No Winners at Crufts

It may be time to be more explicit: The PEOPLE who spend their time chasing ribbons at kennel club dog shows are LOSERS with a capital L.

A piece entitled "There are no winners at Crufts," in The Independent, sounds a bit familiar.  In that piece Mimi Bekhechi writes:

After hours of being paraded, posed and prodded by judges, one dog will be declared “Best in Show” at Crufts next week. But make no mistake: there are no “winners” in the appearance-obsessed world of dog breeding and showing. The Kennel Club's “breed standards” – against which dogs at Crufts are judged – call for dogs to be born in shapes that nature never intended, with devastating results....

To increase the odds of passing on certain traits that are favoured by show judges, breeders resort to orchestrating canine incest, mating mothers with sons and fathers with daughters. This also greatly increases the odds of passing on recessive genes which can result in offspring with debilitating afflictions such as hypothyroidism, epilepsy, cataracts, allergies, heart disease and hip dysplasia...

Even dogs who never set foot in the Crufts show ring lose because of breeders' pursuit of ribbons and trophies. All the new puppies breeders bring into the world in the hope of producing a “Best in Show” contender will either fill homes that could have gone to dogs languishing in shelters or end up homeless themselves. And many of these puppies will go on to have litters of their own, bringing even more dogs into a world that doesn't have enough homes for those who already exist.

Dogs deserve better than to suffer and die for a “beauty” pageant.

It may be time to be more explicit: The PEOPLE who spend their time chasing ribbons at kennel club dog shows are LOSERS with a capital L.

These folks are building nothing of value.

Even their biggest win does not "go into the history books," and they are spending scores of thousands of dollars, and years of their lives, supporting a system that is not "improving" dogs, but ruining them.

And for what? A Chinese-made ribbon that they will have no idea of what to do with once it is won, and which will be tossed out with the trash the moment they are dead.

The ethical values of these people are beyond belief.

They are giving their money and their time to a sport and a club that celebrates inbreeding, that prohibits veterinary inspection of the "breeding stock" being judged, and that prohibits performance tests and standards even for championship dogs from working dog breeds.

They are giving their time and money to a group that celebrates puppy mill operators and extends discounts to them, and which prohibits any evaluation of temperament for show ring dogs.

They are giving their time and money to a group that celebrates the twisted, broken, folded, hairless, giant, and dwarf.  This not a case of loving dogs that happen to be born defective, but people who positively breed for defect while ignoring or rationalizing pain, discomfort, and premature death.

And why?

Chase it around all you want, but it gets down to this:  Kennel Club show dog people are needy, small, reaching, grasping, tunnel-visioned, and breed-blind. They put their own needs for status ahead of the lifetime discomfort and poor health of dogs.

YES, there are dog breeders who show in working dog specialty clubs not affiliated with the AKC or KC, who are not actively wrecking dogs, and who are trying to breed for honest work and health.

But in the American Kennel Club or the Kennel Club in the U.K.?

Nope.  

If you are there, you have bought into a system that systematically abuses dogs.

You are like the person who puts on the uniform and does the salute, and dreams of winning an iron cross, even as you protest that you have nothing to do with the death camps.

But you do. And you know it.

You KNOW.

You know, but the sucking void that is inside you is more powerful than any real concern you have about the long-term welfare of dogs.

And THAT is what makes you a loser.

Yes, you can be a wonderful person in every other way, and your dogs can even be healthy and active and working.

But if you are showing your dogs in the AKC, or the Kennel Club in the U.K., you have joined the Other Side, and it's not the side that stands for dogs.