Silent Witness?

Illustration: Kevin Brockbank

In early 2007, I visited Bristol Vet School to ask for their help.  I was looking for case histories of dogs suffering from inherited disorders that were common in specific breeds, such as breathing problems in short-nosed breeds, something vet schools deal with every day.

It was a friendly meeting during which the problems in pedigree dogs were acknowledged. But at the end of it, Bristol Vet School apologised and said they couldn’t help. The reason?  They didn’t want to damage their prospects of Kennel Club research funding – an important source of money for  a cash-strapped vet school.

We found this again and again while making Pedigree Dogs Exposed – silence bought either by money or because of the profession’s long standing relationship with the Kennel Club. There were a few individual vets who were prepared to speak out publicly about what they saw as a serious animal welfare issue but the veterinary establishment was, largely, unwilling to bite the hand that fed it.

It has not always been the case. In 1963, former BSAVA president Graham Oliver-Jones addressed the profession’s annual congress with these words: “We have recently been to the House of Commons on your behalf and met many members of both Houses. We told them of our tremendous interest in the abnormalities of some of the dogs that we are called upon to treat; and explained that our concern is that dogs are being bred and born into this world to suffer throughout their lives from certain conditions which probably could be prevented.”  

In fact, the BSAVA organised an entire symposium in 1963 on “Abnormalities and Defects in Pedigree Dogs” and six accompanying papers were published, one by dalmatian breeder, Eleanor Frankling, who wrote: “…the tendency among breeders today is to adopt an attitude of “the more the better” over any desired point. If, for instance, small eyes are demanded as they are in the Chow standard, then “the smaller the better’’ and the foundations of entropion are there. The Alsatian stifles are described as “well turned”. I love the Alsatian and owned one when it was a noble upstanding animal. The angulation in hock and stifle is now so extreme that the hocks are practically non-existent and the animal walks almost on its metatarsals. It is short-legged and slinking.”

Yep, more than 45 years before Pedigree Dogs Exposed. 

Now let’s fast-forward to May 1981, when vet Simon Wolfensohn, in an article entitled “The Things We Do To Dogs” had this to say in the New Scientist: “Man is apt to refer to dog as his best friend, but it’s doubtful whether dog can return the compliment. Our strange ideas about the appearance of our canine companions have afflicted many breeds with physical deformities which at best cause the dogs considerable inconvenience and at worst result in a lifetime of visits to the vet. Some breeds have developed their own hereditary disease because their short-sighted breeders have been more concerned with their appearance than their general state of health.” Wolfensohn then went on to highlight the problems of impoverished gene pools, popular sires and incestuous matings as well as conformational handicaps such as short noses (pekes and pugs) and short legs (basset hounds) - in fact, the exact same criticisms we made 27 years later in Pedigree Dogs Exposed.

Now let’s jump to 1988 and a report by the Council of Science which stated: “An increasing number of hereditary problems are being recognised in companion animals, especially dogs. Many of these are the consequences of inbreeding or breeding for genetically defective animals. Some are the result of deliberate selection for abnormal or unnaturally accentuated physical characteristics for fad or fancy…. Collectively, such breeding practices are a distortion of the generally assumed responsibility man has for companion animals. Greater efforts should be made to discourage breeding for physical malformations, particularly those requiring corrective surgery.”

Then, 11 years later, the Federation of European Vets, of which the BVA is a member, published a resolution which urged vets  “not only to treat individual animals humanely but to bring to the attention of the breeding organisations and competent authorities in their countries the need for action to alleviate the welfare problems which can be caused by selective breeding.”


And did they?  No, they didn’t. The veterinary profession as a whole kept its head down, a largely passive observer to the systematic destruction of animals that it has sworn an oath to protect. 

There were some changes. Following the criticism in the 1960s, the British Veterinary Association got together with the KC and established both the hip and eye schemes. After Wolfensohn’s high-profile criticism in the 1980s (repeated on television), the Kennel Club reviewed its breed standards.  Same again in the 1990s and again 10 years later – always in response to criticism. The problem was that these initiatives were nothing like enough. In many breeds, health continued to deteriorate. 

I believe the single biggest reason for this is because the Kennel Club has adopted the policy of keeping its friends close and its enemies even closer. 

Thus, various high-ranking veterinary professionals have been courted by the Kennel Club, none more influentially than Mike Stockman, who was president of the BVA in 1978/9. Stockman was a breeder (of Keeshonds), judge and exhibitor and he was a high-ranking KC official, including Chairman of Crufts.  

Stockman joined the Kennel Club in 1967, not long after that first major criticism. In fact, he referred back to that early criticism in an article in 1984: “The dog world, or at least its pedigree component, reacted with a hardly surprising anger and the authors of the paper were soon extremely unpopular,” he remembered. Sounds strangely familiar!

