Sunday 19 August 2018

Pedigree Dogs Exposed 10 yrs on: everything and nothing



Pedigree Dogs Exposed was broadcast on BBC1 in the UK 10 years ago tonight.  It laid bare dog-breeding practices that had caused a great deal of harm to dogs - harm that had been overseen by a Kennel Club that should have known better.  

Indeed it did know better. Even its own genetics advisor, Jeff Sampson, had written in 2004 in an article for a symposium that: "Unfortunately, the restrictive breeding patterns that have developed as part and parcel of the purebred dog scene have not been without collateral damage to all breeds."  

Like many before him (and since) the answer for Sampson (who was clearly not stupid but had been subsumed into the KC culture) was to advocate gently from within in the hope that something might change.  He and the Kennel Club could fairly point to money put into research to developing DNA tests for the ever-spiralling number of genetic diseases. It's just that nothing was being done to tackle the root problem.  

When I first walked through the steel and glass doors of the Kennel Club's Clarges St headquarters in London’s Mayfair in early 2008 - past oak-panelled rooms, fine art and chefs in starched whites pandering to the Members, I smelled complacency.

Despite the KC's literature claiming that the primary objective of the Kennel Club was 'to promote in every way, the general improvement of dogs',  it had actually overseen a criminal genetic neglect of man's best friend.

It was the Kennel Club that had endorsed the breed standards, that sanctioned the dog shows, approved the judges, green-lighted inbreeding, refused to mandate health checks and had continued to register puppy farm dogs.

It had done next to nothing because the problem was - and remains - that the people who run the Kennel Club are part of the whole self-serving system.  Group-think had persuaded them that it was OK... convinced them that a show-ring rosette was prima facie evidence that they were doing something good for dogs. 

For those that don't know, Pedigree Dogs Exposed was prompted by the death of my Flatcoated Retriever, Fred. That's us at the top.

Fred was born in 1987 and I lost him in 2003, aged 15.  I had thought he was going to live forever and my heart broke into a thousand shards when he died.  Truly, I  had never felt grief like it - and I write as someone who had already lost their mother and father before their time, my mum when she was just 46 to a brain tumour.

It was after Fred died that I discovered that Flatcoats, typically, die of cancer around the age of 8/9 and I was horrified. I felt cheated enough that I had lost Fred at 14.  And I asked: why do so many flatcoats die of cancer so young?

It opened Pandora's Box.

It wasn't just Flatcoats.

It was breed after breed after breed, with some paying a horrendous price in terms of genetic disease, wounded immune systems and lifespans that, for some, average just six or seven years old. 

I started making Pedigree Dogs Exposed with an open mind but the more we researched, the more we learned and the more shocked we became.  By the time the film aired,  I felt completely justified in calling it one of the greatest welfare scandals of our time.  What grated most was the pomposity; the arrogance with which crippled German Shepherds were being wobbled round the show-ring by breeders who to their core believed their dogs were superior to any randomly-bred mixed breed when the scientific evidence spoke so strongly to the contrary.

Inbreeding was seen as a good thing ("as long as you knew what you were doing" - which mostly they didn't).  

The KC happily registered pups born of mother/son + full sibling matings. 

Breeding  from a top-winning dog as often as possible in order to pass on those champion genes to as many of the next generation was seen as a way of improving the breed. 

The show-ring was busy selecting for ever-more extremes - gasping Pugs, bulbous Shar-peis, German Shepherds that were dragging their back ends,  all on the watch of a Kennel Club that enjoyed Royal patronage and a respect in higher places that, frankly, it did not deserve.

As many will remember, I was the villain for highlighting that a top-winning Cavalier had been diagnosed with syringomyelia  rather than the owner for continuing to show and breed a dog with such a hideous inherited condition.

I don't think I'm exaggerating in saying that Pedigree Dogs was a "water cooler" moment.  There had been many others  before PDE - notably vets Simon Wolfensohn and Emma Milne,  and writers/such as Pat Burns (Terrierman) and J Jeffrey Bragg, but it's hard to beat the power of 9pm prime time BBC and the international sales that followed (the film made a particularly big impact in Sweden and Australia). 

