Lauren Rayman
Every Thanksgiving Day, the National Dog Show follows the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Many people enjoy watching both on Thanksgiving morning before or while preparing for dinner.
This year was the 17th Annual National Dog Show. This dog show is a very big deal for the owners of the dogs competing.
The National Dog Show was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania this year and was hosted by John O’Hurley, who was accompanied by dog show analyst David Frei. Over 2,000 owners travelled there to compete their dogs in this year’s National Dog Show.
During the competition, dogs are judged on their looks and obedience in the breed competition, where they have the opportunity to win First in Group and hope to win Best in Show. Although many dogs participate in these competitions, The National Dog Show also has agility contests dogs can compete in.
Winning First in Group is impressive for the dogs competing, but everyone’s goal is to win Best in Show. The Best in Show winner, in essence, wins the whole competition.
In order to win Best in Show or First in Group, many owners do the same rituals and traditions on show days with their dogs, since they believe it is good luck.
The National Dog Show is broken up into seven groups, much like all of the other dog shows throughout the country. These seven groups are the Terrier group, the Toy group, the Sporting group, the Working group, the Hound group, the Non-Sporting group and the Herding group.
Taking home First in Group in the Terrier group was King. King is a fox wire terrier who won Best in Show at the Beverly Hills Dog Show earlier this year.
In the Toy group, King Charles Cavalier Spaniel Bogie won First in Group. Ducky, a Chesapeake Bay retriever, won the title of First in Show in the Sporting group.
Winning the Working group at the National Dog Show was the Doberman Pinscher, Irupe. Whiskey the Whippet won First in Show for the Hound group.
Billy, a Lhasa Apso, was the winner of the Non-Sporting group. Last but not least, the winner of the Herding group was Bella the Pembroke Welsh Corgi.
Although Bella, winner of the Herding group was a finalist in the Best in Show competition, she fell short. The title of Best in Show went home with Whiskey.
Whiskey won the Hound group earlier in the competition. This Whippet won his 20th Best in Show title in a span of 18 months with his win on Thanksgiving Day.
My personal favorite group to watch during The National Dog Show is the Herding group. I love the breeds of dogs that compete in the Herding group and think they are all very cute, but I enjoy watching the whole competition because I simply love dogs.
I would highly recommend anyone who loves dogs to watch The National Dog Show on Thanksgiving Day if they have the opportunity to. It is something that my family and I look forward to every year on Thanksgivng.

Brianna Doctor

    Since I was little I have always loved the iconic song by Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, so of course I had to see the movie, Bohemian Rhapsody, about Queen’s journey to fame.

    The film starts off in the country of England where the band originated from. You are introduced to the lead singer, Freddie Mercury, right away. Right away the film takes you to club where Mercury watches a band play. What they don’t know is he had been following them for quite some time.

    Soon after the band finishes playing, their lead singer quits. As if it were destiny, Mercury introduces himself to the other members of the band, Brian May and Roger Taylor, and tells them he would like to be apart of their band as one of the singers.

    The rest is history after that. Fast forward one year later, the band picked up a new member, John Deacon, and pays a studio to let them record a hit single.

    After hours of singing and trying different ways to create unique sounds, they land a break. Queen had been rejected multiple time, but the band finally received an offer from their first production company and soon after, release their first album.

    While band starts their journey to become famous, the film follows the love story of Mercury and his lover, Mary Austin.

    Once the album hit stores everywhere, they became well liked in the United States. As a result, Queen went on an American tour. While on tour, the film begins to focus on Mercury’s real sexuality.

    After returning to England, the band realizes they need to begin working on their next album. However, they all agree they want their next album to be different.

    The band travels to a farm in the middle of nowhere to focus on their music. Each band member writes their own songs, but trouble ensues when they dislike each others work.

    In no time, however, Mercury introduces his idea for the iconic song, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and they work together to successfully write the nearly six minute long song.

    After recording the rest of their album they named, A Night At The Opera, they pitch their hard work to a producing company. They run into another bump in the road when the producer, Ray foster, refuses to play some of their songs, including “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

    The band decides to take their music elsewhere and play it for the world themselves, and that is exactly what they did. Soon after, the world began listening to Queen.

    As Queen begins to tour the world, the film starts to focus more on Freddie Mercury and his changing personality as well as sexuallity.

    Once Queen becomes famous, Mercury starts to hang with the wrong crowd. He is introduced to the gay community by his manager, Paul Prenter, and soon begins to have an affair with him.

    At this point, things start to go sour with the band. The other band members believe Paul is a bad influence on Freddie, and they are done with how Freddie acts around them. By this time Freddie has begun to drink heavily and mess with drugs.

    The band soon splits up once Mercury decides to go solo; however, the split doesn’t last for long. Mercury realizes he does not sound the same without the rest of the members, and he finally sees that Paul has changed him and not in a positive way.

    Mercury plans to meet with the band and reunite so they can perform and the huge event, Live Aid. The band reluctantly meets with him, but in the end they decided they are better together

    The band practices for weeks as the prepare for their first performance in months together. The movie comes to a spectacular end with the insane performance they put on at Live Aid.

    Overall, the movie was very good and I very much enjoyed seeing it. I would recommend it to anyone, not just Queen fans, and I would say it is totally worth seeing.

Hannah Bartels

    Imagine this: a giant reptile looking man with nonhuman abilities from outer space has an evil, diabolical plan to overthrow planet Earth and all of its people. The idea and type of villain sound pretty familiar. Venom is just like most hero/villian stories with a small twist.

    Venom takes place in San Francisco, California. Actor, Tom Hardy, plays Eddie Brock in the movie. Eddie is a journalist, famous for digging up dirt on public figures. He is engaged to a very skilled lawyer named Anne Weying, played by Michelle Williams.

    Everything in Eddie’s life seems to be going smooth until he makes a big slip up that leads him towards losing his job and his “soon to be” bride. Eddie’s life falls to pieces and he is swept off his feet.

    This mistake doesn’t stop Eddie from ending his personal investigation over an evil scientist by the name of Carlton Drake who does not let anything stop him from pursuing his goals. When Drake discovers an alien-like symbiote, he is determined to discover what possibilities the symbiotic can achieve.

       Eddie ends up getting so invested into his investigation, that he accidently lets a symbiote take over his body which gives him nonhuman powers and invincibility. The symbiote is Venom. Venom threatens Eddie with his life and tells him to do things that Eddie does not want to do so he can achieve his mission of overthrowing Earth.

    Drake quickly finds out what Eddie is up to and discovers that Eddie broke into his lab and stole his symbiote. Throughout the movie, he tries to get it back from him.

    Later on in the movie, Venom becomes convinced that Earth is a good place and decides that he wants to live on it with Eddie. Another evil and more powerful symbiote tries to kill Venom but Venom needs Eddie’s body to stop him from taking over Earth.

    Eddie finds out that Venom is slowly rotting his organs over the short period of time he spends in his body but is determined to stop the evil symbiote along with Venom.

    Some of the humor in Venom was somewhat corny at some points in the movie. However, the overall quality of the movie was fun, exciting and was mainly directed towards Venom and emphasizing his cool abilities.

    Venom is a great action-packed thriller for anyone who loves a twist to any superhero movie. And let’s face it, who would not want to see a movie about two giant, supernatural creatures fighting each other over planet Earth?