LEWISTON – After a lifetime of judging show dogs – deciding which primped and clipped pooch best exemplified its breed – Arnold Woolf found he had trouble stopping.
Once a judge, always a judge.
He found himself sitting by the shoreline, appraising sea gulls and picking the ones with the best gull behavior.
“It gets into your blood,” said Woolf, who judged dogs in 49 states. “I miss it.”
Now 78, he’s retired from judging. His back is too sore to walk around a show’s inner circle, pressing the dog flesh.
So, he turned to his second love: writing about dogs.
A longtime freelancer for The New York Times, Woolf wrote a novel for young readers called “Keynote” in the late 1980s.
He has dusted off the never-published manuscript and begun looking for an agent. He also has been soliciting reviews from national magazines, garnering a favorable review in a publication titled “Collie Expressions.”
It’s his way of connecting with the animals he loves.
“I wrote about dogs for 15 years,” he said, first in a weekly column for the Journal News, a daily paper in several New York City suburbs. He then became a freelancer for The New York Times.
The work began in the mid-1950s and lasted through the 1960s.
From shows across the Northeast, he’d file descriptions of winning dogs and interviews with their owners via Western Union. The newspaper never published his name with the stories.
“They gave me $25 per story,” he said. It was good money for a weekend job. Woolf worked as a private accountant for small businesses during the week.
“Dogs were my life,” he said.
But as the 1970s began, his health suffered. He gave up the column and placed more emphasis on judging, some weekends flying to Chicago for a Saturday show and Los Angeles for a Sunday show, then back home to New York.
By 1980, he retired from accounting at his children’s insistence. He first wrote a book-length memoir about judging. It was never published. He wrote “Keynote” in 1987.
Set in the 1950s, during the “Father Knows Best” era of soda fountains and single-income families, the book tells the story of teenage girls. One adopts a collie, who begins a line of show dogs that leads to the grandest dog show of them all, the Westminster Kennel Club show in New York City.
The 96-page novel is partly a charming story about spunky kids working hard. It’s also a how-to for breeding and showing dogs.
“You get back from a dog as much as you put into it,” Woolf said. Hard work is necessary. In return, you get a loving member of the family.
But why dogs in particular?
It’s too big a question for Woolf, who grew up in suburban New York with dogs in the home. He bred dogs, including a collie and a Siberian husky that were ranked among the best in the country.
“I don’t know what it is about dogs,” he said. As pets, such as with an old English sheepdog he once owned, they can feel almost human.
“We used to spell things around him,” Woolf said. “But we stopped when he learned to spell, too.”
Showing animals in competitions could be intoxicating.
“The feeling is fantastic when you win,” he said. “My dog can beat your dog.”
Woolf mostly misses their companionship. His declining health prevents him from having one in his home in Lewiston.
They’re too much work.
If only he could judge again.
“I just can’t do it,” he said, bent over in a chair in his kitchen. “I’m looking for a miracle that will get me back out there.”
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