Ocala dog handler hits big with Harrier

Noah Milam is going big during his final year as a junior dog handler. He recently garnered one of the nation’s most coveted championship ribbons for his age group.

The 18-year-old competitor won Best Junior Handler at the American Kennel Club National Junior Showmanship in Orlando last month. Because he began the season as a 17-year-old “junior,” he is allowed to continue in the category through the end of the competing period this spring.

Milam competed with his 4-year-old Harrier Ariel and was “over the moon” when he won.

The Ocala-based canine enthusiast first connected with Ariel when her breeder, Mike Gowen, also of Ocala, asked him to show her as a puppy.

“Ever since she was a puppy, we’ve just kind of stuck,” he said. “I was the first person to ever show Ariel, and you know, back then, she was untrained and running all over the place!”

Milam described his hound as sweet, with an expressive personality and a bit sassy. The furry star on the rise is not just Milam’s show pet. Ariel sleeps with him and accompanies him on bike rides as he tools around his lower southwest Ocala neighborhood on a mountain bike.

Relatively rare, Harriers look like “beagles with a gym membership,” according to the breed’s page on the American Kennel Club’s website. They are a favorite of Irish hunters.

Their markings resemble their more diminutive cousins, the beagle. They measure from 19 to 21 inches at the shoulder and move about like a working pack hound. Their short coat and smooth, low-set ears make them approachable and easy to groom.

According to the AKC, the Harriers’ sweet face comes with “enough muscle and sinew to endure a long day’s hunt” and “a well-built Harrier will cover the ground with a smooth, efficient gait.”

Long before Ariel came into his life, Milam grew up watching dog shows with his grandmother.

“When I was 5, we would sit and play the dog shows on TV on Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Milam recalled.

Watching a rerun of the 2008 Westminster Dog Show, just shy of 5 years old, he bet his grandmother, Margaret Taylor, $50 that the beagle, Uno, would win Best in Show, and sure enough, he won.

“After that, I went up to my mom and told her I was gonna do dog shows one day,” he recalled. “We had no connection to the dog show world, and we didn’t know anything about it, but she told me that if I saved my money and bought a show dog, she would help me achieve my goal “

Since that fateful day, Milam has won a slew of ribbons. He has even inspired his younger siblings — Brianna, Grayson, Annalee and Isabella — to follow in his footsteps. Everyone except Isabella, who just turned 8, is already competing in shows, but the youngest sister plans to hit the circuit next year. Their mom, Heather Lee Taylor, sells dog care products at the shows.

The kids’ fur children/budding show dogs include another young Harrier, Max, plus an assortment of Afghan hounds, Welsh corgis, chow chows and Yorkshire terriers.

“I breed all kinds of dogs,” Milam emphasized. “I love doing this.”

Besides showing dogs, Milam enjoys comic books, tinkering with cars and go-karts. With the $5,000 scholarship money he has won, he plans to go to a university to study accounting but hasn’t decided yet on which school.

The 2022 AKC National Championship took place Dec. 17-18 at Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center. Eligibility to enter the event was based on the competitor’s accomplishments in the show ring and in the classroom. Handlers had to have won five first-places in an Open Class with competition present. The wins had to have been earned between Sept. 22, 2021, and Sept. 21, 2022.

“A lot of politics plays into the judges’ picks sometimes, and I’m not one to have a lot of political connections in my court,” Milam said. “Just like I said before, I don’t come from this world. This is something that I decided when I was 5 years old that this is what I was going to do and I stuck to it, and I made it farther than I’d ever thought.”

Last month’s win in Orlando allows Milam to go on to the world’s largest dog show, Crufts Junior Handling 2023, March 9-12, to represent the U.S. in Birmingham, England, in the junior showmanship competition.

He also will compete in the Westminster Junior Showmanship on May 6. The premier all-breed Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is the second-longest, continuously held sporting event in the U.S. and, since 1948, is the longest-running, nationally televised live dog show.