Dogs Trust, the largest dog welfare charity in the UK has formerly announced it will be withdrawing from Crufts and Discover Dogs and will also not be involved in this year’s Westminster Dog of the Year Show.The Dogs Trust announcement follows in the wake of the blow back from the airing of the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed which told, in graphic detail, of how The Kennel Club's closed registry breeding system, coupled with exaggerated standards, has resulted in a rapid rise in diseased, deformed, and defective dogs that too often live lives of preventable misery.
BBC has announced that it is re-evaluating its sponsorship of Crufts, and most observers believe that, barring major changes at The Kennel Club, that they will withdraw their sponsorship of Crufts when their current agreement is up in two years.
The Dogs Trust blog summarizes their position, which is decidedly reform-centered:
Dogs Trust, the UK’s largest dog welfare charity has announced it will be withdrawing from Crufts and Discover Dogs. Dogs Trust will also not be involved in this year’s Westminster Dog of the Year Show. This follows consultation with the charity’s Trustees and requests from its supporters.
Dogs Trust believes that this removal of support is the strongest signal it can give to the Kennel Club and breeders to achieve immediate action to ensure that the health and wellbeing of pedigree dogs is ranked over appearance and artificial breed standards.
Dogs Trust hopes that this will lead to rapid changes in the manner in which dogs are bred and is in talks with the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and The Kennel Club to help bring about the following much needed changes:
1. The review of breed standards to ensure they are firmly focused on the health and wellbeing of the dog, not the supposed aesthetics of the breed. Breeders and show judges must be required to adhere to these revised breed standards.
2. The introduction of secondary legislation, so as to prevent inappropriate breeding practices, especially the intentional inbreeding of closely related dogs or dogs with known debilitating genetic illnesses.
3. The introduction of genetic screening of all breeding stock and the assured integrity of such a process.
4. Purchasers of dogs should first consider a rescue dog. If it is a pedigree, they must understand the importance of determining and questioning its genetic heritage.
Dogs Trust has had a long history of working with The Kennel Club in order to promote rescue dogs at pedigree shows and we hope to be able to continue this relationship as soon as these vital animal welfare points have been put in place.
Dogs Trust, formerly known as the National Canine Defence League, was founded in 1891 at the first Crufts dog show.
Dogs Trust currently has 17 canine rehoming centres around the UK, with its first international rehoming centre currently being built in Dublin. The charity provides kennels for dogs which are abandoned or given up by their owners, and it also runs microchipping and neutering services in order to reduce the number of stray dogs which must be put down.
The charity is best known for its slogan "A Dog is for Life," a phrase coined to help change the ethos of abandoning dogs when their care becomes more difficult than first thought.
7 comments:
Yes! It seems like momentum is building in all the right places. I wonder where we'll be in 20 years.
Personally, I don't think any amount of "genetic screening" will fix things, unless and until they outlaw of closed studbooks.
Even if, in the face of clear evidence of a debilitatingly small gene pool, they authorize a controlled amount of outbreeding, in five or ten generations they'll be back where they are now.
The problem is that the value of their dogs is in their scarcity. A Kennel Club dog is worth more than a mutt precisely because the supply is artificially limited.
Nothing is going to change things until the market decides that the Kennel Club brand has no value.
be careful who you praise.
Groups like the "Dog Trust" not only don't support purebreds, and you may agree with that position, given the state of "purebreds" today. But they ALSO don't want dogs doing "dangerous" things.. like what you do with your dogs. And they especially don't like doing things with dogs that involve danger to other animals.. like what you do with your dogs.
They don't believe in intentional breeding at all.
The more power these groups have, the more limitations on human interactions with their dogs they will will seek to impose.
Actually Emily, everything you have said here is, so far as I can tell, complete nonsense.
Dogs Trust has no position on hunting at all, and was in fact founded at Crufts. Dogs Trust had had a long relationship with the Kennel Club, and that is why this turn of events is a pretty big deal.
As for purebred or not, Dog Trust's position is the same as mine: If you just want a pet, give a first consideration to rehoming a dog that needs a home. A pedigree dog is, for most people, not a better dog than a mongrel. Specialist dogs (working pointers, working terriers, working retrievers, working collies) are a different matter, but true working dogs are pretty rare aren't they?
Dogs Trust is not ANTI purebred dog, any more than I am anti-child. Just as I urge people to consider the "adoption option" for children, so does Dogs Trust urge people to consider the "adoption option" with dogs. The fact that you find that threatening is a little odd...
Bottom line: the only place I can see where I disagree with Dogs Trust is in the arena of tail cropping, which I think nanny-state legislation is best left in Europe. I am pro-choice in this regards, same as I am for human tattoos, human tongue piercing, human circumcision, human breast augmentation, and all of the rest of the bobbing, nipping, tucking and inecting that goes on with humans. A tail dock is NOT a big deal, and free choice should reign. Does Dog Trust think different? Apparently, but I can live with that; same as I can with folks who get tattoos, ring their noses, and inflate their breasts with silicone. The world does not have to agree with me on every point for me to give a nod to them on other points.
P
Excellent!
I have to admit, Mr. Burns, I am a little disappointed that you have not blogged about the most recent letter from the chairman of AKC. Here's a discussion of it on the UKC forums (has the letter in full):
http://forums.ukcdogs.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=228252
Already posted on it a few days back. See >> http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2008/09/akc-facing-extinction-banks-on-misery.html for a little on what it means and how it pencils out.
For the record, I have been talking about the economics of the Kennel Club and the puppy mill connection for so long that when I started (before there was an internet) I had hair!
Patrick
Smooth, broken or rough? Enquiring minds, you know...
Post a Comment