The Westminster win was supposed to be an auspicious start to a busy show season for Pink and her owner, Jennifer Crank, of Pickerington, Ohio. Then the novel coronavirus brought everything to a grinding halt, giving Pink, whom Crank compares to a pro athlete, time off from being a top canine competitor — and more freedom to be, well, a dog.

“My training right now is far less structured,” Crank said. “It’s been a lot more hiking and finding new trails.”

In mid-March, the pandemic put all dog sports and events administered by the American Kennel Club on pause. Although some events resumed in late June, more than 12,000 shows — across 26 categories including agility, obedience and the canine beauty contests known as conformation — were canceled this spring, said Doug Ljungren, the club’s executive vice president of sports and events.

“It’s been quite a shutdown — pretty dramatic,” he said. “A lot of people, this is kind of their lifestyle and what they enjoy doing most.”

Now, instead of filling weekends with local competitions, ticking up miles on the odometer and collecting championships, many owners and their show dogs have found themselves homebound.

For Crank, the pandemic has cost much more than championships. It also forced her Ohio agility-training business, Incredipaws, to close temporarily.

“For me, it’s more than a hobby. It’s a hobby and a profession,” Crank said, “so when the sport is negatively affected, it’s not just taking away my scrapbooking class — it’s taking away my livelihood.”

During this point in the show season, Crank said, her five dogs “would be in total bubble wrap” — she’d be monitoring everything from movements to mealtimes. But this year, “they’re doing more free movement — which probably is better for their mental well-being.”

As Ohio started loosening restrictions in May, Crank began to host socially distant classes and dog trials at her facility.

Agility “is coming back faster than any of the other sports,” with about 83 percent of the typical number of events planned for this summer, Ljungren said. Agility is easier to stage safely because dog handlers compete one-by-one. Conformation shows and other events remain few and far between.

The resumption of agility trials is good news for Jordan York and his dogs — Moses, Nile and Capture — who started traveling again in mid-June.

Moses, a scrappy mutt from Evansville, Ind., captured the attention of the dog show world in 2016 when he began scooping up titles, eventually making his way to Westminster this year.

Westminster is often thought of as the pinnacle of pedigree — a place for purebreds to flaunt their bloodlines and training. But Moses, a mixed-breed who was puppy-trained at PetSmart, won this year’s all-American dog at Westminster, a title for the highest-ranking mutt in the agility round.

“I didn’t have a clue what I was doing except running around out there,” said York of his early days in the ring. “But he enjoyed it. So we just kept doing it.”

Amid the pandemic, York said he’s been running drills with his dogs in the backyard and allowing them to chase after “the thousand and one squirrels” in his neighborhood.

While York was eager to get back on the road again, others see the event cancellations as a welcome respite.

“I was two and a half months pregnant when we won Westminster,” said handler Chrystal Clas, who works and lives with this year’s best in show winner, Siba, a standard poodle. “I’ve actually been really enjoying this downtime.”

Clas and her husband, who run Lakeside Pet Resort, a grooming and boarding company in Hanover, Pa., have spent the months away from the circuit settling into a new normal with Siba and their 2-year-old while they await the newest addition to their family.

Although Siba retired from shows following this year’s Westminster win, quarantine has given Clas and Siba more time to try new sports — just for fun.

One of those is the AKC’s Fast CAT trials. Short for Coursing Ability Test, the sport tests a dog’s speed and drive across a short distance. On a recent Sunday, Clas watched Siba hurtle after a fake rabbit, clocking just under 10 seconds across 100 yards.

Siba has taken to life’s new rhythm. “She doesn’t know she won Westminster. She just thinks she’s a house pet right now and she loves it,” Clas said. “She was born to play with my son and sleep on the couch. She just settled right into it.”

Dog breeder and groomer Amy Halterman expected to spend spring 2020 as she usually does — heading to shows in Michigan, where she lives, or in nearby states. She’s been showing Schipperkes, fluffy black dogs that resemble tiny bears, for four decades, and she thinks one of her dogs, Ringo, could do well at Westminster next February.

(Another of Halterman’s dogs, 8-year-old Colton, made history at Westminster a year ago when, after winning the non-sporting group, he was disqualified from best in show because the judge had a distant working relationship with another of Colton’s co-owners.)

Instead, Halterman has been stuck at home with Colton, his grandson, Ringo, and her eight other Schipperkes.

Although Colton retired after this year’s Westminster, he remains the nation’s top-ranked Schipperke simply because, with the cancellations, no other dogs have had an opportunity to unseat him. But his puppies are missing out on key months of socialization.

“For young dogs that you’re trying to develop to get ready for Westminster, this is a setback,” Halterman said. “We’re training our dogs in our driveways and in our living rooms and kitchens.”

Halterman is still grooming and breeding despite the pandemic. But the methods have changed. Grooming clients now come one at a time and drop off their dogs quickly, and breeding is happening remotely.

Halterman, speaking by phone in early July, had just shipped semen to a Schipperke owner in Connecticut. “There’s a whole lot more using FedEx and UPS than before,” she said.

For obedience trainer Linda Brennan and her Labrador retriever, Heart, quarantine has been a challenging exercise in mental toughness.

“It’s really hard to maintain that motivation without some concrete idea of when it’s going to pay off,” said Brennan, of Columbia, N.J. “We haven’t been in a show since March 7th.”

In February, Brennan and Heart were at the top of their competitive careers. Heart had just won Westminster’s obedience challenge for the fifth consecutive year.

But these days, Heart has returned to her roots as a water-loving Lab, competing in local dock-diving competitions, and even Spell, Brennan’s 11-year-old border collie, got a chance to take a plunge.

“They love to swim,” Brennan said. “When I’m working from home, they’re out in the yard splashing in their little kiddie pool or playing in the hose.”

To keep her dogs competition-ready, Brennan has mixed obedience training with other activities. Heart has started to do more field work, which simulates bird hunting, and Brennan’s puppy, Lita, enrolled in the AKC Trick Dog titles. On Brennan’s YouTube channel, a 3-month-old Lita bounces through a series of tricks including turn, touch, down and paw.

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you’re stuck at home with your dog,” Brennan said.

Some clubs have held virtual competitions, though they don’t count toward titles. In August, the AKC will host its second Virtual Top Dog Challenge conformation challenge; the first, held in June, garnered nearly 700 entries.

Emma Stanchina, 15, entered one virtual show this spring. But her mind is on a loftier goal: winning best junior handler at Westminster.

She and her grand champion Schipperke, Journey, have competed at Westminster twice already, but to qualify for next year, Stanchina needs to win seven titles by late fall. In mid-March, she was well on her way with three. Now, she said, “I’m a little bit worried about how I’m going to get that.”

Stanchina, of Livonia, Mich., still bathes and grooms her dogs weekly. But mostly, she said, her canine crew has spent the pandemic sleeping and playing. They frolic in a kiddie pool. They go on lots of walks.

Stanchina said she’s hoping Westminster will extend the qualification period so that she has more time to collect titles. But with the coronavirus surging in several states, she’s not making any travel plans for New York just yet.

“If the cases keep going up,” she said, “I don’t even know if we’re even going to have a Westminster in 2021.”

Westminster has weathered storms in the past. The show has survived power outages, snowstorms, a national depression, two World Wars and a tugboat strike that threatened to shut down New York City, according to its website.

Gail Miller Bisher, communications director for Westminster, said she remains confident it will happen in February. “We’re planning. We’re moving ahead,” she said. “The dog show must go on.”