Toward the end of World War II, dachshunds in Germany were butchered and rationed to the public as “blockade mutton.”

Of all the canine breeds, this long, low-slung pooch—developed to track and hunt game—was considered the most succulent. “I won’t show my dachshies in China or Korea or any other country that features dogs on the menu,” says Iris Love. “I don’t mind chow chows, but I draw the line when they get turned into chow.”

The 74-year-old archaeologist owns dozens of dachshunds, six of which are slated to compete next week in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show championships, held at Madison Square Garden. Love’s top dog is the somewhat fancifully named Champion Dachsmith Love’s Psyche NT II. At the end of Psyche’s rookie campaign, she is currently ranked the No. 1 smooth bitch and the No. 2 smooth dachshund all-breed. All of Love’s entries are champs, and nearly all are named for heroes of Greek mythology.
    
Love has bred or co-bred numerous dachshunds that have won the national specialty, which encompasses all three coats: smooth, wire-haired, and long-haired. Tyche Tyche, whom Love named for the goddess of good fortune, is a three-time American Kennel Club dachshund bitch of the year. Tyche’s nephew Diomedes was once the highest-ranking dachshund, but he was supplanted by Adamis, who has lived her entire life in the lap of lapdog luxury.

Love limits her champions to two tours. "A dog's life is very short, and much of a show dog's is spent in crates," she reasons. "I retire my champions while they're still young so that they'll have time to play and run and be dogs."

But no dachshund has won best in show at Westminster in the 131 years that the event has taken place. Dachshunds are “nude,” Love says, “without a coat to hide faults.” Many all-breed judges, she adds, will not even look at them.

Psyche is one of the rare rich bitches that doesn’t demand to be primped like a debutante. Still, she gets her whiskers and nails trimmed regularly, her teeth brushed every morning, and a bath before every show. If you’re keeping count, that’s 125 baths a year, sometimes seven a week but never more than one a day. In 2007, Love’s dachshunds covered more than 70,000 miles on the show circuit, journeying as far as California to amass breed points for the A.K.C. standings.

In their relentless pursuit of blue ribbons, some owners spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on entry fees, travel expenses, and overall canine care. On top of that are the salaries of handlers, who flit from airport to airport and from fairground to hotel ballroom. Love’s handler, Erin Roberts, showed at 35 events in the most recent campaign. At Westminster, placement charges, bonuses, and tips could fetch Roberts up to $40,000 per contender. Prize money is an entirely different animal: Love splits hers between Roberts and the Dachshund Club of America.

Love plows money into dozens of full-page advertisements in Dog Fancy magazine and trade newspapers The ads, which trumpet her dachshunds’ achievements, are targeted at judges. “It’s all about exposure,” Love says. “You want the judges to get used to your dog.”

The owner of one of this year’s favorites is rumored to have invested millions promoting his purebred. “It’s a shame,” says Love. “Many people who can’t afford to advertise have wonderful dogs. Are we judging dogs or ads?”

Choosing the seven best-of-group champs is as complex as picking from among an aardvark, a giraffe, and a caterpillar. Each is a different type, bred for a different purpose. A dog gets to be best-in-show because it’s judged to be, say, a better affenpinscher than an competing basenji is a basenji. Yet winning in the Garden often has less to do with conformation than sentiment and pooch politics.

Having attended Westminster for eight decades, Love sees dachshunds differently than the rest of us. We may look at a young male and see a poorly designed suspension bridge. “I look for tone and balance,” Love says. “Psyche is practically a poster child for correct dachshund type—the one etched in the walls of the pyramids in Egypt’s 12th dynasty.”
    
Love’s own pedigree is impeccable. Her socialite mother was a Guggenheim; her stockbroker father claimed descent from Alexander Hamilton and King George IV. Young Iris was brought up in a Manhattan whitestone with a boxer, a Scottie, a French poodle, a Great Dane, a miniature pinscher, and 12 Skye terriers, the oldest of which was a bitch named Fingal. “One of Fingal’s sons married her,” Love says. “I wanted to call him Oedipus Rex.”

Love adopted her first dachshund from the A.S.P.C.A. and named him Baron Heinrich Schulz von Kraus. “Many Europeans of doubtful descent add a title to their names,” she explains. “I thought, Why not a dachshund?”
    
A lover of doggerel who laps up high-toned dog-show chitchat, Love speaks six languages—seven, if you include dachshund. “I’m a Trekkie,” she says. “I’m always trying to mind-meld with my dachshunds.” She almost always wears blue—the color the ancients wore to ward off evil spirits—and an air of perpetual wonder.
    
Her archaeological accomplishments range from the discovery of the base of the Winged Victory of Samothrace to the unearthing of the lost temple of Aphrodite Euploia, at Knidos, Turkey. When Love was excavating the Knidos ruins in the 1970s, her dachshies Carlino and Phyrne served as assistants, burrowing down holes with tape measures fastened to their collars. “Carlino was Phryne’s half brother,” she reports. “They bred in a Ptolemaic fashion.”
    
Carlino and Phryne were descendants of Cracker Jack, the only dachshund ever to win the hound group at Westminster two years in a row. Though Phryne never showed, her daughter, Liz the Lion-Hearted, turned pro in 1987 and won the puppy division of her very first event, the prestigious Knickerbocker Dachsund Specialty Show. Named for her co-owner, gossip columnist Liz Smith, the dog wowed Westminster in 1988, winning best of opposite in her breed.
    
Ever since, Love has taken over Tavern on the Green before the big show for a bash in honor of her breed. With its ice carvings of fire hydrants, dachshunds molded from chopped liver, and sparkling-water pooch bar, the Central Park soiree is the biggest doggie do in Manhattan. Love and her champs have shown up costumed as Egyptian deities, Roman emperors, and Indian chiefs (the dachshies came decked out in feathers and war paint, with bows and arrows strapped to their backs).

Love feeds them hors d’oeuvres on dachshund-shaped crackers and lets them sip from her vodka cocktail. “Dachshies are bons vivants who know how to hold their liquor,” she says. “It probably helps that they’re built so low to the ground.”