“I sort of reject the whole idea of something being beneath me. There are obviously some stories I wouldn’t do or that I have no interest in, but this job is fun and should be fun. And I wouldn’t turn something down that seems like a fun thing for me to do just because maybe the story is not something that 10,000 people are going to tweet about. I don’t give a shit.”
This week a pug-nosed Pekingese named Malachy won Best in Show at the Westminster dog Show. But who are these eccentric people who devote their lives to these over-pampered animals? Whacky weirdos, perhaps, but in his new book, Josh Dean offers a nuanced portrait of one of this country’s more colorful sub-cultures.
CBS' offbeat correspondent, Bill Geist, reports on a pack of New Yorkers who took the silver at the World Elephant Polo Championship at Nepal in 2008. As Geist hilariously put it, these upstarts from Manhattan are the pachydermal equivalent of the Jamaican Bobsled Team. Watch as they practice for their matchs by striding atop their SUVs with jerry-rigged polo mallets.
Watch me spend 5 minutes talking show dogs with Charlie and Gayle, including an awkward exchange in which Charlie asks me to get him an Australian Shepherd. He wasn't joking! (His assistant later followed up.)
What CBS said: Dean spent a year following a real-life champion dog, an Australian shepherd named Jack, and he writes about that experience in his new book, "Show Dog: The Charmed Life and Trying Times of a Near-Perfect Purebred."