I got to be a judge at New York City’s biggest dog Halloween event a couple weekends ago. The Tompkins Square event regularly gets hundreds of dressed up dogs these days. The mere fact that there is some competition for biggest event shows how big dog Halloween events have become. Petsmart did a survey and found 16 million people were going to dress up their dogs this year.
I used to run this same event about a decade ago. We wer
e the first and for a long time the only one in the city to do it. Now there are several big dog Halloween events and many contestants who go from contest to contest with costumes they’ve gone to tremendous efforts to make.
We had several costumes by clearly professional designers, Ishmael and Moby Dick, Dogs Playing Poker and Rapunzel, to name just a handful. It’s almost like they’re the pro marathon runners and everyone else is excited just to be in the competition.
In my mind dressing a dog fits perfectly with Halloween–it’s all about what you don’t have to do but want to do.
The events are also a great way to see dogs–dogs who are happy to get attention. My dog Jolly has always seemed to like to go. He didn’t mind the costume and really seemed to preen when people would pay extra attention to him on the street. This year he went as a judge with me.
Where to See Dog Events Unrelated to Breeding
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