1876 THE AMERICAN CENTENNIAL

It is 1876 and the United States is 100 years old. Who cares? Well a lot of interesting things happened that year. Mark Twain released his novel Tom Sawyer. It was the first year Major League Baseball existed. Alexander Graham Bell got his patent and made the first phone call.


It was also the year all indigenous peoples in the US were ordered to reservations. This was not a popular policy among the original Americans. Thus it was also the year Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his Army was wiped out in the Battle of Little Bighorn by the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. Custer before and after the battle can be seen in the following pictures.



Yet there was another event that year whose reverberations are still being felt today. It was the year the stuffy old Westminister Kennel Club decided to hold the first national championship for dogs and select the best pure bred dog in America.

For the next 132 years the canine aristrocrats dominated the Westminister Championship just as their blue blood owners expected. Then along came 2008, the year of the oddballs and year of the breakthroughs like Obama for President, Clinton for President, even McCain for President, none who ever had a chance in the past.


Keeping with the national mood for change, lo and behold the blueblood dominance of the dog world came to an end as well with the stunning, astonishing, and heart warming selection of Uno, a 2 year old Beagle, as the Best in the Show, the new grand champion of Westminister.


Now don't take this lightly. In 132 years this working class breed of dog never won. This is like a rank and file union member being named CEO of GM. So along with Snoopy we celebrate this win and pay honor to Uno, the Grand Champion of the Westminister Dog Show for 2008.