The best dog in the world was a small brown mongrel called Dotty. She was my bodyguard on the first day I was allowed to walk to the shops alone, my comfort when I broke up with my first boyfriend, and my first-ever passenger on the day I passed my driving test. That dog put up with a lot. A friend and I used to take her to the local village show and enter her into the only class that was accepting of her dubious pedigree: the dog with the waggiest tail. After that we would drag her unwillingly around the agility course, having trained her for months beforehand over jumps made from bamboo sticks and upturned plant pots in our back garden. Poor Dotty.
Given this formative exposure to the world of dog showing, I presumed I knew a thing or two about it.
I didn’t.
On a bright, crisp morning, I made for the City to meet Jane Cooper. A gentle lady wearing a green coat and bright-coloured scarf, Jane has qualified her golden retriever, William, for Crufts this year. There are a number of ways to qualify a dog for Crufts, such as being named Best in Show, Reserve or Best Puppy of a local Kennel Club-affiliated show, or being placed in the top three of a Championship Show, but what each of these routes share in common is how difficult they are to accomplish. Needless to say, Jane is suitably thrilled and it’s all very exciting.
William is, first and foremost, a pet. He lives in the house and is treated like a normal dog. But Jane explains that there are a lot of people out there who take dog showing far more seriously than her, housing their prized champions in detached kennel blocks where they are waited on hand and paw by professional kennel maids.
The British dog-showing scene is mostly female. ‘I would say women between sixty and seventy make up the vast majority,’ Jane says, and the community was mostly daunting and unfriendly to her when she first started to get involved a few years ago. ‘Some people can be quite bossy and territorial, and they don’t have a lot of time for newbies.’
Three weeks later, Jane calls me up to ask if I want to be her assistant for an open show she is stewarding for in Didcot. When we arrive at the venue, the rain is relentlessly hammering down, and the car park is frantic with people ferrying dogs back and forward, many tucked under arms to avoid wetting perfectly manicured paws. One woman holds an umbrella over her Rhodesian ridgeback while she walks along next to it, water dripping from her nose.
As I walk through the door, I am overwhelmed by the sound of yapping and the smell of wet dog. Jane leads me past stalls selling brushes, diamond-encrusted leads and gourmet venison dog sausages. By the time we arrive at our ring, there is already a line of dogs waiting for the first class: American cockers. I mean, I love dogs and all, but these really are ugly little grumpy things that perpetually look like they are having the worst day of their lives. I introduce myself to the judge, who has driven down from Liverpool this morning, getting up at 4 a.m. to be here on time. Nobody is getting paid.
As stewards, we are in charge of keeping things running smoothly in the ring, making announcements, keeping all of the paperwork up to date and presenting prizes. I am given the honour of presenting the rosettes and announcing the winning dogs to those surrounding the ring, none of whom are listening. Every time I come back, Jane gives me some feedback on how to improve my performance next time. ‘That one was really good,’ she beams, ‘just try it a bit louder next time.’
When they are not being fluffed up, the smaller dogs are either kept in crates or tied to an overhead contraption that forces them to stand up with their necks at an awkward swan-like angle. On the table in front of me is a copy of Dog World magazine. A hypnotherapist offers her services to nervous showers on the front cover: ‘Don’t let your dog down, banish your nerves and show him to his full potential’.
One of the ladies in the Weimaraner class we are stewarding threatens to pull her dog out if we do not lengthen the ring. ‘How can you possibly be expected to judge his gait in a ring this small?’ she scoffs. We don’t adjust the ring – there is no room to – so she continues to stomp and huff her way around the ring before being awarded second prize. When I present her with the rosette, she wrinkles her nose as if I’ve just handed her a used tissue.
The following weekend I walk into the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre as part of a canine cavalcade for Crufts, the self-proclaimed ‘greatest dog show in the world’.
