Call it the Dog Bowl. Westminster show's canine athletes get their piece of Super Bowl weekend

NEW YORK (AP) — They're at the top of their sport. They run, weave and go airborne And they're going all out win the championship this weekend.

Sorry — no, they're not the Chiefs or the Eagles. They're the agility dogs at the Westminster Kennel Club show, which began Saturday by showcasing various dog sports.

Dog folk often call Westminster the Super Bowl of dog shows, and the comparison might be especially fitting this year. The United States' most prestigious canine competition opened on the same weekend as pro football's Super Bowl, which features the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. The rare coincidence comes after both competitions' dates shifted in recent years.

“I always said I wanted people to call the Super Bowl ‘the Westminster of football,’ ” quipped dog expert David Frei, who has a foot in both worlds: He used to work in publicity for the Denver Broncos and the San Francisco 49ers.

The Westminster of football? Well, Westminster is 90 years older than the Super Bowl, after all.

And there have been some other connections between the gridiron and Westminster’s green carpet. Los Angeles Chargers defensive end Morgan Fox co-owns a French bulldog who came within a smushy-nose length of winning at Westminster in 2022 and was a finalist the following year. (Many other NFL players also have dogs for fun, if not for show, including Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes.)

However you want to analogize it, being at Westminster is a triumph for Guster the rescue pug. Owner Steve Martin never did the sport before Guster signaled he was interested: He started wagging his tail and tilting his head while they watched the Westminster agility contest on TV several years ago.

“We never thought we’d be here. And now we’re here,” Martin, of Austin, Texas, said as they readied to compete Saturday.

Saturday's contest featured about 350 hopefuls that already have reached a championship level in agility, one of dogdom's most popular sports. It was added in 2014 to the Westminster show, marking the first time any part of the event had allowed mixed-breed dogs since the 1800s. Last year saw the first mixed-breed agility winner, a border collie-papillion mix named, appropriately, Nimble, who is competing again this year.

She's an intentional blend of two breeds that do well in the sport. But it also draws rescue dogs such as an Australian cattle dog mix named Sawyer, or Soy Sauce for short.

His owner, Dr. Amy Ondeyka, has a complicated work schedule as a New Jersey emergency room doctor and EMS medical director. But she made time for agility after realizing she'd adopted a super-energetic dog who opens cabinets, unzips things and otherwise causes domestic mayhem when bored.

“He's always exciting — he does ridiculous things,” she said as he intermittently leaped into her arms during what was ostensibly down time between agility runs Saturday. “We have fun, regardless what happens.”

While some dogs are steered to agility to burn off energy, the sport helps others come out of their shell. Tully, a lanky, shaggy, mostly-Labradoodle mix, used to be “afraid of the world” but now is excited to go to agility classes and competitions, owner Carla Rash said.

Saturday's canine competitors were a spectrum of dogdom, from a statuesque rough collie to a seven-pound (0.9 kg) papillion. They navigated an obstacle course of jumps, tunnels, ramps and other features as handlers gave hand and voice signals. The object is to be fastest, without making mistakes.

The agility winner will emerge from a final round Saturday evening.

Westminster’s traditional, breed-by-breed judging happens Monday and Tuesday, capped by the coveted best in show prize Tuesday night. That's for purebreds only, but mixed-breed dogs also could enter Saturday's obedience competition, an event that Westminster added in 2016.

Saturday's events also featured various demonstrations, among them Westminster's first go at flyball, a canine relay race. Dogs run down a line of jumps, grab a tennis ball and speed back to the starting line, where a teammate then takes off.

“It's a lot of organized chaos,” Hillary Brown said with a chuckle after competing with her Boston terrier, Paxil, and his teammates: a standard poodle, a border collie and a whippet-border collie mix. Their squad, Clean Break, is based in York, Pennsylvania.

“It's a blast. The dogs love it,” Brown said.