It all started with a Sheltie.

One day long ago, adolescent Lynette Saltzman convinced her parents that their Manhattan apartment could accommodate such a dog. Now, tomorrow, more than 50 years and litters of Shelties later, she will judge the Best in Show competition at the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in Madison Square Garden.

“My parents thought I would grow out of it,” she deadpanned. “Obviously, it didn’t work out that way.”

In the world of dog judging, you don’t go higher than Best in Show at Westminster. It is a career capper. Is she nervous? “Not at all,” said the utterly unflappable Mrs. Saltzman. “At Westminster, first of all, you’re starting off with just champions. Then, they’ve got to defeat all the champions in their breeds, and then win the group. By the time you reach Best in Show, you wind up with seven out of 2,500 dogs. You have some pretty good dogs in there. As a judge, it’s hard to go too far wrong.”

As far as preparation for her moment in the sun, she has one item on the agenda: “Buying a dress.”

Westminster officials and participants alike are fond of mentioning that the dog show, now in its 129th year, is second only to the Kentucky Derby as the oldest continuously held sporting event. (By its measure, the creators of the World Series and the Indianapolis 500 are mere parvenus.) Every February, Weimararners, Alaskan Malamutes, and Nova Scotia duck tolling retrievers trot in from nearly every state with dreams of seizing dogdom’s greatest prize. This year, the show limit of 2,500 pooches was reached less than an hour after entries were opened.

Mrs. Saltzman, who declines to give her age (not even in dog years), attended her first Westminster in 1949. She has been present at all 55 events since. The Westminster brass tapped her for the Best in Show job a full three years ago. “They work way, way ahead,” she observed.

As top judge, she must be prepared to potentially face any one of the 165 varieties sanctioned by the American Kennel Club. They’re grouped in seven categories of breed (thus, the lucky seven competitors in Best in Show): sporting, hound, working, terriers, toy, nonsporting, and herding. This year, three newly recognized breeds will get their shot at the title: the Black Russian terrier, the Neapolitan mastiff, and the Glen or Imall terrier.

That’s not fair, one might exclaim! How’s a tiny terrier going to stand a chance against some impressively towering mastiff? Stay calm. It doesn’t work that way. “You’re not comparing the dogs to each other,” Mrs. Saltzman explained, “because obviously you can’t compare a Pekingese to a Great Dane. Every breed has a written standard of perfection that the judge has to know about. These are written by the clubs representing the breed. It has nothing to do with Westminster or the American Kennel Club. Every breed has a parent club.”

“So, when you’re looking at these different breeds of dogs in Best of Show, what you’re saying to yourself is ‘Is this the best Pekingese I’ve ever seen, the best Irish wolfhound I’ve ever seen.’ And if the answer is ‘Yes, it’s the best Irish wolfhound I’ve ever seen,’ and ‘No, it’s not the best Pekingese I’ve ever seen,’ probably the Irish wolfhound is a better dog.”

The canine press, knowing the power Mrs. Saltzman holds in her hands, has been scrutinizing her. “My 13-year-old granddaughter was looking at a dog magazine a couple of weeks ago, and there was an article on Westminster. There was something written about me. What it said was basically: ‘This year, there’s no knowing who’s going to win because insiders say Lynette Saltzman’s reputation is for not necessarily putting up dogs with big records.'”

Is that true? “That is true. I don’t judge records. I judge dogs. It’s whatever dog I think is best that day. I’m not interested in any record. A record frequently is only a reflection of the money spent campaigning for that dog.”

And boy do folks drop money on their prize pooches! Many of the dogs at Westminster are shown not by their owners, but by handlers, who have groomed and entered them in multiple competitions at great expense, sometimes spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Which is why you’ll see that some dogs are owned by consortiums, almost like horses,” said Mrs. Saltzman, “because it may require four and five people to pay for the dog.”

This saddens her a bit, since she considers the sport a fine hobby for children. She always showed dogs herself, from the time she entered her Sheltie in its first competition, a local event in New Jersey. She won a blue ribbon, but concedes, “It was probably alone in its class.” Soon, she discovered obedience trials and began training her animals. Professional dog-training classes followed. After that, the laurels began pouring in. She had her first Westminster champion in 1957.Many more titleholders followed – mainly Shelties – all bred and shown under the Cata mount name. She’s bred so many dogs, she doesn’t remember the number. A parallel judging career began in 1969.

Today, she admits, a youngster starting out would have a harder row to hoe, and not just because of the cash involved. “There are local kennel clubs, but there is very little open space for these clubs to hold their dog shows. When I was young, my parents could take me to endless dog shows within an hour of the city. You can’t really do that any more. They’ve moved out into the boonies, where there’s more ground. Also, the dog shows have gotten bigger. When I moved to Westport, our local show had 600 dogs and it was held on the grounds of the Long Shore Country Club. Later on it moved to Fairfield University, then we moved it to Yale for about 10 years on the polo field. Now our show is going to be somewhere in Putnam County. There’s no place left anymore to do that.”

The Westminster competition gets more attention these days than it once did, owing to Christopher Guest’s mock documentary, “Best in Show,” which sent up the dog culture as being populated by fetishists, exhibitionists, and eccentrics. Ms. Saltzman, of course, saw the movie. (It’s doubtful that anyone who enters the Garden during Westminster’s stay hasn’t). She wasn’t offended.

“I thought it was hysterical,” she chuckled. “I definitely saw people I knew in that movie. It’s a lot like that. For a lot of people, this is their life. A lot of people substitute these dogs for children and family.” She, by the way, is well equipped with family. She has three daughters and three granddaughters. Any breeders or showers in that lot? No, she concedes, though some do own dogs. Pets, she means.