Denise Flam, Newsday

THAT'S ONE UGLY DOG

Ugly, your name is Sam.

At least, that's what the judges at the World's Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair concluded earlier this month when they awarded that dubious superlative to a 14-year-old Chinese crested from Santa Barbara, Calif.

It was the third consecutive landslide for Sam, a hairless, blind, dermatologically challenged fellow who bears more than a passing resemblance to Yoda, or maybe the Cryptkeeper. (The first year Sam won, Japanese television producers -- struck by his resemblance to one of their more successful imports, Godzilla -- hurriedly dispatched a camera crew.)

This year, a photo of Sam in all his wrinkled, mottled glory has been whizzing around the Net, inspiring simultaneous fascination and revulsion the world over.

"Every year the photo gets worse" -- or, depending on how you look at it, better -- says Sam's owner, Susie Lockheed, who affectionately describes Sam as a "mutant." "He has a big hernia bulge, extra-long nails, a lipoma lump in the middle of his chest, and a little line of moles and warts that march down his snout like a stegosaurus."

Sam's many blackheads are particularly vexing because Lockheed runs a facial and waxing business, "and he will not let me work on him. Whenever I get him near the facial steamer, he turns into Cujo."

Clear across the country, Carol Gold, owner of Paws, Claws and Tails, an all-natural animal-food store in Bonita Springs, Fla., is gearing up for her annual ugly-dog contest.

It's held every August at the Flamingo Island Flea Market, though Gold doesn't know the exact date yet: During hurricane season, you play these things by ear. But she does know the odds-on favorite breed to walk away with the ribbon: Last year's winner, like Sam, was a crested.

"These dogs are so ugly that in a way they're beautiful," she says. "Everybody has a concept of what a dog should be, and these dogs aren't it. They look more like rats."

Not surprisingly, fans of these usually elegant, playful toy dogs prefer comparisons to a different species.

Breeder and vet Sophia Kaluzniacki of Green Valley, Ariz., remembers the little girl visiting her practice who spied her veteran crested, Leo, snoozing in a waiting-room chair.

"Her eyes got really big," Kaluzniacki says, "and she said, 'Look, Mom, over there! It's a live My Little Pony!' "

Beloved by entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee -- an early breeder, she often quipped they were "a naked dog for a naked lady" -- Chinese cresteds have two varieties: the Powderpuff, which is covered with hair, and the Hairless, which has silky hair only on its head (the "crest"), tail ("plume") and feet ("socks").

Sam has five head hairs, by Lockheed's count.

Indeed, despite their recent track record, Chinese cresteds do not have a lock on the ugly Olympics. A Neapolitan mastiff of any age could provide a good run for their money.

"It's so in the eye of the beholder," agrees Lockheed, whose other dog, Tater Tot, a 13-year-old crested-Chihuahua mix, was a runner-up in the contest, much to her owner's bemusement. Despite Tater Tot's "troll-doll hair," Lockheed thinks she's "really cute."

Gold theorizes that there's a fine line between beautiful and ugly, and attitude has a lot to do with straddling it.

Lockheed acquired Sam as a rescue at the not-so-tender age of 9, after the local shelter pronounced him unadoptable, and "I would never say he was handsome," she admits.

But he does have an unshakable sense of self: "A real epicurean," he demands a constantly changing array of foods, from flan to strawberry cream cheese, to camouflage the pills he takes for his congestive heart failure and weak kidneys. He drinks bottled water, sleeps on a goosedown blanket and spends his days snoozing on the laps of Lockheed's clients.

He is, Lockheed concludes, fudging her Italian to account for gender, "a primo donna."

If Sam's health holds, he'll be back next year, she vows. In the meantime, she'll just sit back and admire.

"I think he's really adorable," she says, beaming.