John O’Hurley: Dog Show Host & Dog Lover

On Thanksgiving Day, actor and comedian John O’Hurley will be the co-host of NBC’s The National Dog Show Presented by Purina. O’Hurley may be best known for his years on “Seinfeld” as J. Peterman but O’Hurley is also a long-time dog lover and the author of It’s Okay to Miss the Bed on the First Jump: And Other Life Lessons I Learned from Dogs (a NY Times bestseller) and Before Your Dog Can Eat Your Homework, First You Have to Do It: Life Lessons from a Wise Old Dog to a Young Boy.

We recently talked to O’Hurley by phone about his dogs; the dog show host said:

I learned this year that the oldest dog in the world passed away at the age of 21; well coming very close is our 19-and-a-half-year-old Maltese named Scoshi who was the…inspiration for the second book that I wrote. But then we also have two new puppies that are just fabulous. We have Cavalier King Charles and we have a little Havanese, both of which we actually found through David [Frei’s] association in the dog world there we found two really wonderful breeders that led us to two wonderful dogs.

For all his experience with show dogs, though, O’Hurley doesn’t look at his own dogs with a show dog eye:

We end up puppy cutting all of them so they don’t carry the breed character, the characteristic haircut of the breed so we keep them very short.

And … in the case of our Cavalier King Charles, she has a little bit of an overbite so she’s not show quality but then, neither am I.

Photo courtesy The National Show Presented by Purina

Related posts:

1. National Dog Show Presented by Purina, Nov. 26, 2009
2. National Dog Show Continues as Thanksgiving Tradition
3. Talk Show Host Juliet Huddy at a Dog Charity Event
4. Tamron Hall Replaces Mario Lopez as Westminster Co-Host
5. Rufus Named National Dog Show Canine Ambassador