The 149th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show began on Saturday (February 8), and there’s been more Border Collie domination in the Masters Agility Championship Finals.
Vanish won the 12th Finals, the ninth time a Border Collie has won the Agility Championship, with the talented pup barely putting a foot wrong. She represented the 16-inch division and completed the course in just 26.49 seconds.
Swindle Celebration ran her close, however. The Shetland Sheepdog completed the course in 26.91 seconds, just 0.42 seconds slower.
Both dogs finished the course faster than last year’s winner as well as 2023’s. Nimble, an All-American (mixed) dog, completed it in 28.76 seconds last year, while Border Collie Truant finished in 28.68 the year before. Truant’s result was the fastest winning time since the event began in 2014, but their score was smashed by both Vanish and Swindle Celebration.
Emily Klarman, Vanish’s handler, told FOX Sports after her victory that she was “completely speechless.”
Klarman, who’s from Doylestown in eastern Pennsylvania, shared a photo of herself and Vanish with their award on Instagram, and wrote, “I guess we are staying an extra couple nights in New York City… Presentations will be under the lights at Madison Square Garden on Monday. I am beyond proud of this special dog.”
The Masters Agility Championship Finals was the main event of Saturday’s Canine Celebration Day. As part of the Agility Championship at the Dog Show, canines are rested by tunnels, seesaws, bar and wall jumps, and weave poles, among other obstacles, as they follow their handlers’ commands. They aren’t given a map of the course in advance, and they’re judged on their time and completion of the course, minus any faults they make.
The WKC donates $5,000 to the American Kennel Club training club of the winner’s choice or the AKC Humane Fund, while they also donate $1,000 in the names of the four remaining first-place dogs in their height classes and the highest-scoring All-American dog.
You can find the rest of the Masters Agility Championship Finals results on the AKC website, and find out more about how to watch Westminster Dog Show here. If you’d like to find out more about agility, and whether it might be a good activity for your dog, you might find this article useful, too: I gave my working dog a job and it transformed our relationship.
