A photo gallery.

h/t Harry K.

For the first time in many years, I decided to skip the shows in Billings, MT which start tomorrow.

That was our show venue.
Had it hit 24 hours later, the parking lot would have been filled with wall to wall RV’s and campers – including me.

Wally Conran has regrets.

“I decided to stop mentioning the word crossbreed and introduced the term ‘labradoodle’ instead to describe my new allergy-free guide-dog pups,” he wrote.
The name caught on and interest in the labradoodle soared, but he began to worry about “backyard breeders producing supposedly allergy-free dogs for profit,” Conran wrote. He felt that he had opened up a Pandora’s box.

Better to say he fell into one.
Since the animal rights racket began targeting purebred dogs about 25 years ago, a steady trickle of propaganda masquerading as exposé began to enter the media mainstream. Time magazine’s A Terrible Beauty (which includes scientific gems like “practically every species suffers from inherited diseases”) is a textbook example.
Long on weepy anecdotes and lazy research, short on balance and meaningful rebuttal, the oft stated goal was to push the pet buying public towards shelter animals. For their animal rights puppeteers, the goal was for the public to forgo “enslaving” a pet at all.
Of course, Labs had been getting out of the yard and getting it on with the poodle down the street for as long as Labs and poodles have existed. But historically, the product of such matings rightly sold for a nominal fee, or – as they grew into the 30 lbs of puppy food a week stage – for nothing at all.
That all changed when media got involved to help spread the animal rights crafted message of Hybrid Superiority^TM.
To Time magazine and others, Labradors and poodles weren’t simply breeds developed for cold water retrieving that excel in a host of other disciplines – they were deeply flawed symbols of a corrupt and elitist social class intent on forcing artificial standards of beauty on the health and welfare of millions of innocent family pets.

Within the past century, though, and especially over the past 50 years, the most popular types have been bred almost exclusively to look good — with “good” defined by breed-specific dog clubs and the American Kennel Club (AKC). “Form has been separated from function,” says Brian Kilcommons, a dog trainer in Middletown, New York.”Styles come in vogue. The competition at dog shows is geared almost exclusively to looks.” This focus on beauty above all means that attractive but unhealthy animals have been encouraged to reproduce — a sort of survival of the unfittest. The result is a national canine-health crisis, from which few breeds have escaped. […]
“Criticize the AKC, and there will be retribution,” says one New York dog trainer. “Judges may find they are no longer getting assignments. Breeders might discover their dogs are no longer winning prizes.”

Never mind that the AKC registers only a fraction of the purebred dogs born in America, and puppies produced by competitive show lines account for only 5% of those – the few hundred dogs awarded breed ring rankings each year were responsible for the gene defects of tens of thousands of largely unrelated purebreds churned out for the commercial market. To that end, Time (along with countless others) advised;

Most of these genetic problems would disappear if Americans could somehow be persuaded to abandon purebreds in favor of mutts. While individual mixed-breed dogs have problems, the animals on average are a lot healthier than their high-class cousins.

The public was paying attention. The result was an epic backfire in mankind’s long history of unintended consequences.
With the birth of a new type of snob appeal – that of the morally superior, politically correct dog owner – came an explosion in the breeding of so-called “designer dogs”.
A puppy who might command $35 in his grandsire’s day was suddenly worth $1200. And why not? If that was the going rate for a purebred standard poodle puppy, surely a fillintheblankpoo, endowed with media-certified hybrid vigour, was worth as much – or more?
No matter that the $1200 purebred might represent thousands of dollars investment in genetic testing, post sale support, and health guarantees – along with the predictability in adult size, coat type, temperament, and trainability so critical in matching a puppy with his owner’s lifestyle and environment.
No matter that late onset defects are often the product of dominant genes, which require only one affected parent to produce disease in offspring, or that many breeds share the same disease genes for common problems such as hip dysplasia.
No matter that purebreds are so often screened for sub-clinical disease or carrier status that handy databases exist ready to be mined and publicized by their critics – while crosses receive little or no such testing at all.
And no matter that crosses between breeds of different physical types can result in grotesque malformations of structure (such as jaw alignment) and coat care nightmares.
The thing that really mattered was that they weren’t “bred to look good”.
And so, Labradoodle beget Goldendoodle, which begat Cadoodle, which begat Doodleman Pinscher, which begat Giant Schoodle, and so forth, all of them commanding prices well in excess of the original purebreds that went into the mix – for the commercially bred purebreds used in such crosses are invariably the least worthy for breeding.
After all, no one with a poodle or Labrador from generations of health tested, champion stock would consider wasting that investment in a hybridized dead end.
Puppies produced by low quality Labrador parents might command $250 in a market saturated with pet Labradors – hardly enough to merit the work involved in producing a litter or the risk of being saddled with unsold puppies.
But by simply breeding the Lab to an equally invaluable poodle, the value of their puppies could instantly quadruple. Better yet, the profit margins were huge. The Labradoodle puppy requires no more “per unit investment” than does any other mutt – bargain basement breeding stock, dog food, and a vaccination. In contrast, a comparatively priced standard poodle puppy might represent hundreds of dollars of input costs.
Wally Conran knew these things, of course. What he couldn’t have known is how a left-leaning media largely sympathetic to the animal rights agenda would turn his little guide dog experiment into a Gen X status symbol and canine cash-generating monster.

