What makes a perfect dog?

Insights from a club show

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A GROOMER prepares a poodle's hair for the show.

(The Washington Post)

EVERY dog at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is a perfect dog because all dogs are perfect creatures.

But if you ask their owners and handlers what makes each of these dogs — some of whom appear completely indistinguishable, to the untrained eye, from the dogs of their breed they’re competing against — the most perfect specimen, they will tell you something like:

“He has a really, really nice topline, and he does a nice free stack,” Melissa Stehler says of River, a three-year-old Pembroke Welsh corgi.

Or: “See how open her nares are?” Perry Payson says of Cliquot, the French bulldog. “See how nice and tight her feet are?”

Or: “He has an even gait that isn’t choppy,” says Erin Karst, the handler of Tater Tot, a tubular little dachshund. “The legs don’t interfere with each other.”

Topline, free stack, nares, gait. These are the words to describe variances in dog perfection, the qualities that the judges here might use to pick the champions from a parade of beautiful, same-seeming canines. (Nares, by the way, are nostrils, a topline is the posture of a dog’s spinal column, and a free stack is when a dog is standing in the correct posture.)

For those watching on TV, the assessment can be a bit inscrutable. A finely dressed man or woman will run their hands over a dog’s head and spine, pull its tail up, lift the flaps of its gums, and sometimes grab the dog’s, er, undercarriage before asking its handler to take it for a little jog.

It’s a visual and tactile task. When Westminster judge Denise Flaim touches a dog, “I’m just confirming with my hands what my eyes are telling me, which is why I’m able to move somewhat quickly,” Flaim says.