A Golden Retriever... apparently...

UK-bred; French-owned. The lowdown here.

Here's one from 1927 to compare - Ch Haulstone Dan.

Puppy-buyers "being conned" by Kennel Club breeder scheme

Despite recent improvements to the Kennel Club's Assured Breeder Scheme, almost 10 years after it launched, the KC is still bestowing Assured status on many breeders without inspecting them. And even when a breeder has been inspected, years may pass before they are checked again.

This week, ABS breeders Sue and Sarah Stacey, from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, were banned from keeping dogs for 10 years after 13 dogs, including the French Bulldog above, were found living in squalor (full story here).

A quick check reveals that Sarah Stacey has been an ABS breeders since October 2008.

In a statement RSPCA inspector Amy Collingsworth said: “I attended the property in January 2013 following an anonymous complaint from a member of the public. I was let into the living room to assess some of the dogs and was shocked to see that the floor was completely soiled with faeces and urine and the stench of ammonia was overpowering.

“I could see two emaciated dogs with overgrown claws sitting in a cage with a thick layer of faeces underneath them and two puppies, called by the owners Pup 1 and Pup 2, who were huddled together in a pen, subdued and lethargic.

"This was a shocking case of neglect from people who claimed to be registered dog breeders.”

So how could this happen?

Here's the KC boast about the scheme:

The Kennel Club Assured Breeder Scheme (ABS) is the only scheme in the UK that monitors breeders in order to protect the welfare of puppies and breeding bitches. The Kennel Club has recently received formal accreditation by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) to certify dog breeders under the Assured Breeder Scheme.

Sounds great, doesn't it? And, wow, UKAS accredited? That must mean that the scheme is robust, no?

Well no, it doesn't.

Astonishingly, breeders can join by signing a piece of paper promising to abide by the rules of the scheme - even since the scheme was beefed up with UKAS accreditation in January 2013. 

New members must agree to the possibility of a visit by an Assessor, but it is not a condition of joining. Additionally,  there is evidence to suggest that many if not most ABS breeders have never been inspected.

Here's what the FAQ for the scheme says:

"Names of new members are published in the Kennel Gazette and effectively 'policed' by breed clubs who report names that are, in their opinion, inappropriate candidates to us. If this happens then the Kennel Club investigates carefully."

R-i-g-h-t...   

This is clearly ridiculous. Breed clubs may know about shoddy big producers that have been operating for some time, but how can they be expected to know every new or small breeder? 

As it happens, Sarah Stacey, who neglected the Frenchie in the picture above, is a member of the French Bulldog Club and no one reported her. She and her mother run - rather terrifyingly - a cattery and dog grooming business in Great Yarmouth called Bright Eyes.  This listing on the PetPlan website promises:

Family home run cattery where we personally look after your precious pets in a quiet setting. Cattery inspections always welcome.
New for 2009 Fully qualified City & Guilds
Dog Grooming Salon opened by Sarah Stacey.
Dog training and behavioural corrections undertaken in our secure back field. We have over 30 years experience with all breeds of dogs.

Here's the full low-down on how the KC polices the Assured Breeder Scheme:

• All applicants' records are checked prior to acceptance on the scheme
• Check of the health screening records for a member's breed is required
• All members agree to be spot checked by the Kennel Club throughout their membership of the scheme, in order to ensure our standards are maintained
• The Kennel Club has recently added even more Regional Breeder Assessors to its national team to ensure that, as the Scheme grows in size, it can continue to monitor the standards of its members
• The Kennel Club encourages feedback from the dog-owning community and future members' names are published in the monthly Kennel Club publication, the Kennel Gazette, to enable breed clubs to comment on names that they believe to be inappropriate
• All new puppy buyers are given feedback forms by Assured Breeders that they return to us and if this does not happen then we look into the reason why. The Kennel Club receives hundreds of feedback forms from new puppy buyers each month; most of the feedback is positively glowing. However, if any complaints are made the Kennel Club investigates fully and takes the appropriate action which might include removal from the scheme

So the scheme is mostly reactive, not proactive. One would hope that bad breeders will be picked up sometime down the line. But there are no guarantees. In other words, a puppy you buy from an ABS breeders may not be any better than one produced in the most squalid puppy farm.

And don't be fooled by the promise of a "spot check". Unlike local authority inspectors, the KC has to give advance notice of a visit. 

Interesting too that the Kennel Club claims that it has "recently added even more Regional Breeder Assessors to its national team to ensure that, as the Scheme grows in size, it can continue to monitor the standards of its members."

In fact, this time two years ago, the KC had 23 regional breed assessors. They now have 13 (plus a further three full-time KC staff who are trained to do visits if needed). For the whole country.

At the end of 2011, I asked the Kennel Club for some stats on the Scheme. 

At that point, they had just over 6133 active (and 1189 inactive) members, so 7300 members in total. They admitted they had inspected just 15 per cent of them. ("Inactive" is defined as a breeder who hasn't registered a litter in the last three years - but who could, of course, register one at any time.)

