Westminster Dog Show 2024: Photos From Behind the Scenes

Follow live updates on the 2024 Westminster Dog Show.

The tennis balls had been stashed away safely by the time 2,500 dogs and their obedient human entourages overtook the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens this weekend for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

The event began on Saturday with agility, obedience and diving competitions before transitioning on Monday into the contests that are more familiar to the audience at home: best in breed, best in group and best in show.

The human-to-dog ratio at the tennis center might be 2 to 1, but the power balance favors the dogs. There were pugs being wheeled around in strollers, Dalmatians posing like statues on artificial turf, and basset hounds whose ears were strapped to their chins so they didn’t sweep the asphalt. In a tent reserved for grooming, a Lhasa apso was carefully flat-ironed while several miniature poodles were sculpted into sudsy topiaries.

The event, which was first held in 1877, called Madison Square Garden home for a century but relocated to the Lyndhurst, an estate just outside the city, during the early pandemic. This is the second year of the show’s being held in the Flushing section of Queens, with Arthur Ashe Stadium offering deluxe accommodations for the show’s main events.

On Tuesday night, the handsome field of competitors was winnowed down to just one, with the best in show judge, Rosalind Kramer, selecting Sage, a miniature poodle, as this year’s champion.

Whether they won or lost, the dogs remained exceedingly well behaved. The humans, who had a selection of beer and gin and tonics at several concession stands, had more varied results.