When Emerson Jaquish’s mother decided 10 years ago to get a saluki, the contract for the dog said that the canine needed to be “shown.” In other words, if they were to buy the dog, they would be contractually obligated to enter it at dog shows. So at the age of 9, Emerson entered into the ring for the first time, showing her family dog. She began to learn showdog handling from renowned dog trainer Jody Davidson, who trained many of the junior-level handlers in Arizona. From there, she excelled, eventually qualifying for the Westminster Dog Show several times in the Junior Showmanship category.
Ten years on, Emerson is still in the ring, although she typically shows dachshunds now. Dog shows have become her life. She works as an assistant handler under Erin Karst, a professional handler. She attends online college, which gives her the flexibility to work full-time for Karst.
“I try to get all my schoolwork done on Monday, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, so that Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I can focus on the dog shows,” Emerson tells me. I ask her to estimate how much time she spends getting ready for attending dog shows each week. She laughs. “All of it? It’s one big, continuous loop, pretty much.” At the average show, she and Karst manage around a dozen dogs.
Westminster is different—only the cream of the crop make it to the show, so Emerson’s workload is mercifully lighter this week, with just two dogs. One of them, a rotund and fluffy dachshund named Mardi Gras, gazes up at Emerson adoringly. In a few days, they’ll be back on the road, and then the endless cycle of bathing, cleaning, and showing will begin all over again. As high as Emerson has already ascended in the sport, and as much as she has enjoyed being an assistant handler, she doesn’t plan to do it professionally.
“I’ve seen the life of a handler, and it’s really stressful,” she says. “So I would rather not.” At 19, she’s also finally aging out of Junior Showmanship, the category of competition at dog shows that allows children and teens to show off their dog handling skills. Colloquially referred to as “Juniors,” Junior Showmanship is different from anything else you’ll see at a dog show, because it focuses on the humans.
In another ring, I watched a woman trip while running her dog, and they still won an award. In Juniors, the handlers—aged 9 to 19—are the ones being evaluated. The judges are checking for how well you present your dog. Can you properly correct its posture and show off its teeth? Are you moving naturally as you run around the ring? Can you keep your composure if your dog starts misbehaving? If you win Best Junior Handler at seven or more American Kennel Club dog shows, you might be good enough to qualify for Westminster’s Junior Showmanship championship, the most prestigious junior handling competition.
Watching a Junior Showmanship competition is one of those things that will make you wonder, How the hell does someone get into this anyway? Many of the junior handlers I spoke to have parents who breed dogs. One teenage girl, who insists on calling me “ma’am,” tells me she started handling because her brother had been showing livestock in 4H. It’s a reminder that at the end of the day, these dog shows are about showing off the breeding stock. Most seem reluctant to continue the sport professionally.
It is, after all, a grind. Most of the junior handlers at Westminster attend shows year-round, every weekend or every other weekend. There’s never a break. “It kind of broke me a little bit,” Isabella Ruffoni, 19, tells me about her Juniors career. She comes from a multigenerational family of pug breeders. “My options were to keep going with it and continue not loving it, or to take a break.” One handler tells me that there’s been a growing trend in the last decade where the most hardcore Juniors competitors have started homeschooling.
Her daughter’s friend, a former Juniors competitor, shakes her head when I ask her about it. “School first,” she says. “As a young person, I would rather go make money and do this as a hobby.”
I can’t help wondering how many children will still be in this sport a generation from now. Leela, 14, tells me it’s increasingly uncommon. None of her friends at school do it, and there’s a kind of isolation in seeing her friends bond over their school soccer team, while all her handler friends live in other states.
In order to enter a Junior Showmanship competition, you need to have an AKC-registered purebred, and the dog can be any of the 209 breeds. As Juniors Preliminaries Judge Jason Hoke tells me, you previously needed to co-own the dog you were showing, but they’ve recently removed that rule to lower the barrier for entry. Most of the junior handlers I speak to are showing their family dogs, but others aren’t. Leela shares her Old English Sheepdog, Bandit, with a family that lives two towns over.
In the ring, nearly every junior handler has a different breed. It’s a rare sight at the Javits Center, where most of the rings consist of something like 48 French bulldogs or six Saint Bernards. As the junior handlers line up in the ring, it’s hard not to notice that they all somehow resemble their respective canines. It’s partly a result of strategic dressing. Kennedy, 12, is presenting her family’s Pekingese, and she had her pink suit custom-made. Hadrian Towell, this year’s Westminster Best Junior, wore a tan suit with black details that matched perfectly with his Manchester Terrier.
Each round of competition is slow and methodical. The junior handlers individually present their dogs at a table, showing the judges the correct positioning of the hind legs, or answering questions about the proper bite. Then, they lead the dog for a left-hand turn around the ring. Then the field is winnowed. The judge will stand in the middle of the ring, turning and pacing to look at each competitor. The handlers adjust their dogs, hoping to show one last demonstration of poise as the tension builds. Finally, the judge will gesture a hand toward the best of the round, and the rest will get up and exit the ring quietly.
In Judge Hoke’s case, I notice that he shakes the hands of all the handlers before he makes his final picks. This is the toughest Juniors competition he judges all year, he says, because all the handlers are established winners.
“Part of Junior Showmanship is sportsmanship, learning to be young adults,” he tells me. “And, you know, the youth of today, they’re not used to social interaction. And it teaches them to look me in the eyes, say thank you, be polite. It’s really important, I think, to teach young kids not only how to show a dog, but how to grow up into a young lady or young man that has good manners and is thoughtful and congratulates others.”
I nod and thank him, while maintaining strong eye contact.
One of the handlers, wearing a magenta suit, walks an old basset hound around the ring. When she pauses in front of the judge, she gently repositions the dog’s legs twice. Next to me, a woman nods approvingly. “The basset,” she says, shaking her head. “That girl made something out of nothing.”
As Hoke later explains, the basset was being uncooperative; a trait that could have been a mark against its temperament in the regular, best of breed evaluations. At one point, it sat down. “She just picked the dog up, reset the legs, and waited for me to continue the exam,” Hoke says. “It was a challenging dog and she made it look the best that anyone could have made it look.”
