To set the tone for this post, scroll down for a little mood music, and yes, it’s Barry Manilow, but a good song is a good song, and this one is relevant to the topic:

 

Not many dogs ride the subway home after showing at Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, but “Curry,” a Glen of Imaal Terrier, did. She commuted all the way back to the West Side of Manhattan to Chelsea.  Back in 2010, only champions were eligible to enter the famed dog show, and the Curry, then two years old, had qualified. She was one of only four Glens competing that year, but she had high profile friends cheering her on, if only from a distance. The Supermodel, Naomi Campbell, gushed, “Curry is beautiful and has a better walk than me!” while Broadway diva, Christine Ebersole, added, “Curry has the best movement of any Glen I have ever seen. I’m happy she’s not eligible for a Tony Award!”

Curry’s owner, Bruce Sussman,” also happened to be the owner of “India,” the Glen who had not only made the breed’s national TV debut at Philadelphia’s National Dog Show, but was also the breed’s first AKC Champion. India also won Best In Show at the Gloucester Kennel Club just two weeks after the breed was recognized by the AKC. It had been a 10-year campaign to get to full acceptance, and Bruce, who had served as a board member and president, was ready.

As show ring credentials go, India and Curry had earned their “props,” but their owner,  Bruce, was no slouch either. The song we had you listen to at the top of the post, “Copacabana?”  Bruce Sussman co-wrote it, along with Barry Manilow and Jack Feldman.  It’s said that the song was inspired by a conversation between Manilow and Sussman at the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro when they were discussing whether there had ever been a song named, “Copacabana.”  A regular visitor to the Copacabana nightclub in New York City in the 60s, Manilow suggested that Sussman and Feldman write the lyrics to a “story song” for him, and they did. Manilow provided the music.

As for dogs, Sussman had owned, bred and handled Wheaten Terriers for most of his adult life, but when he picked up a book that showed a photo of a Glen of Imaal Terrier, that was it.

So, did the Glens ever play “muse” to their musical owner?

Check it out:

 

According to a 2005 New York Times article, Mr. Sussman conceded that yes, his dogs had inspired a song. “Barry and I were writing the score for Disney’s, ‘Oliver & Company,’ he said. “Bette Midler played an over-the-hill show dog [and] we wrote ‘Perfect Isn’t Easy’ for her.” And now you know.

Image: Pack Rogers’s Glen of Imaal Terrier, “Basil”