Couple Competes Alongside Each Other at Westminster

Couple Competes Alongside Each Other at Westminster

I have watched The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden on TV since I was a little girl. I grew up with many different breeds in my family over the years, from Yorkies and Beagles to Collies and Shih Tzu, but it was always the Puli that caught my eye. Every year I would keep a lookout for the breed, and sometimes the Puli even achieved a Group win, which I would always be cheering on. I often wondered what it would be like to show such a dog at an event as spectacular as Westminster.

My husband, Scott, on the other hand, watched Westminster from time to time as a kid, and while he found the unusual breeds fascinating, he had a hard time understanding the “rules of the game.” The reasons why the judge was declaring this one dog to be the best seemed so arbitrary, considering how different they all were. Of course, his only dog growing up was a Scottish Terrier-Poodle cross that belonged to his grandmother, so the interest level in dogs was never really there.

Scott adopted several dogs (and cats) during his adulthood, including a beautiful Tibetan Spaniel with a tragic backstory. While he loved his animals, the heartbreak of them passing on due to prior health issues (and sometimes just age) so quickly after he’d acclimated to them became so great that he swore off having animals in the house at all. That is, until he met me and I shared my dream with him.

While in my 30s, I’d acquired a pair of white Pulik that I was ultimately unable to show. Fast forward to my 50s, I reached a point in my life where I realized I wasn’t getting any younger. Hence, I decided it was time to pursue what I was always so passionate about and live some of those dreams. I reached out to several breeders listed on the Puli Club of America website and eventually acquired our first two Pulik.

Thus began our journey in Pulik together. First came Ziggy and Bella, who Scott handled at this year’s show. They had limited showing during that time due to COVID, but eventually we began to show at local venues as well as a couple of Puli Club of America Nationals. We relocated to Florida in 2021, and in 2022, we acquired several more Pulik with the goal of beginning our own breeding program with a focus on developing healthy lines of both black Pulik and the less common white Pulik. With white, particularly, there are a lot of challenges getting good health results. For example, some breeders are now crossing whites with blacks to improve hip quality. It’s a multi-generational process, a labor of love to preserve the health and achieve the desired white color in the breed. This is one of our goals and we are so appreciative of our fellow breeders, Linda Meakin, DVM and Sherry Gibson, longtime AKC judge, who have taught us so much about the Breed Standard, evaluation of adults and puppies, as well as reproductive health. We are so thankful for their support, along with many others who have helped us get to this point in our journey. So far, we have produced a couple of litters and have high hopes for our up-and-coming future prospects of returning to Westminster.

Being at the Javits Center for Westminster and showing our Pulik has truly been a dream come true. We may not have won Best of Breed, but having Danny receive an Award of Merit was a great start. We absolutely love NYC and the fact that Westminster was back in the city this year! We are still on cloud 9 over being able to compete at this year’s show. It was a wonderful first-time experience for us, and hopefully, there will be many more. Now that we’ve experienced our first Westminster, we hope that someday we will get that chance to make it to the Group with one of our bred-by prospects. And perhaps, maybe someday, we will ultimately show off one of our beloved Pulik in the Best in Show ring at Madison Square Garden.