The face of a winner.
The farce that is the Crufts Dog Show continues unabated.
Named after a dog food salesman that never owned a dog, it started out as the Allied Terrier Show and helped speed the rapid destruction of almost ever breed of working terrier, from Fox and Welsh, to Borders and Bedlingtons.
Crufts is also the location where the genetic disaster know as the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel first appeared, spurred by an American by the name of Roswell Eldridge who put up a cash prize for anyone who could come up with a dog that looked like those in the paintings of van Dyck. The resulting dog was inbred to the point that today more than 50% of Cavaliers die from heart disease. In addition to jaw-dropping levels of heart disease, well over one-third of Cavaliers have Syringomyelia, a disorder of the brain and spinal cord.
In the last year, insult has been added to injury, as Crufts has now taken on a discount sofa company as its sponsor, going so far as to include a sofa in the Crufts logo. The owner of DFS, the discount sofa company, has said (and I could not make this up): "If DFS was a dog, it would be a Crufts champion." Translated into English that means: "We sell products that look good in the picture but they fall to pieces the moment you try and actually put them to use."
So what's the latest charade? Just this: The London Times is reporting that "The Kennel Club has rewritten the rules for the Crufts dog show to give a veterinary surgeon the authority to exclude any unfit dog."
Right.
And how does that work?
There are entire breeds that are unfit, starting with the English Bulldog.
Listen to the bobble-headed Bulldog breeder in the clip, below, explaining why all English Bulldogs are unfit for ANY function:
"In the heat and the lights of the show, they can overheat and actually go down in five minutes. Instead of a long snout, where it's an open airway, it's smashed like a coke can and the breathing has to go through many, many curves and turns."
Flash located here (right click on link to copy) Youtube link here
Now look at the German Shepherds below, which were show at the Manchester Kennel Club show in 2008.
I guarantee you will see exactly the same slope-backed wrecks walking on their hocks at the Crufts show in 2010!
Border Terrier breeder and veterinarian Steve Dean will be Crufts chief veterinarian, and his word is to be law.
But what good is the law if it will never cry foul?
When the Bulldogs enter the ring the whole thing will become a joke. The German Shepherds, Cavaliers, Pekingese, and Chinese Cresteds will simply be the punchline at the end of a long wind-up going back more than 100 years.
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3 comments:
I'm curious to know a little more on the fallacies and problems about the so called "rewriting of rules" and why they would not work, an opinion that I completely share by the way.May be a post of its own?
Yeah, they won't shave them ringside, they'll just do it at home instead. The amount of normalized faking in the breed is epidemic, and frankly, if those people are made into a punchline I won't shed any tears. The majority of the dogs you see in the show ring now are heavily shaved, Nair-slathered dogs.
Now you know why I agree with you so strongly about how the show world is largely idiotic. I may own 'defective freak' dogs in your opinion, but even these 'freaks' were not good enough in their natural state for the show fancy -- they had to be 'improved' until they required extreme hairdressing and cosmetics in order to be considered 'show quality' while the original type is now considered inferior. I'm sure you'll find some irony there.
Jonzie, I cannot speak for the UK, but here in the US, a dog show judge does not HAVE to give out a first place ribbon. In fact, the judge does not have to give out ANY ribbons at all, if he is presented with a ring full of poor quality dogs. I would guess this is supposed to keep people from entering poor quality dogs just to make up numbers and build a major. In reality, this rarely happens. The exhibitors have a shit fit. They complain to AKC, they complain to the show giving club, they complain to other exhibitors. Clubs become reluctant to hire that judge, clubs that do will see low numbers because exhibitors won't enter under that judge, you see where I'm going with this. If you are a judge and you want to keep getting assignments, you don't want to make waves.
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