What was going on when I was born?

EVERY September, the county becomes the focal point in America for dog lovers. This year, it will be next Sunday when the gates of a famous estate on the Hudson swing open to the country's canine aristocracy, as the Westchester Kennel Club holds its annual extravaganza. It all started in 1905, when a small group of men staged the first Westchester show in conjunction with a fair at White Plains. It lasted for three days and drew 330 dogs. The current edition, at Lyndhurst, a national landmark on Route 9, in Tarrytown, just south of the Tappan Zee Bridge, has attracted 2,790 animals. The show is dedicated to Peter Knoop, the Westchester club's president for 12 years, who died on Aug. 26.

In one of those apparent cultural coincidences that are actually the result of broad intellectual currents that cross national boundaries at certain moments, the year 1898 saw both the founding of the Moscow Art Theater by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, and Freud's starting to write ''The Interpretation of Dreams,'' the book that formed the foundation of all his future work. In the Tulane Drama Review some years ago, John J. Sullivan, a psychologist with an interest in the theater, argued that the starting of the MAT and Freud's book were responses and contributions to certain radically changed conditions of the European mind: a new consciousness of the self, especially of its interiority, and a new awareness of the relations between body and mind. On the basis of these intuitions, Freud embarked on a ''scientific'' revision of nearly all human self-knowledge; Stanislavsky's goals were more modest and circumscribed, but the results of his investigations in his chosen domain nevertheless proved to be far-reaching. A few months ago, Lee Strasberg died after a long reign as head of the Actors' Studio and an even longer one as Stanislavsky's chief interpreter (or, as some think, misinterpreter) in this country. With his death, an era has come to an end; so, this would seem to be a good time to ask some questions concerning the place of Stanislavsky in American theatrical practice, most centrally in the training of actors.

The Defense Department blocked the presentation of about 100 technical papers just before they were to have been delivered at an international convention on optical engineering held in San Diego late last month. The last-minute security crackdown, which received little notice at the time, appears to have been the most sweeping effort yet by the Reagan Administration to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive technical data that officials believe could be of military use to the Soviet Union or its allies. The abrupt nature of the action disturbed some top scientists and even other Government officials, with George A. Keyworth 2d, President Reagan's science adviser, calling the incident ''both unfortunate and ill-timed.'' The action disrupted the 26th annual international technical symposium of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers by eliminating about one of every six papers scheduled to be presented.

FOR this season's evaluation of the 28 teams in the National F ootball League, last season's results are meaningless. Even the A merican Football Conference has no perennial powers any longer. Lasts eason's mediocre team could be this season's Super Bowl winner, or s imply another loser. And even the most sanguine fan of the C incinnati Bengals knows that if the quarterback Ken Anderson were i njured, the team could sink to the bottom. For better or for worse, parity has replaced powerhouses. In assessing the A.F.C., it is important not to be overly impressed with last season. Don't try to figure which team has the ''easiest'' schedule based on last season's won-lost records. The A.F.C. traditionally is the conference of the quarterback, of the long pass play, of instant gratification. This season, there will be a conservative trend. Even Jim Plunkett and Terry Bradshaw - the famed long passers of other seasons - are going to dump off quick, unexciting passes to their running backs.

Cubbyhole Co-ops A Bit of Charm at $35,000 and Up Even in Manhattan, where space is counted in inches, it would not be an exaggeration to call the 16 cooperative apartments at 34-36 Bethune Street in Greenwich Village pint-sized. The smallest measures 10 feet by 11 feet 9 inches and the largest is 13 feet 4 inches by 21 feet 1 inch. The measurements do not include the units' tiny bathrooms.

Israel will not share military intelligence from the war in Lebanon with the United States until the Reagan Administration removes a variety of sanctions against Israel, according to Administration officials. The officials said the Israeli Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, made that position known in a conversation with Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger in Washington two weeks ago. One of the sanctions cited by Mr. Sharon was President Reagan's decision to hold up Congressional action on the sale of 75 F-16 jet fighter-bombers long promised to Israel. The delay was in response to Israel's attack on Palestinian forces in Lebanon in early June.