Two years on, the Kennel Club now says it has 6457 active members and has done "around 5000" inspections. This sounds quite impressive. Clearly, there has been a big increase in the number of inspections done. But you need to bear the following in mind:

• some of these visits may be repeat inspections 

• close on 2000 breeders have left the scheme (either resigned or suspended for breaches). 

• the KC has not supplied the current number of inactive breeders. There will probably be about 1500 of them. And it is right to include them as they would have been active previously - and could become so again.

Add all that up and those "5000 inspections" relates to a total of around 10,000 breeders.

And so my guess is that the KC has, at best, still only inspected less than 50 per cent of its current ABS breeders. That's better than it was - but still not good enough.

(I have asked the KC for more detailed figures and will amend if I get them.)

Particularly worrying is that so many new breeders are still being endorsed by the Kennel Club as an Assured Breeder without being inspected. 

In 2011, the KC told me: "It is the intention that all members will be visited at some point and all new applicants will be visited either prior to acceptance or when most appropriate."

"At some point".

Last week, I asked the same question and got this back from the KC's Bill Lambert: "It is the intention that every active member of the scheme will be visited. We will only issue UKAS certificates to members that have been visited. Whilst it is still possible for low volume breeders to join prior to being inspected at some point we will require all new applicants to be visited prior to joining and in that respect all I can say at the moment is “watch this space”.

"At some point".

And nowhere, incidentally, on the KC website does it advise puppy buyers that only ABS breeders who have been inspected will be issued with a UKAS certificate.

So, two years on from the original reassurance and with no future date given for compliance, the KC is still endorsing breeders without sending anyone to check on them. 

And the stats are truly shocking.

The KC now (post UKAS accreditation ie from Jan 2013) lists the dates of its breeder inspections.

Here's what I found:

Of the 34 French Bulldog breeders awarded ABS status this year, only two have been inspected according to the Kennel Club website. Six of these, all marked as uninspected, are currently advertising litters on the KC Puppy Finder.

Of the 42 new Pug breeders awarded ABS status in 2013, only one of them has been inspected. Five of these new uninspected breeders are currently advertising litters on the KC's Puppy Finder.

Several of the above new Frenchie and Pug breeders have registered five or more litters with the KC and still haven't been inspected.

When I put the figures to the Kennel Club, it maintained that there were always around 200-300 applications "in process" - in other words, that more of the new members above could have been inspected; it's just not showing yet on the KC website. But it wouldn't have been hard to give me the actual figures and when the KC fudges it like this, it is usually a sign that the KC doesn't want the world to know the full extent of its shortcomings.  Don't forget, too, that "200-300 applications in process" doesn't just relate to Pugs and Frenchies - it's across all 200-odd breeds registered by the KC.

Frenchies and Pugs  have exploded in popularity in recent years. There are loads of breeders cashing in on them. Additionally, are no mandatory health tests for either breed under the ABS, despite both breeds having a holy host of health problems. (The KC does list that an annual eye test and a DNA test for hereditary cataracts is recommended but ABS breeders are not obliged to do them.)

The upshot is that anyone who goes to an ABS breeder for two of today's hottest breeds is in danger of being conned.  These breeders may be selling you rubbish pups raised in squalor, like the poor French Bulldogs above. After all, even the shittiest breeder has a half-decent front room into which pups and an adult female (which may or not be the pups real mum) can be brought in for your perusal.

Here's what we need to know about every ABS breeder in addition to what's already listed on the KC website.

• dates of all inspections - inc prior to UKAS accreditation (currently, you have to contact the KC to ask for details on any inspections prior to 2013)

• the number of litters/pups in total they have registered with the KC (a useful way of identifying volume breeders posing as hobby breeders).

• percentage of feedback forms returned by puppy-buyers

• feedback rating from puppy-buyers

And, of course, we need every breeder inspected prior to acceptance on the scheme - or clearly identified as provisional members only, pending an inspection. Anything else is just a nonsense.

Research appeal

I have only had time to go through Pugs and French Bulldogs and would like to put together some stats for the other Top 20 KC-registered breeds.  Could you help?

A list of ABS breeders for every breed can be found here. If it's a breed with a large number of breeders, they will be broken down by county. Pick any county and near the top of the page you'll find a link from which to download a pdf of every ABS breeder for that breed.

The KC Puppy Finder is here - ABS breeders are marked and always at the top of the list.

The information I am looking for per breed is:

• number of new ABS breeders for 2013

• number of these new breeders marked as inspected (NB the KC only lists inspections done since Jan 2013)

• number of these new breeders (uninspected/inspected) currently advertising litters on the KC Puppy Finder

• number of these new breeders (uninspected/inspected) listed with a triangle containing the letter B (which means they have registered five or more litters with the KC).

If you are willing to take on a breed, please state below to avoid a duplicated effort - and then ideally please send the actual figures to me: jem[AT]pedigreedogsexposed.com.

Thank you! 

La Grande Meute - the staghounds of Fontainebleau

The forest of Fontainebleu lies 60km south east of Paris and encompasses 110 square miles. Once a royal hunting preserve, it is now a national park.

There has been a hunt here since the twelfth century.

