NYC dog handlers reveal how they prepare for the Westminster Dog Show

The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is a three-day event — but preparing for the weekend is a year-round endeavor.

While the annual competition selects the hardest-working pooch as Best In Show — 2024’s champ will be chosen Tuesday at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow — there’s another rare breed in the mix: the breeder-owner-handlers (BOH) working hard to make sure their canines shine.

Here are four humans behind the dogs who train just as hard as their pups.

Jamie Goodrich

“It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of pressure. It’s so much stress and anxiety,” Jamie Goodrich, 41, from Central Square, told The Post. “There’s not really an easy part other than trusting your dog that it’s not gonna poop in the ring.”

As a “super proud” breeder-owner-handler, Goodrich has been showing her dogs for about 10 years — currently handling her 4-year-old Akita, Aero.

While she spends lots of time helping dogs form muscle memories and mental training, they also need sensory adaptation since there’s “so much going on.”

“It’s all repetitive. You have to expose them to other dogs, how to act in a crowded situation,” said Goodrich, who goes to handling class with her dog — and teaches classes — once or twice a week. “Sometimes you’re coming in to go to your ring and there’s 50 dogs right there. Some dogs will freak out.”

During classes, they blast a hair dryer in the background for audio simulation, and Goodrich takes Aero to Home Depot and Lowe’s to get used to loud noises.

“It’s pretty extensive what you gotta get a dog used to. Especially in New York City with the horns honking, fire engines and whistles,” she said. “I live next to a fire department, so I got that covered.”

There are some moments of levity, too. One time Aero got a case of the “zoomies” when they were getting ready to go in the ring.

“I was, like, ‘Oh God, this is gonna be so bad.’ She ended up pulling it together, but everybody was just laughing hysterically at this jumping Akita,” Goodrich said.

Even outside the ring, Aero has “surpassed [her] wildest imagination” — she’s now a service dog to Goodrich’s daughter, Shannon Blackwood, who turns 20 next month and has epilepsy.

While at a dog show a few years ago, Aero started jumping on her daughter, and Goodrich looked over to see her then-17-year-old looking “sheet white.” Aero stood over her and guarded her.

“Aero flagged that she was having a seizure and just did it by herself,” Goodrich said. “It totally caught me and a couple of my friends off guard.”

Kay Reil

Breeder-owner-handler of 32 years Kay Reil has gone to Westminster at least 10 times, this year with Arthur, a bullmastiff.

The retired science teacher, 53, joked that she’s not sure who was harder to teach: the dogs or the kids. But showing her own dogs helps her connect with them on a more emotional level.

“I’ve tried showing other people’s dogs, and you just don’t have that bond,” Reil of Huntington told The Post. “My dog loves working with me. He’s just so thrilled to be doing something with me and to have my approval and attention, and it shows.”

The connection Reil feels with her dogs and seeing how happy they are is her favorite part of showing.

“I take them to the beaches out here in Long Island and we run them. It just does my heart good to see them running and being so happy,” she shared.

Of course, the dogs have to train for the shows physically — “just like an athlete” — but Reil expressed that it’s important for humans to keep up, too, because a dog will mimic any of its handler’s “choppy” movements.

“I have to be in shape because I have five of them, so I gotta run all of them every day,” she said.

Though it’s not so common, Reil has also seen some biting during her showing career. Another dog once bit her dog in the face as he was going into the ring, which distracted him.

“I work really hard to make sure that that never happens. I’ll even cover their eyes if we’re standing too close to another dog and just keep them in a happy place,” shared Reil, who is showing her Bullmastiff Arthur this year. “It’s like driving. It’s not you that’s gonna make an accident, it’s someone else.”

But Reil emphasized that “the whole thing with dogs is that it’s not just a hobby, it’s a family.”

Mara Flood

It’s indeed a family affair for Mara Flood, who started showing dogs in the late ’80s with her sisters. She stopped when she got married and had kids — until her daughter Becca, now 24, was old enough to compete in juniors at age 9.

“I said to my husband, ‘I think maybe I’d like one more dog show champion, maybe one more show dog,’” said Flood, a breeder-owner-handler, who accompanied her collie Poe this year. “Now here we are, 15 years later, with multiple champions.”

Flood and her daughter did over 100 dog shows together until she went to college at 18.

“It’s been a couple of years that I’ve been showing without her, and even now, every time I get in the van to leave for a dog show, my heart hurts. I miss her every dog show,” Flood shared.

One of her favorite memories was when she got to watch her daughter win Best Junior for the third time and retire the trophy.

“It was a goal that she set when she was 9,” Flood shared. “We worked so hard for it. That was a very, very emotional moment for me.”

Then, in 2016, both Flood and her daughter won Best of Breed in the male and female pup categories.

“To win the two top spots in our breed at Westminster with my daughter was very memorable,” she said.

Kamilla Szasz

“I show up with my dog and I just trust my dog’s ability and that’s the best I can do,” said Kamilla Szasz, a Queens breeder-owner-handler of eight years.

But it’s not always easy.

“I would lie if I said never anything happens or nobody gets bitten, because that happens,” she said. “I’ve seen it once where a judge got bitten.”

While Szasz has made many friends in the dog show world, she’s made “a lot of enemies, too.”

“It’s a very emotionally-fueled sport. It tends to be all over the spectrum. Obviously, the emotions run really high,” she said. “I say, if you are not having fun, then why are you doing it? At the end of the day, that’s my goal. I want to have fun.”

Szasz agreed that training happens every day. “In my household, every aspect of life is kind of a training opportunity. They are my pets, they live with me and the way I live my life is nonstop training.

“It’s not that the dog is nonstop being worked,” she clarified. “It’s actually a fun experience for the dog. And then they also get to rest in the crate for the majority of the day.”

Szasz said there’s an added pressure to “prove something,” especially when showing a dog related to a former winner.

“You kind of have to live up to the expectations. People just want to prove it to themselves that they can do it,” she said.

“If you’re in it for the fame and the claps and whatnot, and not to better the breed itself, you are likely in the wrong sport.”