| This weekend, as King Charles was coronated at Westminster Abbey, another rarefied breed gathered at a Westminster in the U.S.: the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, which will crown its annual winners on Tuesday. In 1995, the New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean profiled Biff Truesdale, a four-year-old canine who had been named Best Boxer and Best Working Dog the previous year, titles his owners hoped he would defend. Biff was also a “serious contender” for Best in Show, Orlean reported, “although the odds are against him, because this year’s judge is known as a poodle person.” Like much of Orlean’s writing about animals, her portrait of Biff offers a wry, understanding look at the creature himself, and at the even funnier creatures—people—who surround him. To an outsider, dog-show culture can seem both strange and entertaining: extremely expensive, but also very lucrative for owners of a dog like Biff, whose “stud fee” is six hundred dollars. Biff exercises on a customized treadmill, stars in advertisements in dog-show magazines, and travels constantly for work. But while his life style may be unusual, his owners’ deep identification with him echoes the way that many dog lovers talk about their pets. “He doesn’t take after me very much,” one human caretaker reflects. “I’m more of a golden retriever.” | 
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