Bulldog, Pekingese and Clumber FAIL Crufts

A Pekingese, like that which recently won Westminster, was disqualified from Crufts

The Kennel Club has put out a press release noting that NO Bulldog or Pekingese will compete in Thursday's Best in Group competition after the two top dogs FAILED their veterinary checks.  Update:  The Clumber has failed too.  Maybe more to come...

No dog representing the Pekingese and Bulldog breeds will compete in Thursday evening’s Best in Group competitions at Crufts after they failed the new veterinary checks that have been introduced to the show.

The Best of Breed award was not given to Pekingese, Palacegarden Bianca, or Bulldog, Mellowmood One In A Million, following their veterinary checks, which were carried out by an independent veterinary surgeon. This means that the dogs will not be allowed to continue into the Toy or Utility Best in Group competitions respectively.

The Kennel Club has introduced veterinary checks for the Best of Breed winners at all Kennel Club licensed General and Group Championship Dog Shows from Crufts 2012 onwards, in 15 designated high profile breeds. This measure was introduced to ensure that Best of Breed awards are not given to any dogs that show visible signs of problems due to conditions that affect their health or welfare.

The fifteen high profile breeds are as follows: Basset Hound, Bloodhound, Bulldog, Chow Chow, Clumber Spaniel, Dogue De Bordeaux, German Shepherd Dog, Mastiff, Neapolitan Mastiff, Pekingese, Shar Pei, St Bernard, French Bulldog, Pug and Chinese Crested.

Caroline Kisko, Kennel Club Secretary, said: “We are determined to ensure that the show ring is a positive force for change and that we help to move breeds forward by only rewarding the healthiest examples of a breed.

“The veterinary checks were introduced to ensure that dogs with exaggerated features do not win prizes. The independent veterinary surgeon decided that the Pekingese and Bulldog should not pass their checks and therefore they did not receive their Best of Breed awards and will not be representing their breeds in the remainder of the competition.”

To say I am thrilled is an understatement.   Yes, it is just three dogs at one event, but it is a beginning, and hopefully it is the beginning of the END of breeding dogs for deformity, defect and disease.

Readers might remember that in the January edition of Dogs Today, I dared to ask:  Is it Time to Dump the Bulldog?

Is it time to drop the English Bulldog as national mascot, and replace it with a healthier alternative?

The case to be made is obvious and straightforward. The modern English Bulldog is mostly Chinese pug -- a show ring creation with legs so deformed it can barely walk, a jaw so undershot it cannot grab a Frisbee, and with a face so bracycephalic it can barely breathe.

Add to this a deformed intestinal system which makes the dog fart constantly, a pig tail prone to infection, and serious eye problems due to excessive facial wrinkles, and you have a dog that considers its own death a blessed relief.

Is this a dog any patriot would choose as a symbolic representative of his or her country?

I think not!

Read the complete article, and while you are it, read Inbred Thinking, which is a piece from this blog which first caused Jemima Harrison to call me back in 2006, two years before Pedigree Dogs Exposed was aired.  Ryan O'Meara tells a funny story about that old post here -- and how it came to be a magazine article in the UK back in April of 2008.

Of course the story of inbreeding and selection for defect is not new. 

What was new was putting the story to film, and connecting that to the Internet.  That has -- and IS making -- a world of difference for dogs, and that's all Jemima Harrison's doing, along with some smart and brave executives at the BBC, and the ever steady camera work of Jon Lane.

As I wrote in Dogs Today in February of 2010:

It is hard to overstate the impact of the Internet. Suffice it to say that in our own lifetimes, we will see the end of books, newspapers and magazines as we have known them. The era of film cameras, video tape and recorded disks is already past. Many young people today have yet to lick their first stamp, such is the ubiquitous nature of email, voice mail and text messaging in this modern world.

What does this mean for the world of dogs?

Quite a lot.

The Internet, you see, has democratized information and mass communication.

Today, anyone with a computer can read Darwin's notes about canine evolution, research the origins of the Kennel Club, and locate health surveys and veterinary insurance records which illuminate the current and rising crisis in canine health around the world.

When hard-hitting documentaries like the BBC's Pedigree Dogs Exposed are produced, they are no longer seen for a night and forgotten with the morning sun.

Now, thanks to YouTube, anyone with a computer can watch at leisure, and forward the link to scores or even thousands of others via email, list-serv, personal blog, or organizational web site....

... Now, almost too late, the Kennel Club seems to have woken up to the precarious nature of its position.

In the age of the Internet, creating a new national registry of dogs is no longer a daunting task. If the Kennel Club will not stand for dogs that are healthier and more able than those found down at the local pound, then someone else surely will.

While it took the Kennel Club 130 years and hundreds of millions of pounds to build their current registry, it might take a young Internet-savvy entrepreneur only a few weeks and perhaps 100,000 pounds to build the backbone of a parallel Internet-based registration system that pairs modern email outreach with a dynamic web site, a powerful online date base, and a system of real veterinary-based health checks coupled to product-based discounts on pet food, pet insurance, and veterinary care.

Unlike the Kennel Club, this new registry would have no historical baggage to tote, and would not have to pay homage to petulant prigs and screaming matrons hell-bent on holding on to defective standards and misguided Victorian-era theories.

One thing is for certain: at this point in the game, the Kennel Club cannot afford to dally and play footsie with incrementalism.

The 21st Century will no longer wait for the 19th Century to catch up.

Full applause to Jemima Harrison for riding the Kennel Club like a rented mule.  Let us have no illusion that any of this would have ever happened without her unflagging determination that the dogs deserved better.

Full applause to the Kennel Club for, belatedly, taking this first big step forward.

Now, will the Kennel Club take the second and the third step forward as well?

One step does not a voyage make, but no voyage was ever made without that first step.

Let us hope that 10 years from now we will all look back and say: "One small step for dogs, one giant leap for the Kennel Club."

But for now, let us applause.  This was a win for the dogs!.

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