HARTFORD WHAT began early this year as a long list of contests in both major parties for nominations for Governor, United States Senator and other major offices has dwindled to a precious few in Connecticut's primary election on Tuesday. The intraparty fights for Governor, Senator and most other statewide offices evaporated after the party nominating conventions in July, leaving only one statewide primary contest - for the Democratic nomination for Secretary of the State - on Tuesday's ballot. Both parties will also have primary contests to pick nominees in the Sixth Congressional District in the northwestern quarter of the state, and the Democrats will have a contest to choose a nominee in the Third Congressional District in the New Haven area. There also will be scattered primary contests in both parties across the state for candidates for the General Assembly.

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. JOE FERGUSON, the quarterback who came in from the cold, hasn't been slamming his helmet on the ground. Things may not be going well for the Buffalo Bills, but not even Joe Ferguson can blame Joe Ferguson this time. ''I'm just an easy-going country boy that sometimes gets fired up,'' said the 32-year-old resident of Natchitoches, La. (population 20,000), the oldest town in the Louisiana Purchase territory. From the seats, it has been easier to spot the fired-up Ferguson than the easy-going country boy in dungarees and flannel shirt he usually is off the field. For years, Ferguson had been exasperating fans, teammates and coaches by his frequent emotional displays. After an interception, he would kick the ground, throw his helmet, or simply bow his head in a gesture of unmitigated guilt.

Frank Sinatra may have conquered the Pyramids, but can Yves Montand fill the Metropolitan Opera House all by himself? And can he - alone in front of an enormous auditorium - hold that stage which is large enough to accommodate the elephants in ''Aida''? From Tuesday to Saturday this week, Mr. Montand will be the first popular singer to play the Met alone. Charter flights of fans are already booked from Paris to New York to hear him sing such musichall favorites as ''Au''Hollywood,'' and recite poems by Jacques Prevert, Aragon and Baudelaire. Not the sort of thing one usually hears at the Met, but Jane Hermann, presentation director of the Metropolitan, who booked him after seeing his show in Paris last year, has no reservations about it. ''Montand has a classicism that supersedes the normal pop artist,'' she says. ''He belongs here, where the greatest artists in the world perform, and he's played bigger houses before.'' For many of his contemporaries, Yves Montand is more than a singer or an actor; he is the symbol of a generation. His songs, which come out of the music-hall tradition of Piaf and Chevalier, have an arresting simplicity and a knowing, ironic seductiveness. With his special kind of romanticism, his nonchalance and his intensity, he created his own persona and a brand of eroticism that have resisted changing fashions.

CHINESE PLAN TO ABOLISH THE POST OF COMMUNIST PARTY CHAIRMAN PEKING, Sunday, Sept. 5 (By Reuters, Reuters) - China is to abolish the post of Communist Party chairman, created for Mao Zedong as part of efforts to emphasize collective leadership, the Communist Party Chairman, Hu Yaobang, has told the 12th Chinese party congress. The New China News Agency today quoted Mr. Hu as saying that the party would in the future be headed by a general secretary responsible to the political bureau. He would preside over the Secretariat, which deals with day-to-day party affairs. (United Press International quoted the agency report as saying that Mr. Hu made the announcement in his address Wednesday to the opening of the party congress. It said Mr. Hu also announced the start of a major reorganization and consolidation of provincial party ranks.)

FROM the flinty Judean hills to the breathless heat of the Jordan Val-ley and the Dead Sea, the West Bank is an area hard used by man. Much of it is barren, eroded and baked. But like a lovely old rug it retains a scuffed though indelible beauty. Even more enduring is its emotional and historical appeal -containing the tomb of Abraham, the common patriarch of Jew and Moslem, the Christian Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the outskirts of Jerusalem.

DECREASES in enrollment and increases in expenditures in Suffolk County's 72 school districts will continue in the school year starting this week, forcing a number of changes, administrators in the county say. However, the enrollment rate has been stabilizing at elementary grade levels, so that by the 1990's total enrollment in the county is expected to increase. James Brady, chief of the New York State Education Department's Bureau of Statistical Services, said that enrollment in Suffolk schools decreased 14.9 percent over the last five years. Most of the drop was attributed to a declining birth rate, but about 20 percent was caused by out-of-state migration.