THE GERMAN SHEPHERD was streaking around the
ring like a Saluki. His handler, a lean-hipped chap, was sprinting next to it
in long, fast strides--in itself a rare sight, since dog handlers often have
extremely large bottoms, due probably to an admirable indifference to their own
well-being in favour of complete immersion in dogdom's circuit of junk food and
hours of sitting en route to dog shows.
"That is one gorgeous dog" I
thought. "He's being double-handled" hissed the amply bottomed lady
to another sitting behind me. "Why doesn't the judge spot it?"
Double-handling refers to a second person outside the ring who knows the dog
well--in this case it appeared to be a young woman--discreetly signalling the
dog to run toward her. The dog tears up the ring and if it has a beautiful
gait, as this shepherd did, its presentation is extra fabulous. "Is that allowed?"
I asked John Reeve-Newson, one of the best-known judges in the international
dog world and a Canadian veterinarian and breeder to boot. "I would have
stopped it," he said diplomatically.
Welcome to the cutthroat world of the
purebred dog show. The angst of it all can be seen in the hilarious (and only
semi-fictional) film Best in Show. But outside the weird world of botoxed
tails, dyed coats and grooming to hide faults is the world of ordinary dog
lovers, and the Canadian Kennel Club's Purina National in Mississauga, Ont., on
March 9-11 was full of them: children wrapping arms around the puff of snow
that is a bichon frise or perusing the wrinkles of a bulldog's head. Parents
patiently trying to explain that even though a Leonberger would indeed be "so
cool" and certainly "much bigger than the Lab next door" it
really wouldn't fit into the kitchen. The Purina National is Canada's
Westminster, only six years old, but a must-see show. Even the CBC's Rick
Mercer was there, strutting his stuff in the ring with a 160-lb. mastiff.
Look, though, behind the wonderful show dogs at America's
Westminster, Canada's Purina and the British Crufts dog show. Serious problems
are on the boil. Earlier this month, in the middle of Crufts, six Best of Breed
winners were disqualified for health reasons. This threw into public view
problems the dog world has mixed feelings about. Are we inflicting serious
damage on our dogs to
meet human desires and are our kennel clubs actually looking after dogs as well as themselves?
There are many animals more intelligent than dogs,
but lab experiments confirm that dogs are
the most responsive animal to human beings. Purebred, mixed or mongrel, they
read us best. Dogshave accompanied man on his journey for thousands
of years. Each century brings new ways fordogs to contribute: they go up in space
capsules, predict epileptic attacks, detect land mines, help autistic children
and give love to a hodgepodge of
humans: the homeless, the bedridden, the elderly. Canadians alone have 5.9
million dogs in 35 per cent of all households. It's
hard to know how many of them are purebred (the CKC has registered 311,459 dogs between 2007 and 2011, though many are
not registered), but to understand the problems of being a dog, the plight of
the purebred is a good start.
IN ONE SENSE there never have been any
purebred dogs.
Some ancient breeds like the Tibetan mastiff haven't changed much over the
centuries, but in their long journey from wolves to domesticated dogs, a
journey that might have taken more than 10,000 years, there's been a lot of
intermarriage. The codification of all the breeds we know today came around the
19th century.
0 nhận xét :
Đăng nhận xét