This year's 141st Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show saw a beautiful German shepherd dog named GCH Lockenhaus' Rumor Has It V Kenlyn come back to win Best in Show on February 14. She came close last year as the Herding Group winner.The New York Times. In fact, his beat at the Sports Desk was to cover dog shows and horse shows across the country and specifically at Madison Square Garden. His name was Walter R. Fletcher, and he sat across the aisle from me as I covered my first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show Best in Show for The Newtown Bee. He wrote about Pat's Norwegian Elkhound in the Best in Show line-up that year.My Times With Dogs. It was the Queensboro Kennel Club Dog Show, held at the old Aqueduct Racetrack. He, too, was a cub reporter who had covered a few yachting races and hunt meets when he was about to embark on the beat of his lifetime. He squeezed through the outlying racetrack gates, rather than walk the half-mile trek with typewriter in tow to the front gates. And thus, a dog show reporter's career was born.The Times, covering mostly Eastern dog shows, and after he retired in 1976, he did another 20 years as a correspondent covering Westminster until 1996. He passed away in 2000, literally hours after Westminster's Best in Show was held.Reviving A Dog Show 
Reporting Legenddogwriters.orgThis annual award goes to the reporter who best exemplifies continued press coverage of dog shows in America. The winner will be honored with a reserved seat in the Walter Fletcher Memorial Chair for both nights of the 2018 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The chair is located at the end of the front row, in the working press section, on the arena floor of Madison Square Garden. To learn more visit The Newtown Bee. Baggett, an annual guest at the dog show, and I chatted for a few minutes before I went back to the press room.The Bee, I got to cover this show as a working press member, and because I stayed in the sport for 35 years, and took my journalism skills to public relations, I got the opportunity to honor Walter Fletcher. In that serendipitous moment, all my dog show and reporting roots entangled together on the floor of Madison Square Garden.Lisa Peterson writes about horses, hounds and history at lisaunleashed.com. Contact her at .lisa@lisaunleashed.com

It was a tough Best in Show competition for me to pick favorites as not only was there a beautiful German shepherd, a breed I grew up with at my grandparents, but an equally lovely Norwegian Elkhound, my own breed, with GCH Vin-Melca's Daggarwood Delight.

She was handled by her owner, the legendary Patricia Trotter for her 11th Hound Group win. Pat, as she's known in the dog world, first stepped foot in the Best in Show ring in 1970 with CH Vin-Melca's Vagabond, and since then I've witnessed six of those Hound Group wins from the working press section on the floor of Madison Square Garden. In fact, it was because of Pat and her appearance in the Hound Group in 1983, which my family watched on TV, that it was decided to get a Norwegian Elkhound as my first show dog. Two years later I was handling that dog in my first dog show, and a year after that I was at Westminster.

My first appearance at Westminster was as a cub reporter in 1986 covering local Newtown residents entered at the big show. I still have the yellowing newspaper clipping in my archives.

I also covered a judge from Southbury, the legendary Robert Forsythe. He was judging Norwegian Elkhounds.

Pat was showing CH Vin-Melca's Call To Arms. She went on to win her sixth Hound Group that night.

At the time, there was another legend covering dog shows for

My beginnings covering dog shows was decidedly different from Fletcher's first dog show. His was in 1927, the year Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, as he likes to remind his readers in his 1980 book,

For 50 years he wrote as a staffer for

During an early assignment covering Westminster, I discovered a group called the Dog Writers Association of America (DWAA). It was a curious group of eight editors and publishers who had banded together in 1935 and held its first meeting in the Westminster Kennel Club's office at the old Madison Square Garden at Eighth Avenue and 50th Street. Its original mission was to work with dog show-giving clubs to ensure that press courtesies were extended to newspaper reporters. Today, it boosts 500 members, and its main function is the annual DWAA writing contest, which awards the "Maxwells" on the Sunday just prior to the start of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

This year, working as a public relations consultant for Westminster, I got to promote a new award in DWAA's Special Awards Category. The Walter R. Fletcher Memorial Award, sponsored by The Westminster Kennel Club in memory of legendary dog show reporter Walter Fletcher.

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When this award was announced at the DWAA Annual Awards Luncheon, I overheard several members share excitement for the award in the hopes they might win it! To mark the occasion on the Garden floor during the dog show, I placed a 1931 Royal manual typewriter at Fletcher's old chair in the working press section. Nearby journalists took notice and once again Fletcher's legacy was revived.

On Monday night, February 13, about an hour after I had gone backstage to congratulate Pat on winning the Hound Group, I took one last look around the working press section and packed up the typewriter for the night. As I went to leave I heard "Lisa, Lisa," from up in the arena. I looked up to see none other than Sherri Smith Baggett, business manager of

Because of Pat, I got into elkhounds as my first show dog, because of