‘That must be the most peed-on lamp post in the country,’ says the lady in front of me, as her friend’s spaniel cocks his leg to add to the growing wet patch. Her Weimaraner is wearing a cow-print onesie, which does not seem to allow for the fact that dogs need to pee. It cocks its leg and looks surprised when nothing comes out. After a few seconds, something trickles out the bottom of its left trouser leg and I have to cross the road to laugh as the woman angrily wrestles the dog out of its costume.
At the tail end of a bout of gastric flu and blemished with chapped lips, a red nose and a cold sore, I’m not looking forward to approaching strangers to engage them in conversation. That is until I am handed a badge that inexplicably identifies me as a ‘Reporter’ at the entrance, having been granted a free pass and press accreditation by the organisers in exchange for an email declaring my intention to ‘write about it’. Things are looking up.
The show covers over 2 million square feet of shining floors and bright lights, split into five halls, each packed with arenas, stalls, show rings, dog benches and displays. As I walk around, it’s impossible not to notice the huge signs bearing the phrase ‘Celebrating healthy, happy dogs’, undoubtedly the result of a documentary called Pedigree Dogs Exposed that aired in 2008, a watershed moment in the dog-showing world. I came across the controversial documentary on one of my many YouTube rabbit-hole days.
The documentary exposed the numerous health problems experienced by certain dog breeds due to being selectively bred (and interbred) to produce qualities that are deemed ‘desirable’ by the Kennel Club. Examples include pugs, whose faces are now so flat they struggle to breathe and cool themselves, Cavalier King Charles spaniels, whose brains sometimes outgrow their skulls, leading to terrible neurological problems, and bulldogs, whose heads have become so huge that most can no longer give birth naturally and require caesarean sections. The airing resulted in Crufts losing multiple sponsorship contracts as well as its BBC coverage. It also triggered the Kennel Club to introduce a ban on father-daughter mating, to open a DNA research and health-testing centre, and to make some revisions to its breed standards, such as changing the official size of the bulldog’s head from ‘massive’ to ‘large’.
Despite the impact of the documentary, Crufts remains a popular event, with 22,000 dogs taking part this year across a range of showing, agility, flyball (a team racing, tennis-ball-catching extravaganza) and obedience competitions, as well as multiple demonstrations.
Everywhere I look people are grooming, nail clipping, curling, walk practising (yup, a thing), fluffing or backcombing the hair of their resigned companions. The basset hounds wear shower caps to protect their ears, and the Afghans have clips holding the hair around their undercarriage away from their crotch, presumably so they don’t pee on their perfectly coiffed coats.
‘How long does it take to get her looking like that?’ I ask Michael, the owner of a striking Afghan hound called Runa.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘we arrived at eight this morning, having already bathed and dried her, and I finished getting her ready about ten minutes ago.’ I look at my watch. It is 2 p.m.
I have no idea how the judges choose between these beautiful and glamorous dogs. They all look the same to me. I decide to stick around and watch Runa in her class as I scribble notes about the contents of her grooming kit. She gets ‘thrown out’ (doesn’t make the final shortlist). Michael walks back over and starts to pack up his six different brushes, bag full of hair clips, tangle teaser, oil coat spray, conditioning coat spray, de-tangling coat spray, baby powder, large comb and a pair of GHD hair straighteners.
I ask him how he feels. He shrugs his shoulders. ‘Well, we all think we are taking the best dog home, whatever happens.’ He rubs his ever-patient dog on the head. ‘Isn’t that right, Runa?’
The dogs seem to do an awful lot of waiting around, and then when they finally do get to the competition ring, they are repeatedly fiddled with by the owners and judges: leg placing, head lifting, tail straightening. The handlers all make this weird motion with their hand to make the dog look up, sweeping their hand round elaborately and gathering it up into an upside-down claw. Then the whole process is topped off with a good cupping as the judges check they have two testicles. The dogs just stand there, putting up with it. Stupid humans, they must be thinking. I wonder if dogs can roll their eyes.
