DOG SHOW; Being 'Arrogant' Pays Off for Bulldog

By: ROBIN FINN Published: February 14, 1995
The New York Times

This is a tale of three bulldogs, two of them the real thing and one of them, Cody Sickle, an honorary member of the species, for never was there a human being this bullish on the jowly, growly and infinitely stubborn breed.

Sickle, a banker from Merrick, L.I., has been fanatical about bulldogs for the last 40 years. He is 45 now, and when he was 5, he began saving for a bulldog of his own.

It had to be a bulldog, no other breed would do, and after three years of forgoing movies and the rest of the normal juvenile pursuits of his friends, Sickle piled up $60, combed the classifieds, and found his dog.

"It was a Saturday, March 1, 1958," said Sickle, who named his first pet Cherokee and, even though she never panned out as a show dog, later named his kennel after her. These days Sickle, who took time off from college at Northwestern to journey from Chicago during a snowstorm to take his first breed best at the Westminster show in 1969, has a wife and two sons, none of whom is partial to dogs.

But his passion remains undiluted.

Yesterday at Madison Square Garden, Sickle arrived with the latest, best and brightest product of his lifelong love affair with bulldogs, Ch. Prestwick Gawain, the defending champion of the breed.

Sickle bought the dog four years ago after judging him at a show. Gawain was a prodigy, a champion by the time he was 7 months old, and last year he was the top-winning bulldog in the country.

But Gawain wasn't the best bulldog yesterday at Westminster; instead of defending his title, he was upended by a not-quite-2-year-old upstart, Ch. Hetherbull Arrogant Nigel, a white dog with a distinctive leopard marking on his right ear.

And when he went back to work in in the Non-Sporting Group last night, Nigel's precocity again worked wonders. In a competition among 16 vastly differing breeds, a polished poodle won the blue ribbon, but the bulldog took third place.

The two bulldogs are rivals -- Gawain holds a 6-2 edge in the competition with Nigel -- and after the breed judging, they were only two cages apart in the congested benching area. While the dogs slept off the exertion of waddling around the show ring, their owners projected an aura of mutual respect and traded a few good-humored jibes.

Sickle said he overheard Nigel's owner, Jean Hetherington, referring to the judge of the bulldog class, Gilbert Kahn, "as Uncle Gilbert." And Sickle said he was convinced Hetherington, who got into the dog business full time in 1960 after bridge and golf turned out to be unsatisfactory hobbies, had the upper hand yesterday because of longevity.

"Jean's been in the breed since the 1800's, I think," said Sickle, whose dog received an Award of Merit, the equivalent of a consolation prize.

Mollified by her blue ribbon, Hetherington smiled politely and then began extolling the praises of her prodigy, who at 53 pounds and with two best-in-shows, is 12 pounds and five bests off the pace set by Gawain. Nigel happens to be the latest in a lengthy line of 50 champions Hetherington has bred at her North Carolina kennel.

"Nigel showed beautifully; he was kind of asking for it," said Hetherington, who was steered toward bulldogs by her husband, who owned one as a child and attended a university, Yale, where bulldogs are considered top dogs. Despite Nigel's tender age, he has sired a litter of puppies, one of whom is Yale's mascot.

"He's called Handsome Dan, but his real name is Wizard," she said.

This was Nigel's first visit to Westminster -- last year he was too young. But if he was awed by these surroundings, where each ring is surrounded by the hooting and hollering railbirds of this sport, he didn't let on.

They don't call him "Arrogant," said his owner, for nothing. And he's lovable and stubborn as well. At home, Nigel sleeps in his own canine hammock and, when asked to remove himself from the furniture, simply grins and doesn't.

"My mouth felt like cotton when he went into the ring," Hetherington said. "He'd never been in a ring like that before, but the ulcers around here go to the owners, not the dogs."