Stockman  and his wife Val, was involved with the Kennel Club until he retired in 2002. Stockman oversaw the 1980s review of breed standards that so spectacularly failed to halt the ride of exaggerations and his influence survives today in the shape of his daughter, Caroline Kisko, who is the Secretary of the Kennel Club.

“It is so important to the canine fraternity to have links of this kind with the veterinary profession,” wrote KC Chairman Ronnie Irving in his obituary of Mike Stockman in 2007.  

This is not to suggest that veterinary links are always a bad thing. Undoubtedly, there are many times – such as the establishment of new clinical screening programmes  - that require liaison.  My fear is that the KC doesn’t do it for just this reason; it does it to ensure influence and deflect criticism.  

Many critics over the years – including vet Emma Milne (author of The Truth About Cats and Dogs), MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (an increasingly powerful voice for change) and outspoken judge Steven Seymour, have revealed how they’ve been invited to the Kennel Club for lunch and a reassuring little chat about how actively the KC is addressing problems.  

Currently, the KC boasts some big-name vets  - including Mike Herrtage (Dean of Cambridge Vet School), Sheila Crispin  (who despite being Chairman of the new, independent Dog Advisory Council, still sits on the KC’s Dog Health Group and is an Honorary Member of the KC) and past-president of the British Veterinary Association, Nick Blayney. My heart sank recently to learn that the current president of the BVA, Harvey Locke, had joined the KC’s Dog Health Group, too. 

I am at a loss to understand why a vet would actually want to be an honorary member of an organisation that has done so much damage to dogs? It's not really a badge to wear with pride, is it?

I am not questioning these vets’ integrity. No doubt they all think they can change things from within - indeed,  both Sheila Crispin and Harvey Locke have said exactly that to me and of course I can see the merit in this. But the fact remains that sitting at a KC table sipping KC coffee out of KC cups has allowed the KC to exert a pernicious influence in the past. After all, what other explanation could there possibly be for all the above-named vets looking me square in the face and saying that things can’t change overnight when it’s been more than half a century since the alarm was first raised? 

There’s also the small matter that that every single KC initiative aimed at addressing health issues has been prompted by outside criticism. Really, every single one of them. 

Notwithstanding some good and brave vets who have spoken out, I believe history will  find the veterinary establishment guilty on this issue.  The profession has betrayed dogs by allowing itself to be seduced by Kennel Club history, cash, platitudes, front-row seats at Crufts and a half-decent lunch at Clarges St. It has also been paralysed by fears that it will offend breeders who are a good source of income, as indeed is the un-stemmed flow of dogs suffering from largely preventable inherited disease and physical handicaps inflicted on them by some breed standards.  Undoubtedly, many vets have also become inured to the problems that walk into their consulting room every day - as sharply observed by Canadian vet Koharik Arman in the Canadian Veterinary Journal in 2007.

 “What is the point of new animal welfare legislation if we continue to turn a blind eye to the worst of these breeding practices?” wrote one, anonymous, vet in the Veterinary Times shortly after Pedigree Dogs Exposed.  “I don’t want to see another decade of boxers that are the oncologist’s nightmare.

“If we believe that ‘first, do no harm’ is the correct moral position for our profession then surely we should feel strongly enough to require those who set the standards for breeders to embrace the same moral imperative. Alternatively, we can all go back to work with a sigh and enjoy the tiny frisson of intellectual superiority that flares briefly with the next encounter with flawed genetic manipulation of pet species.”

If the veterinary profession doesn’t want to have its hands stained permanently with the blood of pedigree dogs, it needs to step up to the mark. And I'm pleased that this year, there have been much stronger statements regarding purebred dog health from the veterinary hierarchy.  BVA president Harvey Locke strongly challenged the Kennel Club recently over Cesaerian Sections (the BVA believes that no more than one should be allowed; the Kennel Club has set the limit at two. Ish)  There are clear hints, too, that Sheila Crispin's Dog Advisory Council will take a strong stance if necessary. And, later this week, the Veterinary Times publishes an article in which both the British Veterinary Association and British Small Animal Veterinary Association call jointly for "urgent action" to address the obvious conformation problems seen in the Neapolitan Mastiffs at Crufts.  (Not available to the general public online but I will blog the substance of it on Friday.)

The veterinary profession needs to keep this up - and also address how vets can help constructively in terms of education of the puppy-buying public and, particularly, in data surveillance (on which more another time).

This article is an updated version of the one that appeared in the January 2011 issue of Dogs Today magazine. Dogs Today is now available internationally for iPad and iPhone for the bargain price of 59p for the app, which includes one edition free.