A dog owner-handler from eastern Pennsylvania is celebrating this weekend.
Emily Klarman of Doylestown, Buck County, watched Vanish, a Border Collie, win the 12th Annual Masters Agility Championship Finals on Saturday at the Westminster Dog Show in New York City.
Vanish’s win marks the ninth for a Border Collie out of 12 all-time winners, continuing the herding breed’s dominant reign in the competition.
Vanish, who represented the 16-inch division, cleanly sped her way through the course in just 26.49 seconds.
“She’s very intuitive, very natural — probably smarter than me,” Klarman told a Fox interviewer in the ring. While Klarman said the win initially left her speechless, Vanish was quite vocal about the victory, as viewers could hear her barking enthusiastically.
The winning time was less than a second better than the runner-up in the competition. Swindle Celebration, a Shetland Sheepdog, finished in 26.91 seconds, just 0.42 seconds slower than Vanish, according to a foxsports.com story.
Vanish and Swindle Celebration zipped through the course more quickly than last year’s winner, Nimble, the All-American dog who ran it in 28.76 seconds. It was also faster than Truant the Border Collie’s victory in 2023, a time of 28.68 seconds that was previously the fastest winning time since the event began in 2014, the story said.
The Masters Agility Championship Finals was the highlight of the Canine Celebration Day on Saturday.
Agility is a timed competition that tests a dog’s ability to complete an obstacle course that includes any combination of tunnels, seesaw, bar and wall jumps, weave poles and more — following the commands of its handler.
The Westminster Kennel Club donates $5,000 to honor the winner to the AKC training club of their choice or the AKC Humane Fund, along with a donation of $1,000 in the names of the four remaining first-place dogs in their height classes and the highest-scoring All-American (mixed breed) dog, according to the story.
The dog show, in its 149th year, is back at New York’s Madison Square Garden for the first time since early 2020. It will pause for Super Bowl LIX on Sunday and resume Monday, with events also taking place at the Jacob K. Javits Center.
Best in Show will be crowned Tuesday at Madison Square Garden.