‘How important is it that a dog has two testicles?’ I ask a short, stout lady who breeds West Highland whites.
‘Very,’ she says, straight-faced. ‘If they do not have two fully descended testicles, they will be either listed as having a “severe fault” or outright disqualified.’
If this happens, the missing testicles are usually in there somewhere but haven’t yet dropped down. In the rare case that they cannot be found at all, owners will sometimes pay for them to have prosthetics implanted, which are difficult to detect, although this is officially cheating.
I read an article earlier that morning, in a well-thumbed copy of Dog World I found on a table in the press area, that explained how owners of neutered dogs in America are increasingly using this service because they believe it makes their dogs ‘feel better about themselves’. The most popular brand on the market at the moment is Neuticles, selling for around $500 a pair, with nearly a million already implanted into pets around the world.
‘There was this breeder in America,’ the stout lady continues, already giggling, ‘who had a dog that was a unilateral cryptorchid’ – she notices my glazed expression – ‘oh, he only had one ball. Anyway, the breeder took him to a plastic surgeon and got a prosthetic so he could compete. Then as the dog was flying across the country to his first show, the high pressure in the cabin caused his other ball to drop.’ She stops and bites her lip to compose herself. ‘The owner hadn’t realised and took him to the show…’ She stops again, shoulders shaking as she snorts in a deep breath. ‘And the judge had to disqualify him for having three balls!’
I can’t help but laugh with her, scanning the crowd gathering around us who lean in eagerly to try and catch the punchline.
She goes on to tell me, after catching her breath, that pet plastic surgery is a growing business, with owners inflicting tummy tucks and facelifts on their dogs, as well as Botox injections to correct wrinkles and make their ears ‘fall better’.
I can’t quite bring myself to believe this and decide to google ‘pet plastic surgery’ on my phone over lunch. ‘Why not be beautiful?’ one of the world’s leading dog plastic surgeons says in an interview with Bloomberg. ‘It’s very important. If the pet is beautiful, the owner is happy and wants to show their pet to their friends.’ I finish my jacket potato feeling utterly depressed.
The big competitions and displays take place in the main arena, where I spend my first evening watching the agility. The dogs race around an obstacle course of jumps, seesaws, tunnels and weaving posts. Before each competition starts, the handlers ‘walk the course’ without their dogs, simulating how they will guide them around and gesticulating as they run past each obstacle. They do this repeatedly for ten minutes, wearing professional running tracksuits with the names of their dogs emblazoned on the back.
In contrast to the showing ring, the dogs seem to really be enjoying themselves in this environment, barking and wagging their tails furiously as they hare around the course. The spotlights and dramatic music give the event a real sense of glamour and the audience ‘awwww’ as each dog walks into the ring.
In between runs, I speak with a young couple sitting just in front of me in the stalls. They introduce themselves as Sarah, Duncan and Kevin the Lakeland terrier. They explain to me the three different breeds of dog showers: fun amateurs, genuine professionals and old dog ladies. ‘The one similarity is that they all want to win!’ Duncan says. ‘Some do it for the money they can make from breeding, but for most people, it’s a passion. The Lakeland terrier who won best of breed last year was flown in by private jet from the USA, along with his full-time groom and professional handler. Now that’s money.’
‘Do people ever get spiteful about it?’ I ask.
‘Well,’ Sarah joins in, ‘when Kevin won his first class, one woman stormed out because a “pet” won.’ She shrugs. ‘Fair enough, I suppose. If you do it for a living, it must feel unfair when someone swans in from the outside and takes a prize away from a dog you’ve worked so hard to breed.’ I think Sarah is being very nice. That woman sounds like a complete knob to me.
The following day I spend a couple of hours with the Yorkshire terriers, who have to be shown with red bows on top of their heads and presented on little stools with red cushions, which looks as creepy as it sounds. They require an enormous amount of grooming and hair straightening, standing patiently between classes with their faces covered in tissue wrapped up with tape to stop them getting eye and nose secretions on their pristine faces.
