The Westminster Dog Show Turns 150. Here's What Has And Hasn't Changed Over Time

When some Gilded Age gentleman hunters organized a New York event to compare their dogs, could they have imagined that people would someday call it the World Series of dogdom or the Super Bowl of dog shows?

Of course they couldn't. The World Series and the Super Bowl didn't exist. Nor, for that matter, did the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty.

But the Westminster Kennel Club's dog show did, and still does. With the 150th annual show set to start Saturday live on FOX, FS1, FS2 and FOX One, here's a then-and-now look at the United States' most famous canine competition.

"The trappings, the window dressing, you know, changes over time. But what’s at the core, what’s the heart of it, which is the love of dogs ... that has been the same," says club President Donald Sturz.

It comes from the Westminster Hotel, where the show's founders liked to belly up to the bar and brag about their dogs. The hotel is long gone. The moniker stuck.

The club's "First Annual New York Bench Show of Dogs," in 1877, was no small thing. It featured about 1,200 dogs of a few dozen breeds, ranging from pugs to mastiffs. They included an English setter valued at $5,000, at a time when an average laborer in New York made about $1.30 a day. The Associated Press reported that "the bulldogs are represented by a number of noticeable delegates," and a family of "Japanese spaniels" was "highly amusing."

It wasn't the first U.S. dog show, but it wowed and endured. Among U.S. sporting events, only the Kentucky Derby has a longer history of being held every year.

This year's Westminster show boasts 2,500 dogs, representing as many as 212 breeds and 10 "varieties" (subsets of breeds, such as smooth vs. wirehaired dachshunds). Some likely hadn’t made it to