiites. Others demand inflated rents and deposits that few can afford. Fatima Zahra, 42, from Beirut’s southern suburbs, said she and her sister sold their finest jewelry to pay the $5,000 the landlord charged up front for two months’ rent.

In some Beirut neighborhoods, displaced people who can afford to pay high rents are only allowed to take the apartment after landlords inform the security agencies to check on whether the family has any links to Hezbollah.

Sectarian tensions are a sensitive issue in Lebanon because the country fought a 15-year civil war ending in 1990 that largely broke down along sectarian lines.

Social frictions have worsened since Israel’s targeted airstrikes killed Hezbollah officials or members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in predominantly Christian, Sunni and Druze areas, raising fears among the hosts that Hezbollah members are mingling within the civilian population.

The Lebanese are deeply divided over Hezbollah’s wars with Israel, with many in the small nation blaming the Iran-backed group for dragging the country into a deadly conflict that has so far left more than 1,300 people dead and over 4,000 wounded. Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, triggering the ongoing Middle East war.

The renewed war has caused widespread destruction and paralyzed the economy at a time when Lebanon is still in the throes of a historic economic crisis that broke out in late 2019. The country has not yet recovered from the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024.

In mid-March, an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the town of Aramoun killed three people, prompting some local residents to call for the displaced to leave the area.

Days later, an airstrike on the nearby town of Bchamoun also killed three people, including a four-year-old girl, who were displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

In neither case did Israel announce the intended target of the strikes, but neighbors assumed that someone in the targeted apartments was a Hezbollah member.

“Had we known that they were linked to Hezbollah, we would have kicked them out,” an angry man who owns an apartment in the building in Bchamoun said at the scene.

In late March, a missile exploded over the predominantly Christian Keserwan region north of Beirut, with debris falling on different areas. Although the Lebanese army later said that it was an Iranian missile passing over Lebanon that fell, many initially assumed that it was an Israeli airstrike targeting displaced people.

No one was was hurt by the missile debris, but a group of young men attacked displaced Shiites in the district of Haret Sakher near the coastal city of Jounieh, calling for their eviction, before local officials intervened.

“We don’t want them here,” shouted a Haret Sakher resident shortly after the strike. He said that some of the displaced refer to their hosts as “Zionists,” accusing them of being aligned with Israel because they criticize Hezbollah for dragging the country into the conflict. He added: “We don’t want national coexistence.”

George Saadeh, a member of Jounieh’s municipal council, told The Associated Press that he had called on Haret Sakher residents to avoid any reaction “so that we can preserve civil peace.”

In a predominantly Christian area just north of Beirut, plans to house displaced people in an abandoned warehouse near the port were suspended last week after drawing backlash from lawmakers and residents.

“The Israeli targeting campaign has created a lot of paranoia,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center. “If you see a displaced person, maybe you wonder, ‘What if this person is a target?’”

Fearing the tension could slip out of control, the army has beefed up its presence on the streets.

Last week, army commander Gen. Rudolphe Haikal toured Beirut and the southern city of Sidon and told troops that they should be “firm in the face of any attempt to undermine internal stability,” the army said in a statement.

Police forces, including a SWAT unit, were deployed at major intersections in the capital to preserve peace and prevent any friction between the displaced and locals. Police patrols pass through the tent city by Beirut’s coast where Shuman and his family are staying.

An official at the municipality of the predominantly Sunni town of Naameh, just south of Beirut, said that they have received thousands of people displaced from southern Lebanon.

The official said that in order to avoid tensions, they opened a school in one district for displaced Shiites and another in a different neighborhood for people displaced from Sunni border villages.

“There are concerns among people,” that conflict could break out said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

With the Israeli airstrikes and ground invasion mainly targeting Shiite areas, U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, a Lebanese-American, was criticized for stoking sectarianism. He told reporters in late March that the U.S. had asked Israel for a commitment that Christian villages in southern Lebanon will not be attacked.

“We have asked the Israelis to leave Christian villages in the south alone and they told us that they will not touch Christian villages,” Issa said. However, he added, “They (Israelis) said that they cannot guarantee” that the villages would be left alone “if there is infiltration into these villages” by Hezbollah members.

Several Christian villages in southern Lebanon have asked displaced Shiites who were sheltering there to leave, fearing that their presence might trigger Israeli attacks.

Legislator Taymour Joumblatt who is the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, the largest Druze-led political group in the country, said that the biggest concern in the country now is “strife.”

“The most important thing is to reduce sectarian pressures on the ground,” Joumblatt said. “Our Shiites brothers are part of this country and our humanitarian duty is to help them.”

———

Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre contributed to this report from Beirut.

FILE — A displaced woman who fled Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, carries her belonging as she moves to a better spot to shelter from the rain, past an Arabic anti-war poster that reads, "Sacrificing for whom? Lebanon does not need war," in Beirut, Saturday, March 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

Special forces police officers deployed amid tensions between people displaced by Israeli strikes and local residents in Beirut neighborhoods, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

FILE — A child walks past tents sheltering people displaced by Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, along the Beirut waterfront in Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

Special forces police officers deployed amid tensions between people displaced by Israeli strikes and local residents in Beirut neighborhoods, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

File — Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)