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Canine Cluster Brings Joy To Dogs And Humans Alike

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: January 11, 2009

BROOKSVILLE - At first glance, Gerry Smith could never be mistaken for anything besides a dog lover. First glance, second glance and every glance thereafter.

It's not simply, with a kindly broad face featuring sagging jowls, sad - but hopeful - eyes and downturned mouth, that he fulfills the stereotype of dog owners coming to resemble their four-legged companions.

There also is his attire. The senior citizens uniform of black fleece zipper jacket over a maroon shirt and de rigueur knit khakis arrives in a generous dusting of ash flecks, confirming the sweatshirt maxim that "shed happens."

Finally, there is the matter of his companionability. At 71 - a self-assured 10 in canine years - Smith has perfected the difficult art of getting along. A dozen years removed from hoofing the cold, hazardous corridors of the old Budweiser brewery power plant where he was a manager, Smith seems equally predisposed to swapping anecdotes or stretching out for the duration in some soft, warm, sunny location.

This also roughly describes the brood of four pugs inhabiting Smith's doublewide mobile home on three acres in the shadow of the Shady Hills incinerator. Theirs, too, are the irresistible faces of resolute despair, belying the breed-wide inclinations toward affability, curiosity, mischief-making and, well, dogged sociability.

To own a pug is to hire a chaperon, say the experts. Smith shrugs at that. Pugs follow you around, he says, because they never know when you might sit down, and they believe themselves to be the creatures for which God created laps.

Making A Lap

Luckily for the curly-fry-tailed pack under his roof, making a lap is one of Smith's best qualities - and not solely because 23 years of inhaling noxious fumes looking after Gussie Busch's boilers devoured both his lungs and most of his colon. Laying a hand on the battleship-hued walker that gets him from his scooter to his chair, Smith huffs, "I can't walk from heretothere."

Not that he's complaining, necessarily. He has his land, shelter, pugs, a close-knit society in which he fits well and, connected to that, responsibility: Smith heads the Pasco Kennel Club, which turns 30 next month.

Considering the joy he finds in the company of his dogs, however, it makes us wonder how they are minding themselves when we come upon their human on a recent morning, pug's mug under a putty baseball cap and settled in a plastic folding chair, elbows on the plastic top of a folding table, pretty much occupying the heart of the tent at the heart of the ongoing dog show billed as Florida's largest.

Going Back Stage

The Florida Classic Cluster, the event's official title, certainly has the geography to support its claim of hugeness. Involving various obedience, skills and standards competitions - the last is the beauty contest familiar to viewers of the annual Westminster Kennel Club television broadcast - what is known to regulars as "the Big Cluster" blankets 57 meadow-sweet acres on a knoll surrounded by pines off Lockhart Road above Exit 301, where Interstate 75 joins State Road 50.

Expected to attract nearly 18,000 entrants by next Sunday's closing ceremonies (with competitions held daily, except Tuesday), the Big Cluster is sort of like Westminster without the roof, Manhattan prices, network cameras and Lester Holt. The Florida event does have its David Frei, however, the all-breeds expert and color analyst, in the person of Chris Reid, 56, Smith's partner in a modest dog-show-tour business that operates, informally, as an adjunct to the education wing of the American Kennel Club.

Reid, who, makes her home among dogs, horses and (at least where animals are concerned) co-dependent husband in Denver, N.C., attends the AKC's Eastern Seaboard circuit, providing tourists informed glimpses about all things dogs.

For instance, that the sleek Doberman pinscher was the invention of a tax collector - Louis Dobermann - who required no-nonsense protection from those in his village who did not approve of his profession. That a proper Samoyed wears a perpetual smile as well as a silver-tipped coat whose shedding fur was/is spun into yarn that Siberian natives who developed the breed knitted into blankets and clothes.

That the Akita arrived from Japan with splayed ears and a rambunctious tail, but that the Americanized standard possesses ears snuggled against the head and a coiled, compact caboose. "It started out as a truck," Reid says, "and we turned it into a Mercedes-Benz."

For herself, Reid prefers cairn terriers, otherwise known as "electric Jell-O."

The tours, like the event itself, are free. The seven Bay-area clubs that sponsor the cluster charge only for parking - $5 for a standard vehicle, more for RVs. Reid and Smith are compensated by the organizing clubs out of entry fees.

It is a marvelous place just to hang out, Smith says, paraphrasing Will Rogers: "I never met a dog I didn't like. I never met a bad dog." Indeed, an overarching impression is one of surprise: The Big Cluster is not one large yapping sniff-fest.

Instead, the pooches are uniformly well-behaved, much like the one accompanying Pam Lewis, a 9-month-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel - one of 18 on her Trilby farm - who is content to observe, wide-eyed and silent, from her perch on Lewis' lap.

You don't have to be Gerry Smith, obvious and thoroughgoing dog lover, to recognize this as a blessed arrangement.

Keyword: Florida Classic Cluster for photos. Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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