Finally!
Update: Sadie releases official statement on PETA

“The state that has no business in the bedrooms of the nation seeks to insert itself into the fallopian tubes of its poodles.”

My op-ed in today’s National Post.

Checking in from Pennsylvania, with a few positive results – the chief among them First Award of Merit for Am.Can.Ch.Minuteman Madrid.

In fact, the final lineup here at Hatboro (day 2) of Best of Breed, Best of Winners, Best of Opposite Sex all had Minuteman breeding behind them.
Everyone hates us, which is as it should be.

We’ve just wrapped up three days of showing in Monroe, Michigan. Fly managed to walk in a straight line with head up long enough to take two majors, including 5 points at the Michigan Miniature Schnauzer Club specialty show on Friday. That leaves him just three points short of his title. They weren’t the only wins of the weekend, but definitely the most appreciated!
My net access here has been poor, and I have only a few minutes in the evening to check mail, etc. Thanks again to everyone who’s been keeping the place going during my absence. I should be back in just over a week’s time, but I’ll try to check in from time to time.

*

“Fly” – a new Canadian champion this weekend, in spite of his complete and utter contempt for show training of any kind.

Next stop: AMSC national specialty, where he is no doubt looking forward to the opportunity to humiliate me before an international audience.

Those dogs weren’t screwing those old people – they mauled them to death.

“You are more likely to killed by a bolt of lightening than by a dog,” said Adam Goldfarb, a spokesman for the Humane Society of the United States. “It’s one in millions.”

There have been at least 20 deadly dog attacks in the U.S. this year, 22 in 2008 and 33 in 2007, Goldfarb said, compared with about 75 million owned dogs. Many dogs that turn vicious aren’t necessarily pets but kept for hunting or breeding, or as guard dogs. Dogs that attack also typically are not spayed or neutered, which can contribute to aggression, Goldfarb said. He said it’s likely the dogs in the Georgia attack weren’t sterilized.

Canine ticking time bomb – how long before she kills?

The Humane Society of the United States – now using dead bodies as propaganda billboards. Do yourself and your pet a favour. Don’t give these animal rights zealots your money, unless lawyers are among your favoured charities.

Meet the new kid on the block.

Having decided to hang around his roomy apartment an extra week or so, he was a little too big to make his entrance the old-fashioned way, so new-fangled way it had to be. The new wing at the vet clinic will have my name on a plaque.
I head out on a road trip this weekend (well, the rest of the week, actually), and though I should be able to blog on occasion, things will be slow. The guest bloggers are invited to drop by, but if they have better things to do, check out the blogroll.

In one of nature’s classic confrontations, a lion and jackal face off over a carcass.
In another, wilder, kingdom, Minuteman Madrid went hunting for her championship title this weekend and attained that, along with two group first wins.
I hope you enjoyed your weekend away from the computer as much as I did. Normal blogging will resume tomorrow.

Best in Show goes to the Sussex Spaniel, Ch Clussexx Three D Grinchy Glee – a ten year old veteran from one of the oldest and rarest of British sporting breeds.

That’s right – an inbred, purebred, show bred, senior canine citizen with the health and condition to beat the best if the best.
Maybe there’s something to this master race stuff after all!
This year, the WKC website offers videos of breed judging. Find your favourites here.

No, really, they are.

The people who were once partners in animal husbandry are rapidly being converted into animal rights activists with stethoscopes;

In the new way of thinking, it is OK to do surgical sterilization of an animal with all the far reaching impact this may have due to the change in hormones this causes, but its not OK to snip off a length of tail before a pup can feel that surgery, or take off excess ear so that the ear can stand as is normal in dogs (a drop ear is a mutation seen only in tame canines). It is considered reasonable to mention only the positive effects of alter surgery but not to mention the negatives. Now how can it be OK to ‘sexually mutilate’ a dog without its agreement, but not be OK to prevent tail injury or fix an ear or remove a dewclaw? Do the vets not realize that if they alter the last animals they will be out of work?

Precisely. The next time you hear someone declare a docked tail to be a “needless mutilation”, ask them if their cat is spayed.
Related: The Humane Society Of The United States – a “humane society” in name only.

Some years ago, I campaigned a quite infamous little schnauzer bitch I called “Frankie”.
In the show ring there are ribbons you want to get, and ribbons you don’t want to get. A “good” ribbon, for a bitch of Frankie’s show record and status, was big and blue (First In Group). A “bad” ribbon was significantly smaller, and striped green and white (Best of Opposite Sex).
These formed the basis of a demonstration. I first gave ribbons of each description to a volunteer and with Frankie sitting in my lap, directed that they offer them to her one at a time.
If the volunteer offered the large, blue “First In Group” rosette, Frankie would sniff it in interest.
If the volunteer chose the green and white ribbon, they were met with teeth, bared in an audible snarl.
I taught her do that.

I needed the day off, anyway.

June 27, 1995 – June 27, 2008