FILER, Idaho — Those four cages stacked by the table inside Mary Stotz's RV speak volumes about an absorbing way of life. So does the bath time reaction of a corgi named Lacey.
"When I give Lacey a bath she knows she's going somewhere special," said the corgi's owner, Dorothy Sayers.
Both Buhl women are among the dog owners and breeders who spend their summers on the road, competing in a dog show circuit that takes them across the Western U.S. Months of breeding and training lead to the annual season of weeks-long road trips.
The RV is the summer home of Magic Valley's most devoted dog show families.
"You don't figure gas mileage because if you do you leave it at home," Sayers said. "It's kind of a costly hobby."
For Sayers and Stotz, the Snake River Canyon Kennel Club Dog Show in June in Filer kicked off the Idaho-Montana competition circuit.
In a room filled with more than 40 dogs, the lack of barking seemed strange. But then again, these dogs were competing for coveted titles like Champion and Best in Show. The dogs looked nearly as serious as the owners, breeders or handlers who were showing them.
Sayers is all of those things to the Pembroke Welsh corgis she showed June 15. And something else, too.
"They are family," Sayers said. She travels and shows them because, she said, they enjoy it. "It's fun for the dogs."
Some of the dogs at the Snake River club show pranced around the show rings beside professional handlers, who transport and show more than 20 dogs at a time, Sayers said. Because shows take place all over the U.S., some dog owners and breeders choose to send their dogs with hired professionals.
That's not a cheap enterprise, but neither is a summer of traveling.
Sayers, who has shown dogs for about 21 years, goes to at least 20 shows a year. She has taken her corgis to compete in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Washington, California, Oregon, Colorado, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska — and she's not alone. More than 650 visitors come to Magic Valley for the Filer show every year, said Stotz, the show chairwoman.
Sayers' Lacey received her first points in the June 15 show and was headed to Blackfoot to compete again the next day, with two other corgis that Sayers is showing this season.
Most of the dogs competing at the Filer show would go on to Blackfoot and then to Billings, Great Falls and Missoula, Mont. Owners and dogs that did not do well in the preliminary rounds left Filer early in the day to get to Blackfoot the night before that competition began. In RV parking lots, dog owners park beside other members of their home club and swap show tales.
But competition — not camaraderie — is Stotz' motivation for showing her Lakeland terriers.
"It's a matter of pride," Stotz said. It's a chance to compete with, and often beat, professionals.
Like Stotz, Sayers breeds her own dogs. "Usually out of one litter you only get one show dog, and I sell the rest as pets," Sayers said.
From the last litter of Sayers' dogs, four competed in Filer this month for various owners — a reason for Sayers to be excited.
This summertime life on the road is well known to Bernice Richardson, 83, of Twin Falls, who showed and bred dogs for 63 years. She no longer travels due to a recent stroke, but when she was active with the Snake River Canyon Kennel Club she traveled as far as Texas, Massachusetts and Connecticut as a judge and dog owner. For Richardson, dog shows were a career.
"I started with collies and then got a poodle and learned to groom it," Richardson said. "I started a grooming business in 1958 and have been self-employed ever since."
The folks involved in dog shows usually start with a pet or a hobby but eventually become experts in their breeds, Richardson said.
"I got my first Lakeland as a pet," Stotz said. Now she talks with ease about grooming techniques and the Lakeland standards for ear position and facial expression.
And she'll do it all summer long.