Britain's favourite dog show leads animal lovers to a catfight

Birmingham: It seems so very British that an ugly row has broken out between those who say they love dogs and those who say they love dogs more. But just such a royal catfight has ensnared the country's most prestigious dog show, Crufts, which opened here on Thursday, a four-day extravaganza of four-legged bliss that has drawn millions of viewers to the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) since 1966.

But not this year.

The BBC has dropped its coverage of Crufts after a documentary exposed questionable practices among some competitive breeders. The quest for the perfect look produced Pekingese with excessively mashed-in faces, bulldogs with oversize heads, and dachshunds with unhealthily long bodies. Crufts, complained one anti-cruelty activist, was nothing less than a parade of mutants.

The fallout has led to competing claims over who has the best interests of dogs at heart in a country where more than 1 in 5 households owns a dog, a fact well-supported by evidence on the country's sidewalks.

Stung by the bad publicity, Kennel Club, which runs Crufts, issued revised standards of canine beauty in January, modifications they say were already under way but acknowledge rushing into force because of the controversy. That sparked protests from breeders and owners who fumed that rules were being changed without fair warning before Crufts, which people here call the "greatest dog show on Earth."

The pageant's motto this year, coincidentally or not, is "Happy, healthy dogs," promoting an ideal that, Kennel Club officials huff, they certainly didn't need to be lectured about by the BBC.

"It's almost as if they invented the idea, whereas actually we were very conscious of it, and we were already working with those breeds which we felt to be of the most concern," says Caroline Kisco, the club's secretary.

The programme that spawned the fuss, Pedigree Dogs Exposed, showed animals suffering from physical problems apparently inbred by owners intent on achieving contest-winning looks.

- Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service