The issue hit the headlines - and continued to dominate front pages in the UK for months to come, fuelled by the three high profile reports into dog-breeding that followed,  the desertion of Cruft's main sponsor, Pedigree;  the BBC dropping the broadcasting of Crufts after more than 40 years, and the setting up of the Dog Advisory Council as a canine watchdog (sadly now defunct).

For my part, having lit the blue touch-paper, I found I couldn't walk away. I wrote articles, did interviews, started this blog (almost 7 million page views to date) spoke at conferences and dinners, chivvied the great and the good behind the scenes and embraced social media to continue to spread the word. 

In 2012, I made a follow-up (you can view it here) which highlighted the need for more to be done.  Rather more recently, driven by deep concern about the lack of reform for the extreme brachycephalics, I started CRUFFA in an effort to tackle that particular issue from a different angle. 

So, 10 years on, where are we now? 


The good news

• There is much greater awareness of the dangers of selecting for extremes - whether for very flat muzzles, or short legs,  excessive skin or size.  If you compare the dogs that won Crufts in 2008 with the dogs that won Best of Breed in 2018, there is a perceptible swing towards moderation in some of the worst breeds.


Crufts 2008    ©The Kennel Club

  Crufts 2018  ©The Kennel Club
(yes a bitch, but she reflects the general trend)

• There is widespread acknowledgment that inbreeding is a bad thing.  Most breeders now know what a co-efficient of inbreeding (COI) is and that a high number is a bad number.  Some are going beyond the COI worked out from paper pedigrees and using tools such as Embark or MyDogDNA to check diversity and disease status at a DNA level. Some - heaven forfend - are even doing some thoughtful outcrossing.

• There is a wealth of new science on the issues. Make something a hot topic, as did the film, and the research interest and funding will follow. 

• I had the devil of a time trying to persuade the veterinary profession to speak out when I made PDE. Today, they are among the strongest and most determined advocates for reform at both an individual and profession level. Thank you.

• The RSPCA was always on board, in no small part due to their then Chief Vet, Mark Evans who spoke out extremely strong in the film. Since then, all the main animal animal welfare organisations in the UK have played a part in maintaining the impetus for reform. A big thank you to them, too.

• Legislation: October 1st sees the introduction in the UK has of legislation that makes it a criminal offence to breed from a dog "if it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of its genotype, phenotype or state of health that breeding from it could have a detrimental effect on its health or welfare or the health or welfare of its offspring."  The proof of this will be in the pudding but my hope is that a few high profile cases will act as warning shots over breeders' bows. There are similar laws now being enacted in Europe/Scandinavia, too.

• Social media: nothing to do with PDE, but Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others today act as an effective watchdog. Pictures of extreme show-dogs proliferate quickly and attract widespread censure.  Brands that use exaggerated breeds to flog their stuff are now contacted - and very often respond quickly. This morning on Twitter I collared both Body Shop (Cruelty Free International) and supermarket Waitrose for using a Frenchie and a Bulldog respectively in their marketing. I am hopeful of a good response. Everyone can help here by doing the same - it really works. Brands in the main do not want to be associated with animal suffering.





• The Kennel Club has come quite a long way since 2008. After initial denial, it quickly bowed to public opinion  (the then Chairman of the KC, Ronnie Irving, described it at the time as "a tsunami of hate") and began making changes. These included the banning of first-degree-relative matings; better training for judges; a review of breed standards (and changes to more than 70);  the introduction of Mate Select;  educational tools for breeders and the public; vet checks at major shows; the establishment of the Kennel Club Genetics Centre at the Animal Health Trust.; a limit on the allowed number of C-sections; increased funding for research and the news that it would consider well-thought-out outcrossing.  The KC's Assured Breeder Scheme is now policed much more strictly.  The KC supports a peer-reviewed journal which publishes useful research in the field. More recently the KC announced breed health and conservation plans which are intended to take a more holistic view of breed health - although the huge delay on these being publicly available suggests these may be proving contentious with breeders/breed clubs. 

