A British fight over dog-breeding ethics gets pug ugly

BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND — 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 opens today here in Birmingham, a four-day extravaganza of four-legged bliss that has drawn millions of viewers to the British Broadcasting Corp. since 1966.

But not this year.

The BBC has dropped its coverage of Crufts after a documentary exposed questionable practices among some competitive dog 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 British sidewalks.

Stung by the bad publicity, Britain's Kennel Club, which runs Crufts, issued revised standards of canine beauty in January -- modifications that club officials say were already underway but that they acknowledge were being rushed into force because of the controversy. That sparked protests from some breeders and owners who fumed that the 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, 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," said Caroline Kisco, the club's secretary. "But we were taking a more softly, softly approach in getting them to agree to the changes."

The documentary that spawned the fuss, "Pedigree Dogs Exposed," aired on the BBC and was not for the squeamish. It showed animals suffering from horrible physical problems apparently bred into them by owners intent on achieving contest-winning looks. Some mated dogs with their parents, or siblings with each other, inbreeding that can lead to deformities.