THE DOG SHOWS THAT WIN A ROSETTE FOR CRUELTY
No, it’s not just Crufts that’s plagued by controversy – as our columnist found when she ventured into...
IT’S Saturday afternoon, and I’m in a small market town called Wooler, not far from the border town of Berwick. I’m at the Cheviot And Berwick Canine Society Dog Show, held in the sports hall of the local school. It all sounds rather genteel, harmless and quintessentially English, although from the reaction I’m getting, you’d think I was at the border of Turkey trying to get into Syria. Or outside the Grand Palais in Paris, trying to gatecrash a Chanel show.
‘Why are you here?’ the show secretary asks me. I tell her I’m reporting on the dog show. She asks me to email her my copy before it’s printed for approval (I refused).
Why on earth is she so super sensitive, I ask? But it’s a bit of a stupid question, given the mishandling scandal that surrounded this year’s Crufts competition, with a dog being lifted aloft by its throat and tail. ‘I must protect the Society,’ she tells me ominously.
Later, as she sees me taking notes, she tries to confiscate my notebook. She makes me show the pages to her, and I thank God I have such terrible handwriting.
‘I’m a dog lover,’ I tell her. ‘I have rescued border collies. I adore dogs.’ She remains suspicious. Giorgio Armani, the rottweiler lerl of the couture world, should hire rer this woman to protect his empire. . He’d never get a bad review again.
The show season is getting intoi into its stride, but the dog showing world – and even this small, local showhowh held under the aegis of The Kennel ele Club – is currently as defensive as a starved Romanian stray over its PedigreeP Pedigree Chum. Its relationship with the heh great British dog-loving public is as strained as the many choke chains here e garrotting various golden retrievers. s.s
On this afternoon, I see dalmatians, matians,mtians, labradors, spaniels, cavaliers rs and whippets: dogs and owners erse of all ages and sizes.
Most of these people obviously slys love their charges, kissing ngn them all the while, but it’s still tillt commonplace to see dogs being ngn manhandled, groomed withinhinh an inch of their lives, pulled,ed,e dragged and, yes, as with the winner of Best in Show at Cruftsufts earlier this month, picked up inappropriately and placed on na a table for judging.
Despite the furore a few weeksekse ago surrounding the moment ent handler Rebecca Cross lifted her five-year-old Scottish terrier, ier, Knopa, by its throat and tailil – sparking an online petition thattt that garnered more than 160,000 g-sig signatures asking for theo ownerere to be stripped of the title – it seemse eem ms today nothing has changed.
Because today I am appalleda alledd to see a lovely Skye terrierere – named rather unimaginativelye ely Skye – picked up by her taila ail and throat by her owner, a an action that is still deemed d normal here, in this world of f so-called experts.
To be clear, The Kennel Club, which runs Crufts, states that picking up a dog in this manner is against the he rules, rules,rule and it is currently investigatingating theh events at Crufts. But when I challenge hallenge Skye’s owner about tail-lifting and the scandal at last month’s competition, she says: ‘Well, it was only a foreign dog. Wasn’t it Russian?’
Why anyone, let alone a fanatical dog lover, would pick up their pet by two delicate pieces of its anatomy – especially a dog that is heavy – is beyond me. The action reminds me of when a vet picked up my dying, dehydrated cat by the scruff of his neck.
I began to wish poor old Skye, entered in the vintage class as she is 13, would turn round and bare her teeth at the indignity of being hoisted aloft by her tail, itself endlessly preened and primped, all for a coloured rosette.
John Bradshaw, author of the excellent In Defence Of Dogs, tells me: ‘Dogs should never be lifted by their tails, as this can damage the joints between the vertebrae, causing pain and potential long-term damage. That Scottish terriers were originally bred to have strong tails, even if true, is not a valid excuse since the dogs shown at Crufts have been bred for the showring for more than a century.’
And it’s not just the older generation who treat dogs in this manner. I meet a 26-year-old showing her nine-monthold standard poodle, Lottie, who is ‘very nervous’ – the dog that is, not the young woman. She is basking in her new hobby.
The owner paid ‘a lot of money, but then she is a pedigree’ for her poodle, yet despite this she routinely picks up Lottie by her middle to place her ‘correctly’ in the ring. She is very slight, and Lottie quite big, which makes the lifting awkward for both. She also spends a lot of time grooming. So, does Lottie enjoy being combed, her paws wet-wiped? ‘She hates it!’ The correct method to lift a big dog? Back to John Bradshaw: ‘The best way, to avoid damage to soft organs,’ he confirms, ‘is to have one arm under the rib cage, the other scooping behind the back legs.’ This is definitely not what Lottie’s owner is doing.
