NEW YORK — Sage, an extravagantly coifed miniature poodle with a certain winsome mystery about her, won the 148th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Tuesday night, prevailing over a tough field of competitors including a majestic German shepherd, a silken Afghan hound and a proud giant schnauzer.

The competition began with some 2,500 dogs from more than 200 breeds, then eventually pared down to a field of seven group champions vying for the top prize. The best-in-show judge, Rosalind Kramer, who remained sequestered during the proceedings so that she could emerge fresh for the final round, selected Sage over what she called an “absolutely glorious” lineup of dogs.

Sage, a 3-year-old female whose full name is GCHG Ch Surrey Sage, was a surprise win. Before the show, which was held for a second consecutive year at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens, she was ranked just 39th of all show dogs in the country — based on points amassed in previous shows — and only fourth in her group, non-sporting dogs. But she had something about her.

Like all show poodles, Sage appears to be about 75% hair, with a sumptuous coiffure that rises to a huge pouf above and around her head, surrounds her body in a kind of puffball and reappears as topiary-trimmed pompoms on the end of her tail and at the bottom of her skinny legs, as if she is wearing après-ski boots. She trots daintily, as if running was slightly beneath her.

It was the 11th time a poodle of one size or another has won the competition. In 2020, the title was won by Siba, a standard poodle; in 2002, it was won by Spice, another miniature poodle who is Sage’s great-grandmother. Sage (and Spice’s) handler, Kaz Hosaka, said this was his 45th Westminster and that it was time to retire.

Hosaka, who is known for his poodle hairdressing expertise — a New York Times profile in 2009 called him “an artist who tends his poodles’ poufs as if they were bonsai trees from his native Japan” — carried Sage into the ring for the best-in-show competition, and again into the post-show news conference, positioning her in front of a yellow-and-purple ribbon twice the length of her body. “She’s heavy,” he said.

“I was not expecting anything,” Hosaka, 65, said. “She did it for me today.”

He said that Sage, too, would retire now that the show is over. He plans to go to happy hour more often, he said, and Sage will finally be allowed to venture outside in the rain without worries about what it will do to her hairstyle. “She’ll be like a normal dog.”

Hosaka has a towering reputation in the dog world for his way with poodles. A recent article in Edge, a lifestyle magazine, said that Hosaka “is to the poodle world what Michael Jordan is to basketball. Smooth, clever, elegant and nearly unbeatable.”

Reserve best in show — Westminster’s title for second place — went to Mercedes, a German shepherd, that won the herding group. Monty, a dark and dignified giant schnauzer that won the working group, came into the show ranked No. 1 in the country.

Other finalists were the winner of the hound group, Louis, a 6-year-old Afghan hound with such silky hair that he looked like an animate shampoo commercial; Comet, a 3-year-old Shih Tzu that won the toy group and sported a fetching blue bow; Micah, a spry black cocker spaniel that defeated a formidable field of pointers, setters and retrievers to take the sporting group; and Frankie, the colored bull terrier that won the popular, if crowded, terrier group.

The Westminster show, which dates to 1877, centers on the traditional purebred judging that leads to the best-in-show prize. But over the last decade, the club has added agility and obedience events open to mixed-breed dogs.

And this year, the agility competition counted its first non-purebred winner, a border collie-papillon mix named Nimble.

Associated Press contributed.