The Sonoma-Marin Fair is in full swing this week and yesterday's highlight was the annual World's Ugliest Dog Contest. This event is in its 21st year and has really become popular with the international media. This year there was a sign-in booth for media and there were expensive cameras all around. The event is now sponsored by Animal Planet Television and this year's celebrity judge was none other than Jon Provost, who played "Timmy" on the television show "Lassie".
As usual, the competition's most well represented breed is the Chinese Crested. These dogs have characteristic spotty and spiky hair, mottled skin, and lolling tongue. They have been selectively bred for centuries to achieve this level ugliness - truly approaching the Socratic form of "Ugly". Unfortunately, this breeding has also rendered them as fairly short-lived animals, and in fact two of last years top three dogs have passed away in the last year.
This year the contest's winner was NOT a Chinese Crested, but was instead a Boxer Mix with a serious underbite named Pabst. Named for his "Bitter Beer Face", Pabst's winning personality is what swayed the audience to cheer the loudest, which in turn influenced the judges and eventually led to his win...