The Summit County Fairgrounds will literally be going to the dogs this weekend.
Pooches of all shapes and sizes will be strutting their stuff as the Columbiana Kennel Club Dog Show holds court Friday night and the Rubber City Kennel Club Dog Show is Saturday and Sunday.
Admission is $5 per car each day.
These are not your typical mutts.
To be able to compete, these pedigree dogs must be AKC registered breeds.
Organizers say as many as 1,100 dogs are expected Saturday and Sunday.
Friday’s show is typically the smallest since it falls on a weekday, and any competitors are on the road heading toward Akron.
Paul Morehouse, vice president of the Rubber City Kennel Club, said the Akron show attracts a number of dogs from out of state and even Canada as it is the first stop of the so-called Florida Dog Show circuit as folks and their pets head south for the winter competition season.
“It is not uncommon for people and a dog to come from as far away as California,” he said. “This is a big deal.”
Coordinating the sea of dogs is left to Martha Brown, who chairs the show for the club.
At any given time during the show, Brown said, there are as many as seven different rings set up with dogs competing against one another.
And those not competing are probably having their hair groomed and primped.
“There’s always a lot of barking going on,” she said. “Some of them take a lot of grooming.”
But don’t let the bark scare you off, she said, these are competition dogs so they are trained to play nice with one another and with their adoring fans.
The dogs compete by breed but also to land enough points and the judge’s eye to be considered best of show for each day of the competition.
“It is usually a different dog that wins each day,” Brown said.
And if nature calls — and it often does — local Boy Scouts are at the ready with shovels in hand to clean up any accidents.
“You have to be ready for the scooper duty,” she said.
At noon on Sunday there will be a meet-the-breeds session where the public can learn more about some of the 189 AKC recognized breeds.
“You can pet the dogs and ask the owners about the breeds,” Brown said. “This is a chance for folks to see them up close.”
The number of AKC recognized breeds changes all the time, and this year’s show is expected to see at least a couple of the newer breeds eligible to compete.
The Belgian Laekenois — pronounced Lak-in-wah — will make its first appearance at the Akron show this year.
Considered the rarest of the four Belgian sheepdog breeds, it is considered a “rough and tumble” dog with a woolly look.
Another newcomer to the Akron competition is the Barbet, a water dog of France, with frizzy looking hair.
“You hear about the breeds, but you never know when AKC will officially register them,” she said.
Morehouse said he’s been a member of the club since 1976 and once showed Cardigan Welsh Corgis.
“They have a nice, deep bark,” he said.
Now he just helps out with the show and gets his dog fix spending time with the competitors.
Like Morehouse, Brown said, she too no longer competes and dedicates her time helping to run the competition so other members can participate in showing their dogs.
Her dogs, Dalmatians, now just compete for her attention.
“We have couch potatoes now,” she said.
Craig Webb, whose yellow Lab Bailey will be sitting out the competition and snoozing away the weekend, can be reached at cwebb@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3547.