Cruft's

[FredPuli43]

Anyone going to Cruft's next week ? And which day(s) and with which breed(s) ? I'll be there on all 4 as usual, though most actively enthused by the Wolfhounds, the Pulis, the Dandie Dinmonts and the Standard Poodles

[doctordb]

Would you say the RSPCA and bbc had unsubstantiated views?

[lankeela]

The RSPCA are nothing but a poitica organisation who hide under an animal rights banner and spend people's hard earned donations on their campaigns instead of using them to help the animals that people expect their money to be spent on. All the local RSPCA branches have to do their own fundraising and get nothing from head office. As for the BBC, if they employ the likes of Jemima Harrison to produce biased programmes which don't show both sides then the dog word does not need them. I have spent many hours discussing these issues with people who know what they are talking about and I refuse to allow it to happen on this group in a discussion which is about our hobby so if you don't like it don't come on this thread.

[FredPuli43]

Well, I don't think the views were unsubstantiated. But none of it was news to anyone involved in 'dogdom' in the last 60 or more years.

The practices complained of are as old as dog breeding. But the difference is that when people were using the practices originally, they were using them to achieve a dog that was good, or better, for a particular purpose. Careful breeding produced dogs for quite specialised work; working on barges or protecting itinerant tax collectors or for running alongside coaches, for example. The failures were not kept; no dog resulting that couldn't breath properly or went deaf, blind or lame was bred from, and any such trait was bred out.

But later the lunatics took over. Someone would decide that breeds would conform to some standard of appearance. This might produce harmless consequences; for example, the modern, "show" golden retriever is extremely unlikely to be golden; it's white; but often it produced very harmful ones. These were ignored, with confident smugness, by the Kennel Club.

[jules77]

You wont win Jacky, people who make comments about Crufts and dog showing, have probably never been, and for those that have, they have absolutely no idea about breeding coefficients etc.

My dogs are first and foremost my pets, but they also happen to love the attention they get when going to a dog show. Dragged round the ring, I think not, it wouldnt be allowed.

[RATTER15]

Im not against Crufts or dog shows, I agree the dogs do enjoy it, especially after waiting for hours, often tied up or shut in cars and vans. I do think that many judges will usually choose winners based on their own personal favourite breed or the person showing the dog rather than on the merits of dogs on show. Ive seen the way judges skim over certain breeds with hardly a glance and head for the ones favoured by the judge.

I still think the Kennel Club and its judges has a long way to go on kicking out dogs or even breeds of dogs with very obvious faults, they have made improvements I hope they keep the pressure on.

Even when all this is done, It really isnt my scene and I would not walk around any show ring, I leave that side of things to Carakeel.