flourishes only where wagers may accompany it. Remove the betting
element, and you turn your racetrack into a huge and untrodden
lot.

There is practically no betting connected with any dogshow.
People go there to see the dogs and to watch their judging, and
for nothing else. As a rule, the show is not even a social event.
Nevertheless, the average dogshow is thronged with spectators.
(Try to cross Madison Square Garden, on Washington's Birthday
afternoon, while the Westminster Kennel Club's Show is in
progress. If you can work your way through the press of visitors
in less than half an hour, then Nature intended you for a
football champion.)

The fortunate absence of a betting-interest alone keeps such
affairs from becoming among the foremost sporting features of the
world. Many of the dogs on view are fools, of course. Because
many of them have been bred solely with a view to show-points.
And their owners and handlers have done nothing to awaken in
their exhibits the half-human brain and heart that is a dog's
heritage. All has been sacrificed to "points"--to points which
are arbitrary and which change as freakily as do fashions in
dress.

For example, a few years ago, a financial giant collected and
exhibited one of the finest bunches of collies on earth. He had a
competent manager and an army of kennel-men to handle them. He
took inordinate pride in these priceless collies of his. Once I
watched him, at the Garden Show, displaying them to some Wall
Street friends. Three times he made errors in naming his dogs.