Sounds a lot, doesn't it?

The bad news

• Exaggerations are always in danger of sneaking back in.  This Peke has just won the Toy Group at the World Dog Show in Amsterdam. 




Bottom line, if we'd seen true reform, the Pekes winning in the show-ring would look more like this little one from 100 years ago - a dog today that would be thought to be a Tibetan Spaniel.




And at Crufts this year, although there were some more moderate dogs - and better breathing  than we saw 10 years ago - it was depressing that this young dog had qualified.




There has been zero progress in terms of moderating faces in the extreme brachycephalics.  Deleterious underbites are the norm with jumbled mismatched teeth the inevitable consequence. There are still no restrictions on popular sires, either - and little impetus when this is where the serious money lies in dog-breeding.  This year's top Bulldog, Ch Sealaville He's Tyler,  has sired around 200 litters. At at least £500 a squirt, this is where breeders claw back the expense of raising top show dogs and it's an income stream few would willingly forego.




• Inbreeding is still rife.  The KC may have banned actual mother/son, father/daughter and full-sib matings, but they still register puppies from matings that are far more inbred than this because of cumulative inbreeding. They also chose to not also forbid grandfather/grand-daughter matings - a pairing Sir Patrick Bateson, who chaired one of the reviews into dog-breeding, thought was particularly pernicious.

• We've seen outcrossed Dalmatians and outcrossed Irish Red + White Setters registered by the Kennel Club - but this has been entirely due to individual breeders fighting for it; not something initiated by the Kennel Club or the breed clubs, which in the main remain deeply conservative. As such, outcrosses are extremely rare and the norm is still to breed dogs in closed gene pools with the inevitable consequences.

• Breeders continue to convince themselves that they can health-test their way out of problems. 

They can't.

• Progress has been made in raising awareness of the health deficits associated with particular breeds, but the popularity of some of our most deformed and disabled breeds - Bulldogs, Pugs, French Bulldogs - has soared.   The Frenchie is now the UK's most popular KC-registered dog - knocking the far more sensible (and more sound) Labrador off the top-spot it has held for decades.

Now, we're seeing a surge in miniature smooth Dachshunds - seen as a cute "easy-keeper", at least until they bugger their backs. They have a muzzle, I guess.  Just no legs.

• There remains disdain for crossbreeds, despite the science telling us that they tend to be healthier and live longer than their purebred cousins. The comparing of purebred dog breeding to eugenics in PDE was uncomfortable for many, but the parallels are obvious. And they remain. Everyone who still looks down their nose at a labrador x poodle and refers to them as a "labramongrel" needs to take a long hard look at what's driving how they feel.

How depressed am I by this?  In truth, at times, very.  But it is not as lonely a place as it was. There were times when I've felt like I was the only person shouting that things must change and now I am not. The conversation has started - and it continues.

Ten years is the blink of an eye and there has been change. It is heartening to see the progress made by European and Scandinavian kennel clubs in particular.

But it isn't yet the root and branch reform in the way we breed dogs that's needed to protect our dogs and it could so very easily slip back. There is also much work to be done in helping puppy buyers to make better choices.

The dogs still deserve better.


25 comments:

  1. Thank you Jemima, a well written summation of the last 10 years.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a huge pity that the neurologist you relied on so heavily to condemn the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel breed has been PROVEN by way of a successful BVA/KC CM/SM appeal to be unable to accurately identify SM in a dog. Read the last quarter of 2017 KC BRS supplement.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The individual describing the abnormalities may be discredited,but I take it the dogs are still abnormal.

      Delete
    2. Don't you need to do an MRI to accurately diagnose syringomyelia? So what does it matter if a vet can't tell by an exam which dogs have SM or not?

      Delete
  3. Thank you for your fantastic work, for standing firm against the horrors we see all the time, if we just open our eyes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello from the USA--keep up your excellent work!

