In his professional life as a champion show dog, Nick the Tibetan spaniel is meant to embody the particular handsomeness of his breed: the cunning little face, the silken fur, the tail of Seussian floofiness that curls up and cascades down his back. This week he will compete for the second time at the pinnacle of canine contests, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary. (Best in show will be decided on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.)
But Nick, who is 4 years old and formally known as Ch. Torrey’s The Price Is Right, is not just another egotistical overachiever with a fancy tail. In his private life, he works as a therapy dog at the memory care unit of a Brookdale Senior Living center in Vancouver, Wash. His job there is essentially to be himself, a 14-pound bundle of furry empathy.
With his kind eyes, enthusiastic yet respectful manner and love of being the center of attention, Nick is an excellent volunteer. Mimi Galindo, the program manager of the memory-care unit, said he had an instinct for knowing how to behave with the residents who needed him the most. “He brings joy to them in the moment,” she said. “Dogs don’t see age, just the connection.”
Many dogs are bred to perform specific tasks — retrievers to fetch birds for their owners while hunting, for instance, and Portuguese water dogs to herd fish into nets (yes, that is apparently a thing). But the most serious show dogs, who go to multiple shows a week and compete for the top national spots in their breed rankings, have little time to perform even the jobs they were born to do, let alone take on extra work.
Then there are dogs like Nick, successful enough to be champions but with room in their calendars for other endeavors. A number of these multitasking dogs are among the competitors at Westminster this year.
To name just a couple: In Longmont, Colo., Callie the toy American Eskimo dog is being trained in scent work — practicing by learning how to identify anise, cloves, cypress and birch smells — in order to become a diabetes alert dog for her owner, Dr. Elizabeth Rose.
“As long as someone hasn’t accidentally spilled some birch into the show ring at Westminster, we should be fine,” said Dr. Rose, an addiction medicine specialist at a V.A. hospital who also runs an online boutique called Best of Bitches that makes custom rosettes for dog shows.
And in Coconut Creek, Fla., a miniature longhaired dachshund named Breezy works as an emotional support dog at the elementary school where her owner, Marianne McCullough, teaches fifth grade. Breezy visits at times of particular need — when a beloved teacher suddenly died last year, for instance, or when the children were reeling from the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, just a mile away from their school.
“Not every pet is a show dog, but I can assure you that every show dog is a pet,” Ms. McCullough said, quoting Patricia Trotter, a legendary breeder and judge who served as the best in show judge at Westminster in 2021.
As for Nick, he lives in suburban Vancouver with his owner, Kitty Lewis, and the rest of his pack — his parents, Vanna and George, and a Jack Russell-Shiba Inu mix named Marty. They are a boisterous, voluble and curious bunch. Judging at least from an initial visit, Tibetan spaniels are the sort of dogs who, even when they barely know you, are eager to follow you into the bathroom.
Nick began working at the senior home as soon as Ms. Lewis, 70, retired last fall from her job as a ticket agent for Southwest Airlines at Portland International Airport. “Even before I retired, I felt like God was saying, ‘You need to volunteer,’” she said. (She has a second volunteer job, staffing the information booth at the airport and fielding questions about things like the location of the rental care desks.)
One Wednesday in January, Nick put on a seasonal outfit, a headband festooned with Valentine’s Day hearts, and jumped into Ms. Lewis’s car. (Full journalistic disclosure: It was impossible to take notes during this portion of the assignment because Nick, shamelessly lobbying for flattering press coverage, draped his full silky body across me, tilted his head backward and repeatedly licked my nose.)
At Brookdale, a group of residents sat in a semicircle, mostly lost in their thoughts, while a wildlife program played on television. Ms. Lewis let Nick walk around to say a quick hello and snuggle against people’s legs. “Doesn’t he look handsome?” one resident said. “Hello, sweetie.”
His presence had a striking effect. As he visited each person, sitting on the laps of those who requested it, he unlocked something in them, and they began to talk — not conversing so much as reminiscing about dogs from their pasts. Dogs they had as children. Dogs they had when they had children of their own. Rescue dogs they adopted and cared for into the animals’ old age. Bobo, a Russian wolfhound who belonged to someone’s mother.
A resident named Polly spoke about her years as a dog-show breeder and handler. “We used to do dog shows,” she said. “We were very involved.”
Brookdale’s memory-care residents can keep dogs in their rooms if they’re able to care for them, but few are cognitively well enough to take on the responsibility, Ms. Galindo said. (There’s just one dog in residence at the moment.) A peek into Polly’s bedroom explained why Nick had stirred such strong memories. Above her bed were huge photos of her and her husband as a young couple, proudly showing their prizewinning Welsh terriers.
Nick, presumably imagining that everyone was talking only about him, continued his tour of the room. Ms. Lewis gave him some Goldfish crackers. (He prefers the Cheddar cheese ones.) He found his way onto the lap of a lady named Maureen, who pronounced herself a “dog-o-holic.” “You are doing such a good job,” she murmured into his ear. “Yes, you are.”
Nick performed his signature move, the backward nose kiss, on another resident. “You like to be petted, don’t you?” she said, whereupon he promptly fell asleep. It’s exhausting, being the center of so much attention.
“He loves being here,” Ms. Lewis said. “I can’t explain it.”
Ms. Lewis has been a dog-show aficionado since she showed her first dog, a Shetland sheepdog, when she was a girl. (Alas, he later died from a coyote attack.) She has worked at the U.S. Air Force, maintaining safety equipment, and at Delta Air Lines as a flight attendant. She has a black belt in taekwondo.
She has been married twice and has two children, and dogs have been a thread running through her life. Unfortunately, she said, her second husband was not a dog lover, but he agreed that she could get a dog if he could get a gun. “He eventually came around to the dog, but I never came around to the gun,” she said. (She kept the dog in the divorce.)
That particular dog was named Winchester, and he was a poodle, which meant two things: He was very smart, and his coat needed a ridiculous amount of washing, blow-drying and sculpting to achieve the correct poufy poodle style beloved of dog-show judges. “Their hair is something else,” Ms. Lewis said. “Those continental cuts, with the pompoms on the rear end — that’s a lot of work.”
By contrast, she said, Tibetan spaniels are not just intelligent and good-looking, but also easy to groom. She washes Nick with Mane ‘n Tail horse shampoo, blow-dries him and then touches him up as needed. “I’ll fluff him up before a show,” she said.
At home, Nick enjoys playing with his dog posse, surveying the living room from his favorite perch on top of the back of the sofa; and performing his favorite trick, which is playing dead. He demonstrated, rolling over onto his back and sticking his paws in the air in a realistic approximation of, maybe not a dead dog exactly, but at least a deceased insect.
At the end of his shift at Brookdale, Nick visited some of the less sociable residents, including the ones who mostly prefer to stay in their rooms but are happy to receive a canine visitor. As they finished up, he and Kitty came upon a woman sitting in a wheelchair by a window, crying softly. A caregiver was on the way.
She said that her name was Joanne, and that she was feeling anxious.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m a mess. I’m worse than the other ones.”
But then she took Nick into her arms, as gentle and loving with him as he was with her. He snuggled deep into her lap, she stroked his soft head, and they sat quietly together for a time. Eventually, she said she was feeling a bit better.
“You are a sweetheart,” she told Nick. “I love little dogs.”
Sarah Lyall is a writer at large for The Times, writing news, features and analysis across a wide range of sections.
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