Oh, the Irony

As I sat down for my afternoon meal today, I had a choice between watching yet another rerun of a Project Runway I had already seen and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, so I chose the latter. A woman from Alabama was working her way up the questions, and she was about to go for $25,000. After a dramatic commercial break, the show resumed and Meredith Vierra decided it was time for some small talk. She asked the woman about her love of animals to which the woman responded that she raises money for dogs that were displaced because of Hurricane Katrina. Then, back to business. The $25,000 question was something along the lines of "Which breed of dog won the Westminster Dog Show in 2008 for the first time in history?" The choices were pug, beagle, Scottish terrier, and bulldog. I immediately was 99% sure it was the beagle because of all the hubbub after the Dog Show this year, and I was 99% sure the contestant would get it correct because of her love of dogs. She started off guessing it was the beagle, but she decided to use a lifeline to be sure. She spoke with some guy over Skype, and he told her only that he knew it wasn't the Scottish terrier. Not very reassuring. She decided to use yet another lifeline and phone a friend. She read the question to the friend, read him all the answer choices, and...silence. She kept telling him how many seconds were left, and I was beginning to think the call had cut out until he finally spoke up and managed to spit out, "Can you repeat the--" before getting cut off by the time clock. So, our dog-loving contestant was left with nothing. She didn't feel confident enough to take a guess, so she walked with $16,000.

As you probably already know, the answer (final) was, in fact, beagle. The only thing I doubted when I read the question was that they were tricking me by naming another dog show that the beagle hadn't won. I almost had to feel bad for the woman because it kind of made her look foolish after she talked up her love of the canine species, but then again, she has $16,000 more in her pocket than I do, so I can't feel that bad.