A day for rez mutts

Mary Vitt was flipping through the cable TV channels one day about seven years ago when she came across the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

"I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen," recalled Vitt, a Bureau of Indian Education audiologist. "All those dogs prancing around with their big long names, everybody taking it so seriously."

Vitt thought about Mutton, a stray rez mutt she had rescued and placed in a loving home. Mutton had been hit by a car and walked with a limp, but she was still, Vitt was certain, more dog than any of those pedicured, pedigreed creatures promenading across her TV screen.

"They should have a dog show for mutts," thought Vitt.

Over the next few weeks, the thought kept trotting across her mind like a coonhound on a scent. Eventually Vitt decided that if it was going to happen, the "they" in her thought was going to have to be replaced with "I."

Witt got some of her animal-loving teacher friends together and an annual event was born.

Last Saturday, April 18, marked the seventh All-Mutt Dog Show in Crownpoint.

Fifteen canines competed for such titles as "Best Tail" and "Least Obedient."

Some purebreds crashed the show - a few armfuls of dachshunds, a shivering Chihuahua pup, Bruce the boxer and the regal Aragon, an 80-pound Siberian husky whose owner, school psychologist Yasmine Reinhard, had brought home from a trip to Russia.

Vitt decided not to make a stink about whether or not the dogs were technically mutts. After all, it's easy to prove your dog has papers, but it's kind of hard to prove he doesn't.

And anyway, "We're all about inclusivity here," she said.

If there had been a prize for the muttiest mutt, it might have gone to Spicy, a long, low-to-the-ground, shaggy, multicolored affair that might have been a cross between a Welsh Corgi and an Australian shepherd, among other things.

Speech therapist Debra Blanton was 53 and had never owned a pet when Spicy showed up and adopted her.

"I lucked out," said Blanton. "She's the best dog."

From a purely objective point of view, it was hard to see what was so great about Spicy. Even alongside the other mutts she stood out as decidedly odd-looking, and when it came time to run the obstacle course, Spicy took one look at the bright yellow poles, slipped her collar and ran around sniffing the other dogs while her handler, Blanton's student Leila Joe, frantically called after her.

But that's the thing about dogs. Your dog is always the best dog. In fact, that's the very attitude Vitt is trying to engender with the dog show (those school employees always have a hidden agenda to educate).

"It's mostly for fun," Vitt said, "but it's also an effort to get people more involved with their dogs. We get a lot of dogs abandoned at the school, and we're trying to get people to really enjoy and take pride in their dogs so that won't happen so much."

Everyone at the dog show was obviously taking pride in their pet, but perhaps none so much as Lacey Smith, who drove all the way from Pinedale, N.M., with her good-natured Aussie mix, Butch.

"When I saw an ad for an 'all-mutt' dog show, I had to enter him," Smith said. "This may be his only chance to be in a show."

And Butch, of course, is also "the best dog."

Picking up a pawful of ribbons, including "Most Obedient," was Ozzie, a creature who frankly wouldn't be allowed within a hundred yards of the Westminster Kennel Club until somebody made sure he was neutered.

Even owner Juanita Bates, who found him running wild at the chapter house, admits he is not the most attractive of canines - she named him after Ozzy Osbourne because with his black coat and bat-like face, he looked like the perfect pet for the heavy metal rocker.

Now, however, she wouldn't be without him.

"He's a really nice dog," she said, and he certainly seemed to be, sitting quietly throughout the competition even when other dogs, possibly mistaking him for a bat, growled at him.

"Best Trick" went to Ruby, a red heeler mix who could jump into the back of a pickup with the tailgate up and walk a series of six-inch-wide planks suspended several feet above the ground.

Incongruously, Ruby also won "Least Obedient." Only heeler owners will be able to figure that one out.

For "Best in Show," 9-year-old judge/MC Matthew Holtsoi and his cohorts chose Joey, an adorably tiny pup who barely qualifies as a mutt, having only two breeds - dachshund and Chihuahua - in his pedigree.

Asked the secret to being a good dog owner, Joey's 7-year-old owner, Skylar Blackbull, responded, "You have to feed them every day and give them water."

Hmmm, sounds like she's holding back her real secrets, lest Spicy and Ozzie give her a run for her money next year.

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