Animals: Mutt Show

Young Tommy Adair is a purebred English bulldog, son of a grand champion. Some day he may know the feel of smooth green carpet under his feet, the glare of arc lights, the eyeing of solemn experts who may award him ribbons and medals for his form, coat, stance, carriage. But already he has won a prize—in Ocean City, N. J. one day last week—simply for being so appallingly, truculently ugly.

Some 5,000 residents and Easter visitors watched Tommy Adair and 149 other less well-bred dogs straggle crookedly down the resort city’s wide boardwalk. An American Legion band blared martially while the dogs tugged or were tugged by small owners who had entered them in Ocean City’s second annual Mutt Show. Proudly heading the line ambled an ingratiating, yellowish mongrel named Hobo Ocean City who makes the boardwalk his year-round home. Barred from competition because he was champion Mutt last year, he was chosen host this year.

The only qualifications for entrance in the Mutt Show were four legs and a bark. Aristocratic lineage won purebreds no favors. The American Legion (sponsors) saw to that by choosing as judges three men utterly ignorant of dogs. No expert could have deciphered the scrambled strains in a waggling pup named Peanuts, and no expertness was needed to tell that he deserved a prize for being “cute.”

While newsreel cameras chirred, 48 other prizes, mostly collars and harnesses, were awarded to owners of largest, smallest, shortest-haired, longest-haired, oddest dogs. There was only one disappointment: by an oversight the judges failed to honor, as advertised, the mutt with the most fleas.