In the lead-up to the country’s biggest dog show, a third-generation handler prepares a gaggle of premier canines vying for the top prize.
2 min
The elite athlete is capable of tremendous discipline. At the moment, though, he’s humping the competition.
Sonny, the star Portuguese water dog, went nosing around for a girlfriend when he was supposed to be attending to press obligations in the Long Island living room of his professional dog-show handler, Kimberly Calvacca.
But there is much work to be done: In just a few days, Calvacca will load the freshly fluffed Sonny and five other crème-de-la-crème canines into a van and head to Manhattan to compete at the country’s biggest dog-sporting event: the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
The pedigreed dogs are the epitome of their breeds, owned by enthusiasts who pay Calvacca $150 per show day for her more than 100 dog shows each year.
The circuit reaches divine heights Tuesday in Madison Square Garden with Westminster’s top award of best in show, a status symbol that has eluded Calvacca, a third-generation dog handler in her 50s who started showing dogs in high school.
Competing alongside Sonny are Valentina, a min pin and the only contender Calvacca partly owns; Tango, a pug; Estee, a canaan; Shindig, a vizsla; and Nala, a rambunctious toller who reacted to getting kicked out of this photo shoot by peeing on the floor.
When it’s showtime, the dogs perform. “It’s a lot of time, a lot of effort and making sure that this dog is raised right so it has the temperament to say, ‘Pick me!’” Calvacca says.
She trains them to stand stock-still when a judge inspects them nose to tail, or trot in a circle without getting distracted by the crowd.
At times, she recreates show conditions at home so her pageant queens and kings won’t be spooked by whatever the competition throws at them.
Most preshow work happens in her “dog room,” a basement utility space where pet scrubs and tinctures abound like makeup at Sephora.
She says the room is filled with the good juju of champions her grandfather groomed there when this was his house.
On her boombox, when Sade’s “Smooth Operator” switches to Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” the frantic synth reflects the chaos.
First, she must wash the dogs one by one in an elevated bathtub. Then she hoists each dog onto a work table, attaching the animal loosely to a loop she cheerfully calls a noose.
She trims their toenails with a repurposed woodworking tool, styles their fur with a $600 dog blow dryer and clips their coats with $1,000 scissors. She cleans their teeth with an electric toothbrush, a dental tool for plaque and a breath-freshener spray.
Each dog spends 15 to 30 minutes daily on treadmills, one of which costs $3,500 and is specifically for dogs.
Then come meals from 40-pound bags of dog food—she’s sponsored by Purina—and various biscuits and canned meats. In the ring, she gives them human treats such as salmon, steak and meatballs.
On a recent day, she heaved a 10-pound bag of frozen chicken from Costco onto her kitchen counter, then boiled breasts with onion powder and garlic powder.
She calls it her “winning chicken,” and during shows she’ll sometimes store a chunk of it between her teeth for quick access.
Calvacca doesn’t play favorites, she says, but she snuggles Valentina and calls Sonny Mister Handsome.
He is the exuberant frat boy, the alpha of the group. He licks, he yodels, he sleeps on a purple pillow. He plays it up in the ring. “Sonny always thinks he wins,” Calvacca says.
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Apple’s growth engine is showing signs of slowing, as rising costs, weaker services growth and AI competition challenge its profitability. With John Ternus taking the helm, the pressure is on to reignite innovation and sustain investor confidence.
3 min
The Apple growth and profit machine is wavering, and the boost from price increases might not be enough to keep it going at historic rates. That dials up the pressure on Apple’s new chief executive, John Ternus.
The company saved the bad news for its earnings call, an hour after it posted its results for the September quarter, projecting that for the current quarter its high-margin services business will continue to slow and that its widely watched gross profit margin will continue to fall.
Apple AAPL -1.83%decrease; down pointing triangle shares had been flat in post-close trading but declined as much as 4% after the company made the projections, which fell short of Wall Street estimates.
The impact of high memory costs are weighing even more heavily on the company, Ternus and Apple Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said on the company’s earnings call. Apple has stockpiled cheaper components purchased earlier, but those inventories are dwindling.
When Ternus took over as Apple’s third chief executive of the past 29 years on Sept. 1, he inherited sky-high expectations. The men he followed were among the most successful company leaders in American business history. Steve Jobs revolutionized consumer devices multiple times. Tim Cook expanded Jobs’s creation to spectacular heights.
The expectations are reflected in Apple’s huge valuation. Oppenheimer analyst Martin Yang noted that Apple stock trades at 36 times next year’s expected earnings, a premium to the overall market, even though its earnings are only expected to grow 1%, which is slower than its tech peers.
“We see insufficient upside to justify the premium,” Yang wrote in an investor note, adding that Apple needs to boost iPhone sales growth and turn around its slowing services business to make him more bullish.
Investors have bid up Apple shares because it has been a port in the AI storm—a reliable and capital-efficient business that stands apart from rivals which are spending hundreds of billions of dollars racing to the AI frontier.
While others invest in data centers, Apple has been pouring its own cash into buybacks and dividends. But that safety may be challenged if Ternus can’t speed up Apple’s innovation engine.
Apple’s lagging performance in AI was evident when its new “Siri AI” chatbot arrived this past quarter. Its long-maligned assistant was already stale the day it arrived, surpassed by agents such as Instinct and Muse that can complete multistep tasks for consumers, while Siri still sets kitchen timers.
Apple needs to give people reasons to buy its devices as they get more expensive. The company raised prices across the board last quarter to help offset higher costs. Without compelling new features, a big question is whether consumers will slow the frequency of iPhone upgrades.
The new iPhone Duo appears to be a bright spot. Consumers are scooping up the $1,999 foldable smartphone despite mixed reviews—so many that Apple can’t keep up with demand. Shipping dates jumped out to January soon after the device went on sale, a disappointment for the normally reliable Apple supply chain.
Apple said its revenue grew 12% in the September quarter, slightly ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. Its widely tracked gross profit margin, at 47.9%, also came in just ahead of analyst estimates.
Apple will need to find new growth avenues because a reliable engine during the Cook era—the services business—is slowing. Courts and regulators worldwide have limited Apple’s ability to charge developers big fees to distribute apps through its App Store, the biggest component of the company’s services segment.
One of its most lucrative App Store fee generators has been the ChatGPT app from OpenAI. Around the time Apple accused OpenAI of trade-secret theft this past summer, OpenAI began redirecting potential subscribers to pay via its website instead of the App Store, skirting Apple’s tollbooth.
Apple’s valuation has bumped up against a ceiling in recent weeks. Six times it traded above a $5 trillion market capitalization intraday before finally closing above the threshold, which it has already fallen back below.
News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a commercial agreement to supply news through Apple services.