Beautiful dogs. Beautifully filmed.

100 years of breed improvement - the real story

The world and his mother has forwarded to me the above article from yesterday's Daily Mail (see the whole thing here). It's a steal from this post in July by blogger Mus Musculus, which features the following comparisons between dogs of old and now.

The article, and the blogpost before it, has generated a lot of traffic. Mus Musculus has done a great job of finding comparisons which match in terms of the dogs' stance.

But in doing so, punches have been pulled.  And that's because, in several breeds, the reality is far worse, excepting perhaps in the Bulldog. 

The modern example of the Bulldog above is really bad - and, actually, you'd be very unlikely to see such an extreme beast in the UK show-ring today. Equally, the bulldog-of-yore ain't much to be proud of - less wrinkled, longer-faced but that front frame is awful - a recipe for severe, debilitating joint pain. You have to go further back in time to find a more normal-looking Bulldog. 

I also don't see that much wrong with the modern Boxer (their main issues being ones you cannot see).

But let's have a look at some of the others.

The modern Basset here has much longer ears, is fleshier and a little lower to the ground, but this is the Basset that won Crufts in 2012 - way, way worse.

Then there's the GSD.

The modern counterpart featured in this comparison is an American-line dog. These are awful, but much worse to look at are the cripples favoured in the German and UK showring:

And, finally, there's the Dachshund... 

Compared to, say, this champion miniature Dachsund widely advertised in the UK dog press last year:

Or this Standard dog, which won Best of Breed at Westminster in 2011.

To come shortly... a reminder that in a sea of freaks, you can still find moderate versions of many breeds - if you know where to look. 

Shar-pei - the eyes have it

Have what?

Well, quite often entropion - the turning in of the eye margins causing damage to the dogs' eyes.

It is a direct consequence of the wrinkling/skin folds that have become a defining feature of the Westernised version of the breed but was never a feature of the original Shar-pei (see here).

And, indeed, it is is so bad that "tacking" is routine in the breed -  a procedure in which the vet places sutures around the eye when the dogs are pups to prevent the eye surface being injured by the inward rolling of eyelashes.

This often does the trick; sometimes, though, Shar-pei need more surgery to correct the entropion when they are older.

Shar-pei breeders are so de-sensitised to this that tacking (and entropion surgery) is not considered a big deal in the breed. In fact, in the twisted logic adopted by some breeders, tacking is actually considered a sign of a responsible breeder. And although the Kennel Club dictated a few years back that dogs that have had their eyes tacked cannot be shown, insiders tell me that an awful lot of show dogs will have had their eyes tacked as pups. It is hard to prove one way or the other.

But there are some breeders taking a stand and one in particular I'd like to praise.

Three years ago, I blogged this photograph, as featured in a book by the photographer Tim Flach. As you can see, this very wrinkled eight-week-old pup is sporting a stitch above her right eye - a "tack".

It turned out that the pup was bred by a UK-based breeder called Ines Alarcao. She took quite a lot of stick at the time and has since withdrawn from showing.

But she's kept breeding Shar-pei and she recently sent me these pix of her current litter of eight pups. Here they are at six weeks old. They all have clear eyes and not a single one has had to be tacked. They also have fewer wrinkles and bigger ears (breeding for very small ears in Shar-pei has led to tiny ear canals prone to ear infections).

Have a look at these photos and then see below for what Ines says about these pups.

It's a big improvement - at least in terms of their conformation.

I asked Ines how she had achieved it:

"I bought two girls from different lines four years ago , with reasonable eyes and not many wrinkles and good ears. I have mated them with guys with the same features. One of them produced a blue boy with excellent eyes, the other produced a girl with good eyes too, and  I have now mated these two together and produced this guys.   Some people say that good eyes are a matter of luck. Not true! But I had to find it through trial and error. I am keeping two girls from this litter , I bought another one that has got less wrinkles and more traditional features, and I have another 6 mth-old girl that i bred and kept with really good eyes. My new breeding program will  be based on them."

Now these pups are still too immoderate for me. And, in my opinion, this breed is too inbred and has too many inherent health problems (notably Familial Shar-pei Fever) to be able to justify breeding it at all.

But I really was pleased to see these pix. A step in the right direction.

Lola the Bulldog: tu-tu much

Now I'm all for a good party. And I don't have any inherent objections to dogs being dressed up.

But let's not pretend that this is for the dogs, eh? Especially when the party girl has to be taken out every 10 minutes and be blasted with air-conditioning to stop her collapsing (see from 10.31).

See how Lola tries to take the matter into her own hands at 11.15 minutes in with a blatant attempt at suicide.

Suspect this video will be taken down pretty quickly... enjoy, or otherwise, while you can.

Pedigree Cats Exposed

Extreme cats at the Supreme Cat Show at the National Exhibiton Centre in Birmingham today.

We didn't just fuck up dogs.

We tried very hard to persuade the BBC to commission Pedigree Cats Exposed but after much deliberating, they turned it down. "Too like the dogs" was their verdict.

Well exactly. 

Haven't quite given up yet.