Angel on a Leash (23 page)

PHOTO: DAVID FREI

Angel was especially protective of Teigh in his final days.

PHOTO: DAVID FREI

Grace and Angel at Teigh and Belle's gravesite.

PHOTO: MARY BLOOM

David the dog walker on the streets of New York with Angel (LEFT), Uno (FRONT), Teigh (BACK), and Belle (RIGHT).

PHOTO FROM THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION

David and Grace one morning at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.

Elizabeth Taylor and Me

O
ccasionally, someone recognizes me in public from my television work (“Hey, you're the dog guy” or “Hey, Westminster!”). That's not a big deal to me, but it can be fun. I've been doing Westminster on TV since 1990, after all, and the National Dog Show since 2002. There are millions of people in the viewing audiences, so I hope that I come across some people out there who have seen the shows.

There was one time in particular when I was very pleasantly and genuinely surprised by the recognition. In late 2003, the people at
Sex and the City
asked me if I would be interested in playing a role in one of their final episodes. This was very exciting for me; I loved the show and had watched it from its beginning in 1998. As the series was coming to an end, the world was watching.

They wanted me for the role of a dog show judge, so it wasn't a huge stretch. I read for the role and answered their questions about how I thought the scene should play out so that it would be (mostly) technically correct from a dog show standpoint while still allowing for some creative license. I guess they liked what I had to offer, because I got the part. They also accepted my suggestion to use my friend Wayne Ferguson, president of the Kennel Club of Philadelphia/National Dog Show, to play the dog show PA announcer. I felt great about how they involved me, and I was excited to be a part of it.

We were scheduled to shoot the dog show, the so-called “Astor Classic,” one evening on location in New York City at the world-famous Roseland Ballroom. They brought in a bunch of show dogs and handlers from the tri-state area, many of whom were friends of mine. The way everything was set up, the grooming area and the ring, I really did feel like I was at a dog show. Well, a small dog show, anyway.

I had my own little dressing room in one of the production trucks; that was a kick, and I was loving the whole experience. When my makeup call came, I headed for the makeup truck. It was a couple of hours before our scene was to be shot, but I imagined that they were getting us lesser players out of the way so they could make their four female stars even more beautiful.

They put me in a chair at the far end of the truck, probably where they put all the rookies. As they were working on me, I saw a few people come in and sit down, but I couldn't really tell who they were. I chatted with a man and a woman in the chairs next to me; they had been in the show in small roles before (“no small roles, only small actors”), and they told me how much they loved the crew and the stars in personal, stand-around-and-visit situations.

When they were through making me up, I got up to leave and had to walk behind all of the other chairs to get to the door. Just as I got to the door, I glanced to the left and saw Sarah Jessica Parker sitting there, looking back at me in the mirror. I smiled, and before I could say anything, she said, “Hey, I know who you are; you're the dog guy! I watch you on TV all the time!”

OK, take me now, God; I have everything I've ever needed in my life. I have been watching
Sex and the City
since its very first episode and considered myself a faithful fan, especially of Sarah Jessica, so to hear that from her, well …

I laughed and replied, “Thanks. I watch you all the time, too, Sarah Jessica. I am a great fan. Thanks for having me here tonight.” I spent the rest of the night thinking of all of the things I could have possibly said that would have been wittier and more charming.

In the show, I was judging the Toy Group, which included Charlotte (played by Kristin Davis) and her Cavalier, named Elizabeth Taylor, competing against a number of my friends. And here's a surprise: Charlotte and Elizabeth Taylor were my winners. Admittedly, I hardly looked at her dog or any of the other dogs. That's the way it was written, and I didn't have any trouble following the script. Here is the way that the episode synopsis from HBO describes it: “Elizabeth takes first prize, largely due to the judge being sweet on Charlotte.” My friend John Mandeville, the columnist for
Dog News,
used the word
lecherous
in his description, but I thought that was a little strong. Smitten … that would be OK.

