I am a dog, a German shepherd dog.
My name is Deadline and I have previously written two stories for the Chicago Tribune. One was about a national Frisbee-catching contest held in Lincoln Park. The other was about a North Side pet store that throws–for a price, of course–birthday parties for dogs.
I have written these stories because my owner, Rick Kogan, is employed by the newspaper and always seeks my help–wisely, I must add–when he encounters an assignment dealing with dogs.
So, he came home a few weeks ago and tossed some photographs in front of my face.
“I need your help again,” he said. “I have this panorama of pooches, photographed by Francois Robert. I thought there might be something you might want to say in the paper about people who dress dogs in costumes. There will be some extra bones in it for you.”
I recognized the pictures. There is only one place they could have been taken, at the Halloween Costume Party for Pets held at the Parkview Pet Store on North Clark Street, an annual gathering of many other dogs and some of those vile cats and other lesser creatures.
This event has been going on for 26 years. Robert was among the first to discover and photograph this festival of furry fun. (It takes place this year at noon on Oct. 26).
When I was but a puppy, eight years back, I was there. I was expecting to go dressed in a skeleton costume but the stores had run out of them by the time Kogan got around to shopping. I had to settle for a pair of bright red horns affixed to my head and a red cape strapped to my back.
I was a devil, of course, and in a foul mood because of it.
That is why I growled and snapped at the lens of a WLS-Ch. 7 camera that was being shoved in my face. Little did I know that that video clip would be picked up by other ABC stations around the country. It was my 15 minutes of fame.
And it was my last year in costume. I am a dignified–some might even say majestic–creature. I have no need for embellishment.
But I have continued to attend the show. Part of the reason is that Kogan has often been a judge of the contest and a couple years ago was the master of ceremonies, as he will be this year.
This costume contest was started by the store’s owners, Lauren Merrill and Donna Dunlap. They began it “just for fun, thinking it might be a nice thing for kids after school.”
The first year it attracted one child and nine adults. It has grown in popularity and last year about 150 people (kids and adults) showed up. More than 40 of them came with costumed pets, parading across a small stage set up behind the store on Sedgwick Street between Webster Avenue and Grant Place.
Over the years there have been crowd favorites. One of the greatest was as a horse named Lady Guinevere. There have been worm contestants. Pigs. Snakes. Chameleons. One year there was a snail in a tiny race car.
I have seen cats dressed as clowns and a lot of cats dressed as old women. I met a little boy who dressed (don’t ask me how) a bird not bigger than a hand in a Dracula costume.
Many of the most popular costumes are those that have a topical theme. During the excitement surrounding the 1990 airing of Ken Burns’ PBS series “The Civil War,” a man brought an aquarium filled with crickets. Half of them were dead and he called his entry the Battle of Gettysburg.
In 1991, in the wake of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, a woman walked on stage with three basset hounds leashed in a row and wrapped in silver foil.
The name of the costume?
Long Dog Silver.
The crowd howled.
Now you may be thinking that some of these owners are in need of psychiatric help. Perhaps you are right. Who would even think to put a costume on a worm? Since the majority of the contestants are dogs, it makes me wonder if people who dress up their dogs are suffering from what Dog Fancy magazine’s October issue characterizes as “dogaholism.”
I think about that during the summer when I see dogs sporting sunglasses and bandannas. And I worry about them–the owners, not the dogs.
Most of those who come to the Parkview costume contest are not dogaholics and seem not to suffer from any other mental malady. For them it’s just a once-a-year fling.
In that spirit, there is no cost to enter the contest and each animal gets the same prize, usually a bag of treats. All are “winners,” as long as judges come up with suitable, maybe even funny, categories. For instance, a dog dressed as a pumpkin was one year awarded a Best Seasonal Costume prize. The year I was dressed as a devil, I won a Clout Costume prize because Kogan was one of the judges.
It is all in good fun, as Robert captures in his photos and in his own clever names for the costumed dogs.
I’ll be there this year, for moral support. It’s tough for a dog to be dressed as a clown or to wear a skirt, even if it’s only for a couple of hours.
