Miss P, a beagle, working the ring at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday on the way to winning Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.”
It took 20 minutes for David Merriam, the Best in Show judge at the Westminster Kennel Club Show on Tuesday, to give the dog-loving audience at Madison Square Garden a bit of a shock. After a devilishly long route to making up his mind — he seemed to enjoy building the suspense, smiling a bit impishly as he deliberated — he made the surprising choice of Miss P, a 15-inch beagle and the grandniece of Uno, the first beagle to ever win the big show, in 2008.
Merriam, a retired, white-haired California trial judge, ignored the crowd’s favorite, Swagger, an Old English sheepdog, and two other dogs who were believed to be likelier winners than the nearly 4-year-old Miss P: a Skye terrier named Charlie and a Portuguese water dog with the artistic sobriquet of Matisse. Merry Miss P was not the name on everybody’s snout.
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Alexander declined to describe Miss P’s victory as an upset (she has a career 19 best in shows; Matisse has 238) but had only praise for his rival handlers. “They’re all masters of their job,” he said.
David Frei, the analyst for the USA Network broadcast of the show, said: “It was a great lineup. There were 500 best in shows out there, and she had 19 of them. It’s not an upset.”
A version of this article appears in print on February 18, 2015, on page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: A Regal Beagle Seizes the Spotlight. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
