Humans Unleashed

NEW YORK It's nearly show time and a couple dozen Pomeranians with fluffy tails and beady eyes are lined up on a bench, getting spritzed into cotton-candy poof balls. One woman is sculpting muzzle hairs with a toothbrush. Another is rubbing Pinaud men's hair tonic on her dog's backside. It like visiting the world's silliest spa.

"Keeps it fluffed without drying it out," says Audrey Roberts, who's from Texas and speaking over a small cloud of mist. "Can't have too much hair."

The dogs seem impervious or bored, like starlets on a smoke break. But in less than 45 minutes, these itsy-bitsy canines and their anxious owners will trot into Ring 7 on the floor of Madison Square Garden, hoping to capture the best of breed title at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Known to insiders as the Big Time. Known to outsiders as the Most Satire-Friendly Event on Earth.

More than 2,600 dogs have converged here, all of them designated champions, in 165 breeds and varieties that range from intimidating (Doberman pinscher) to preposterous (Dandie Dinmont terrier), from the woefully impractical (mastiff) to the largely obscure (Glen of Imaal terrier). On Monday and Tuesday, the show turned the Garden into the yapping and malodorous center of the dog-loving universe, with the top prize, best in show, awarded last night to Ch. Rocky Top's Sundance Kid, a brown and white bull terrier.

Most of the yapping, of course, comes from the owners. Each breed is a soap opera unto itself, with its own intrigue and gossip, its own heroes and villains and, naturally, its own superstars. Spend an afternoon with the Pomeranians and you get a sense of just how complex and vicious -- yes, be forewarned, it is going to get ugly -- these mini-dramas can be.

"I remember watching a handler step on a miniature poodle, during the competition," says Mark Lasiter, who is applying some final touches to his Pomeranian on the first day of competition. "You don't see that too often, but it happens. And there's no way that was an accident."

At another event, according to another dog show regular, a Newfoundland was left alone for a few minutes and someone -- a rival owner, one presumes -- shaved the dog's head.

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As anyone who's seen the movie mockumentary "Best in Show" might have guessed, this whole purebred dog thing went berserk a long time ago. Like any thriving subculture, its language is sometimes hard to decipher. Other times you can understand it, but it sounds all gangsta, all Snoop Dogg, if you will.

"If I could find a really gorgeous bitch, I would think about it," one owner says. "But first I need a really gorgeous bitch."

"I think the judge just really likes long-legged bitches. I've got a short-legged bitch."