An unusual terrier took the top prize two days in a row at the Gold Country Kennel Club dog show at the Nevada County Fairgrounds over the weekend.

Stonebroke Right On The Money is a Sealyham terrier bred by Howard Stone of Modesto and owned by Linda and Mickey Low of Paradise Valley, Ariz. The close-clipped 3-year-old with a long creamy beard is the top terrier and the fourth-ranked dog overall in the country, after winning his 22nd Best of Show award this year on Sunday.

"This is a very special dog. He's now the top-winning American-bred Sealyham of all time," Stone said. "He's good-natured. He's an ambassador of the breed."

Right On The Money was among 1,700 dogs that competed at the Gold Country Kennel Club's 5th Annual Back-to-Back All-Breed Dog Show held at the Nevada County Fairgrounds Saturday and Sunday.

The event added 400 animals to its entry list this year, Diane McCormack, a club board member and a Truckee dachshund breeder, said. Any show drawing more than 1,000 animals is considered a significant event.

The two-day event attracted serious breeders and hobbyists from around the country and abroad.

One of those was Susan McConnell, who shows her own dogs as a way of relaxing from her job as a professor of brain development at Stanford University.

McConnell's puli won in the herding category both days. The Hungarian sheep-herding dog resembles a large black mop. The animal drew appreciative comments from the crowd as McConnell sprinted him around a grassy ring during the Best of Show competition late Sunday.

She calls the dog Basil, though his formal name is Catsun Comanche. As Basil flopped on his side on a table and McConnell brushed grass out of his floor-length, rasta-like twists, she said she enjoyed the community she had found in competing.

"If you breed a beautiful dog that's balanced and has the physical structure to do the job it was bred to do, like hunting or herding, it's a living work of art," she said.

Dogs compete according to their breed. Winners in each breed go on to compete in one of seven functional categories, then on to best of show.

Even the dogs that seem to be without a function - the toy breeds - originally had a purpose. They developed from fluffy lap dogs kept by court ladies to attract bubonic plague-bearing fleas from the owner, McCormack said.

Sealyhams were developed in Wales in the late 1800s from a strain of white, rough-haired Flemish terriers that were mixed with other terrier types to create a dog tough and strong enough to chase otters from river lairs and badgers away from farm animals, according to the Web site of the California Sealyham Terrier Club.

It is also the rarest of all terriers, with 76 registered with the American Kennel Club, Stone said. Top breeds such as Pekingese have tens of thousands of animals registered at the national level.

Stone is the person most associated with the breed in this country. He also sells dog statuettes at shows around the country.

McCormack said Right On The Money is unusual in that neither of his parents are champions.

"He knew how to pick that puppy," McCormack said of Stone, who has been breeding Sealyhams for 30 years.

Stone named his kennel Stonebroke "because when you show dogs, you end up stone broke," Stone said with a laugh.

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To contact staff writer Trina Kleist, e-mail trinak@theunion.com or call 477-4231.