He continues: ‘Dog shows like Crufts emphasise a dog’s appearance above all else [and it] sends the wrong message to prospective owners. A pet dog will be a companion for, perhaps, 15 years, and the success of that relationship will depend far more on the way the dog behaves than on how it looks.’
My feeling, too, is that if you are even watching Crufts on TV, you are colluding in a celebration of the very worst aspects of pet owner-
ship in this country: dogs as ornaments, dogs as status symbols, dogs as disposable – that’s to say, if a dog fails to win, like a race horse, the owner will go shopping for a better model.
The owners, many of whom have brought their children, have travelled from far and wide to attend the show. Expense, it seems, is not an
‘When dogs fail, owners shop for a better model’
issue, with ‘portable show trolley cages’ (costing upwards of £450), top-of-the-range beds and blankets, grooming products and, of course, the requisite top-of-the-range hound, bought as a puppy from a breeder at a cost of more than £1,000. (A dachshund puppy here cost her owner more than £1,200.)
Not one person here, on being
quizzed by me, thinks there is anything morally wrong with purchasing a dog, as you might a car or a washing machine, rather than rescuing an animal from a pound – a dog who simply needs love and a donation to charity. ‘Yes, but you might have aggression issues,’ says one young mum.
I speak to another mum, here with her daughter, and she tells me she wants to buy a puppy, ‘do the right thing, meet its parents, as I have young children. I don’t want a dog with problems. The puppy is for the children, after all’.
Excuse me. Dogs are not toys. Of course some rescue dogs have problems, but most don’t. You can even get puppies from pounds, as I have done. If you want a pedigree (and, God, why would you given the genetic engineering that has rendered many of the best-known breeds, such as the bulldog, unrec-
ognisable from their ancestors), there are rehoming charities for pretty much every breed under the sun, including Scottish terriers.
However, the fetishisation of the so-called perfect pup aside, the way dogs are treated at these shows is indicative of a wider problem outside the show ring.
For, while at this show I saw constant tugging on a collar to keep a head up, the OCD moving of hind legs into the ‘correct’ display position by a handler and the spraying of unguents on to coats, I often see dogs walked by my house on leads, being yanked ferociously, hauled away from sniffing interesting smells, and many on choke chains, which themselves I had thought had died a death – just like their proponent, Barbara Woodhouse. Why not use a harness? I only saw two harnesses on my visit to Wooler, the vast majority of owners preferring ‘cinch leads’ – a slip-rope that can be either loose or on strangle mode.
Crufts and small shows like this one are helping distort our relationship with our dogs, making it less one of love and partnership, more one of brutal dictatorship.
Our dogs are shut indoors alone all day while owners are at work; they are never let off the lead.
Crufts is the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger problem with our pets. While I’m a big fan of Noel Fitzpatrick, Channel 4’s Supervet, the doting, loving, responsible owners who come into his practice are hardly representative of the types I see on this Saturday afternoon in Northumberland.
Proud dog owners they certainly are, with some bursting into tears at being awarded a coloured ribbon, but I’m not sure they are really acting in the dogs’ best interests...
If we are indeed a nation of dog lovers, let’s boycott these shows and ban Crufts, which pushes up the price of pets at the top of the pile and treads on the far too many dogs consigned to the dustbin. Let’s ask the Government to lift VAT on veterinary treatment for rescued pets, and let’s only patronise vets who give a discount if we can prove a dog is a rescue animal.
Let’s elevate dogs like my little scrap Hilda – who resembles a fox crossed with a toilet brush and whom I brought back from Romania aged 13, the brightest, spunkiest, feistiest, funniest dog in the world – to Best in Britain.
With tension mounting, mainly due to the fact our photographer is taking pictures of dogs being manhandled, I leave the show before I’m ejected, and meet Ivy Potts, here with her two adorable dachshunds and a whippet. Ivy is in her 70s, and clearly adores her dogs.
‘They are allowed to be dogs, they climb on chairs, run up the stairs,’ she says. ‘They love going to shows: when they see the carrier they get all excited! I would never lift a dog by its tail. They mean everything to me. My daughter lives abroad, so my dogs are my grandchildren.’
What I have witnessed today is a group of so-called dog lovers who seem to have bypassed the past 20 years or so of stories in the press about puppy farms, about the fire at Manchester Dogs’ Home, about the dogs in peril in countries such as Romania and Vietnam, and are obsessed with style over substance.
Ivy’s description of her dogs being her grandchildren says it all, really. Dogs are our family, only better: they are always pleased to see us, and the love they feel for us shines in their eyes.
Isn’t it time we began to treat them with the respect they deserve?
‘If we love dogs, we should ban Crufts’