Is That a Terrier or a Couch Cushion?

Crufts was a failure for The Kennel Club, because instead of changing the topic it underscored it.

Yes, the doors opened, and the dogs appeared, but the internal numbers and press were not good.

There were fewer people than before, and a noticeable lack of lines at the bathrooms.

Parking spaces were readily available. And though the Kennel Club has no doubt tried to fluff up the numbers as best they could, they have had to concede that attendance was down 10 percent or more from the previous year.

There were also fewer vendors at this Crufts than ever before, and in order to try to fill up the space, The Kennel Club widened the hallways -- a visible sign of declining revenue and interest.

Instead of money coming in from BBC and Pedigree dog food sponsorship, money was flowing out to hire vanity video crews to shoot the show and put it on Youtube and to stream the video on the Internet.

And how did that video streaming work? Not very well. I have excellent cable Internet connections and top-flight computers both at home and at work, and both locations could not play the streaming video most of the time -- a complaint echoed by others. Sometimes I would get still clips with audio, but only rarely a real stream. Bottom line: this is technology not yet perfected.

As for the Crufts YouTube Channel, it has tried to valiantly push up the numbers to 100,000, but a look at the videos finds that more than a quarter of those 100,000 hits were for a Crufts ad that has been up for over a month, and much of the rest is padded by videos that have been up for even longer. In fact, most of the Crufts Youtube videos have been seen by only a few hundred people -- a crashing decline from the 14 million people who saw Crufts last year when it was on the BBC.

Though Kennel Club enthusiasts at Our Dogs magazine tried to crank up the rumor mill to suggest that animal rights lunatics would be doing "rolling blockades," throwing flour bombs, and stealing dogs, there was almost no protest at all; just the same 15 animal rights protesters that show up every year and who remained (as in years past) polite, civil and virtually ignored.

The press stories on Crufts were entirely dominated by Pedigree Dogs Exposed, as was radio and TV coverage.

In fact, it was hard to find a single Crufts news article that did not talk about Pedigree Dogs Exposed in the first, second or third paragraphs, and even the morning-after stories on the best-in-show (Terrier close to extinction charms Crufts to win Best in Show) mentioned the BBC expose from seven months earlier.

Adding injury to insult, an American-owned dog bred in Canada won the show, and it was not even a true working dog or a popular breed, but instead a dog that has failed in the field, and which has failed in the pet trade as well. No one digs with Kennel Club Sealyham's, and it is a dog so ugly, compared to other terriers, that it is one of the rarest breeds in the world.

Look at the winning dog, at right, and ask yourself this: Is that a terrier or a couch cushion?

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