    ReplyDelete
  5. At the begiining of all this the KC and all the breeders said to breed healthier more geneitcally diverse dogs would not happeen over night it would take years - well given that it is acceptable to start breeding your bitch at 2 years (health considered and breed)then you keep a bitch from that litter and then you breed that bitch at 2 years - well 2 x5 = 10 years, so in the last 10 years we could have had 5 generations of the same breed diversified. So the breeders could be well on their way to diversing their gene pools. The problem is that the KC has done seminars and courses on genetics but unfortunately they haven't gone deep enough, you need really to have proper courses run from colleges or Uni's which take months/years for it to be really understood. The KC have merely made the breeders look good and feel competent about genetics when they're talking to 'Jo public' but unfortunately genetics go deeper than the KC can instruct them in and lets face it the KC aren't an awarding body anyway!! So to conclude the genetic diversity could have started propery over the last 10 years.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Somebody nominate Jemima for an OBE - she has done more for animal welfare than any radical vegan activist group. Jemima, well done - a decade of victimisation by the "status quo", of feeling like you are fighting alone, a decade of bashing your head against a canine wall. You are an inspiration to all of us, we are all behind your consistent leadership, let's see another decade of education in the name of beautiful dogs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I second that as a Clumber Spaniel owner and rescue/rehoming charity.

      Delete
  7. If the general puppy purchasing public could be made more aware too - we do our best at our Day Care to spread the word. Keep beating the drum Jemima!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I've been reading your blog since 2012, and using your teachings to help inform the dog lovers in my life ever since. It's good to see a new post :D

    ReplyDelete
  9. • Exaggerations are always in danger or sneaking back in. This Peke has just won the Toy Group at the World Dog Show in Amsterdam.
    That is the reason why I no longer show, the judges make the breed and the breeders play on it.
    Health is very important Investigate DNA and much more.
    In the Netherlands you have FairFok from the Kennel Club, but nothing comes of that world. Something will have to happen. People have to change their mentality.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Isn't new legislation coming into force in October to stop puppy farming etc and declaration by dog breeders to declare profits over £1k per litter. That will weed out a lot of breeders who are financially motivated. I understand that Defra has instigated this action?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I remember finding the plight of the Cavalier King Charles particularly upsetting. Has there been any improvement in the breed or is it beyond help now?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Jemima, at times I get so fed up and depressed over the depth of ignorance in the purebred world, and the unintentional cruelty that springs from it, that I feel I can´t take any more of it and would be better off doing something more worthwhile... and then I remember you. You could take it. You didn´t quit. Why should I? I think there are thousands of us who fell the same way. Thank you for your hard work and courage!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Well done - and thank you. And yes - the cats, and every other "purebred" animal continues to need rescue from the self-centred, ignorant show morons who persist in their "hobby" while ruining the quality of sentient lives.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cat fanciers are far, far less concerned with "purebred" and closed stud books than the purebred dog crowd.

      Delete
    2. And yet, persians still exist.

      Delete
  14. I thought you lost Fred when he was 15 in 2003??

    ReplyDelete
  15. Thank you for all you've done to raise awareness of this problem, Jemima! And don't lose hope.

    ReplyDelete
  16. 10 years! Wow. I have had to take a 6 months break from all the stupidity and charictor attacks ... its almost pushed me and my family over the edge... depression was not something I expected to get the better of me but it does feel like banging your head against a very hard brick wall.Why would anyone not want to do better for breeds they love? Why would any breeder not want the very best health for the dogs they breed? Why did breeders lose the ability to breed for the dog not the illusion of purity? Is the answer simply ignorance of genetics and social climbing in the dog world? We have so little time to make a difference it's already to late for some breeds.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Any sort of boiler installation can involve a critical amount of labor and
    understanding.

    ReplyDelete
  18. And, should you're contemplating a new heating system,
    let a excessive-effectivity furnace save hundreds in heating costs
    — and keep your family extra comfy than ever.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Excellent article, as with all things regulation needs to be in place. Producing healthy genetically strong dogs without inbreeding deficits that also look good will take work. Movement is in the air and surely breeders should be in this in the best interest of the breed, maintaining it ,introducing strong genetics without spoiling the great look of the dog is the ultimate goal. Keep going, bit by bit.

    ReplyDelete