Westminster Kennel Club-You Are So NOT Winning
OK. The affenpinscher won best in show and now I can unclench my jaw. The buzz around the annual Westminster Kennel Club competition sets my teeth on edge every year. I’m not a fan and here’s a few reasons why:
1. The kind of breeding that goes into perpetuating a breed standard is canine eugenics. When natural selection takes a back seat to smooshier faces or more pronounced topline slopes, we get what’s coming to us served up by DNA’s karma. Breed standards no longer ensure that a dog’s appearance, movement and temperament are indicators of a sound, healthy dog. A few years back, I asked a veterinarian who had been practicing for over 40 years her thoughts; she readily admitted that health problems that would only occasionally be seen in some breeds have become more prevalent and more severe in nature. Would we allow human breeding for certain traits even if it compromised certain aspects of our species’ health? Hell no. So why is it OK to do it to dogs?
2. A breed standard in the US often calls for surgical manipulation of a dog’s features. I’m not down with that. Tail docking and ear cropping are cosmetic surgery, plain and simple. There is a strong argument against tail docking and it’s been outlawed in some parts of the world. I would hazard a guess that most of the argument against tail docking would also apply to ear cropping. The last time I saw a totally natural Doberman, dewclaws and all, I couldn’t get over how beautiful he was with his long, thin, tapered tail and beautiful, floppy triangle ears. We need to leave dogs with all of their communication tools intact, period.
3. In a world where too many animals are put to death each year in shelters, I think the money and time that go into everything that surrounds a competition like Westminster could be better used elsewhere. I wish that social pressure were enough to get most people to rethink where they get a companion animal, but we’re not quite there yet. I cringe every time someone talks about getting a dog from a breeder. I keep my politics to myself, because every dog needs a home. I’d happily put my own well-trained, well- socialized, registered therapy dog of a mutt up as an example of what can become of a shelter pup in loving hands.
4. I worry about the quality of life these dogs have. Last year a photo in a Washington Post gallery (no. 43) almost made me choke on my breakfast. Sophie, a standard poodle, was getting primped and readied for competition. Her display of what some behaviorists call ‘whale eye’ stopped me cold; her mouth was also crunched in a show of discomfort while her groomer/handler poked at her with a makeup brush. Here was a dog being manipulated into a human-manufactured standard of perfection. I’m pretty sure Sophie wasn’t having fun, but the better question is does she even know what fun is? Has she ever been allowed to run wild through the woods and sniff everything she could get her nose near? Or is that too risky for a dog whose value lies in her looks?
At the end of the day, we know who the winner is in our house. She’s a mixed-breed, totally natural, adopted, center-of-our universe dog who reminds us daily that we all won the day we brought her home.