We shot the end of the scene the next night. I brought Belle to the shoot that second night, which brought me into a long conversation with Sarah Jessica, who told me that she grew up with a Brittany as her family dog and loved the breed. I was grateful to have this “do-over” from my previous night's meeting with Sarah Jessica in the makeup truck, and I thought that I was witty and charming this time. She was as gracious and elegant and beautiful in person as she is on television and in movies.

The episode (“The Cold War,” episode #91) aired on February 1, 2004, and was one of the final episodes of the series. I had a couple of close-ups, and my name was in the credits for one of the hottest shows on television—and I got a paycheck. I could go through life like this. As a bonus, all these years later, I still get an occasional residual check for a couple of dollars each time the show airs somewhere, along with phone calls and emails from friends (“Hey, your
Sex and the City
episode is on right now”), which are nice reminders of the entire experience.

Kristin Davis was a sweetheart, too. We had a lot of “hurry-up-and-wait” time between takes of our scene, and I felt like I was hanging out with a friend. A couple of years later, in 2006, Kristin came to Westminster to plug the release of her new movie,
The Shaggy Dog,
and we had a little visit on the air, reminiscing about her dog show handling experience and my judging in
Sex and the City.

The winners always like the judges, of course. And even though her win was scripted, I think Kristin was caught up in all of the Westminster hoopla and felt like she and Elizabeth Taylor had gotten a big win under me. She fit right in at Westminster.

My Character-Rich World

I
f I had a dollar for every time someone asks me about the movie
Best in Show,
I could retire and live on that income (along with my hefty residuals from
Sex and the City,
of course). Well, that may be a bit of an overstatement, especially since my residuals are down to about $2, but I could still get a lot of good dinners.

My stock answer is that I love
Best in Show,
I love the fact that the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is a big enough part of the American landscape that it could be the subject of this brilliant satire, and I love that
Best in Show
lives on and on, just like Westminster itself. This movie came out in 2000, and I still get asked about it every year when I go on the publicity circuits for both Westminster and the National Dog Show.

Yes, there are a lot of things in the movie that could well happen in the dog show world in which I live, where we have a character-rich environment. I tell everyone that I do in fact know many of the characters in the movie and that my wife has indeed yelled at me when our “Busy
Bee”-equivalent toy was not in the dog's show bag (“You go back and get her Busy Bee!”).

The movie is as quote-rich as it is character-rich. I liked the yuppie couple the most, played by Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock, and the talk of their meeting at Starbucks and the quote about being lucky to have been “raised amongst catalogs” were perfect. I still laugh when I think about Harlan Pepper's (Christopher Guest) nut-naming, Buck Laughlin's (Fred Willard) TV color commentary, just about anything from Gerry Fleck (Eugene Levy), and really anything else from the movie, for that matter. The advice given by one of Harlan's friends as Harlan and his Bloodhound set out for Philadelphia: “If you get tired, pull over; if you get hungry, eat some-thing”—still gets quoted on any road trip I am a part of.

This movie is a big part of my life—not just because I walk around quoting the dialogue. It's because it brought about the creation of the National Dog Show on NBC.

It all began when Jon Miller watched the movie and found it to be hysterical. Jon is the creative genius who is now president of programming for NBC Sports and VERSUS sports network. He's the guy who came up with the hugely successful National Hockey League Winter Classic, the outdoor hockey game played on New Year's Day and broadcast on NBC. He oversees 8,000 hours of sports programming, including every big sporting event you can think of, from the Kentucky Derby to Wimbledon to Notre Dame football to the Dew Action Sports Tour and more.

He started thinking about how entertaining the dog show concept was and what he might be able to do with it. He found Wayne Ferguson, show chairman for the Kennel Club of Philadelphia. Wayne is my best friend in dogs, so I am biased, but anyone can tell you that he is an astute businessman, too. He created Cherrybrook Pet Supplies years ago from the trunk of his car and built it into a multimillion-dollar operation.