One woman’s dog doesn’t make the cut and is thrown out of its class. As they walk out of the ring, the woman points at another lady and shouts to her friend, ‘Look at the state of that second one. How on earth did that make the shortlist? The whole thing is rigged!’ She slumps into her seat and crosses her arms, yanking her dog towards her on its lead.
Later that afternoon my request to the press office to ‘have a go’ at the agility is granted and I am told that someone is willing to lend me their dog. I head over to the display arena for 1 p.m. and am greeted by the compere for the day’s proceedings.
‘You must be Lucy, the reporter.’
‘Er… yup. That’s me!’ I reply, hoping she isn’t going to ask me who I report for.
I am whisked across and introduced to Jed, a small black crossbreed who looks up at me, tail wagging expectantly. I bend down to make a fuss of him and introduce myself, but he is fixated on the squeaky toy being handed to me by his owner and tries to wrestle it from my hand.
‘Just take him around the jumps and through the tunnel,’ his owner tells me. ‘He will follow that toy wherever it goes.’
I wait my turn, giving Jed a pep talk about how we are going to nail this, and show all the other dogs up. When it is our turn, an announcement goes around the arena. ‘Lucy is a famous reporter and wants to try her hand at agility. She will be running Jed. Please give Lucy a round of applause’.
I blush. Am I a fraud? Yes, of course I am.
I walk out, Jed yapping at my heels, and do an awkward spin around to wave at the audience. I stumble over Jed and rescue myself just as I am about to face dive, provoking a mass ‘Ooooo’ from the stands.
I blush even more. ‘I’m OK!’ I squeak, trying to concentrate on the task at hand. I lead Jed up to the first jump and ask him to sit. He sort of obliges, but he is so excited he can’t quite bring himself to commit, so he squats awkwardly and hovers. I panic that this position means he is probably going to do a poo in front of all these people and decide to set off immediately.
‘Come on, Jed!’ I run around, pointing at all of the jumps like the professionals do, shouting ‘tunnel’ as we approach it. He flies around like a pro, the audience cheering as we clear the final jump.
I wait for my time, but it never comes. It turns out they didn’t time me as it was ‘just a bit of fun’. What?! I leave the ring waving and smiling like the fake celebrity I am, belying my inner devastation.
The show ring next to the agility course is playing host to the Irish setters. Tall and smartly dressed, Jon has been showing and breeding these elegant dogs for the last forty years, with two ‘dog rooms’ assigned to the ten dogs who share his home.
‘I’m getting a bit old and cynical now,’ he tells me. ‘It’s a political and bitchy world. A lot of people give up because they can’t hack it – you need to have very thick skin.’
‘What keeps you coming back?’ I ask him.
‘I still get a buzz from winning,’ he says, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s like a drug.’
‘You just pray you have a good judge,’ he continues, pulling at a tiny knot on a shining red ear. ‘One who judges your dog on the day. Some judges only look at pedigree and lineage. They all like different things, so you try and be clever about it – match the right dog to the right judge – but it doesn’t always work. Most judges are afraid to pick a dog that isn’t expected to win.’
There is a pause while we listen to the results from the last class.
‘I went over to Westminster Dog Show,’ he continues, ‘the American equivalent of Crufts, and it’s different over there. People celebrate success. Here people are just jealous, and they can’t wait for you to fail. And even if you win, people just want to point fingers and pick holes.’
The Afghan that won Best in Breed came here from America, flown over along with its professional handler and groom, having already won at Westminster within the last month.
‘Everyone knew it was going to win,’ Jon says. ‘It wasn’t the best bitch here, but it was presented perfectly. It showed its socks off.’
I love the idea of a dog ‘showing its socks off’, picturing it flouncing up and down a catwalk, its hair pinned back by a giant fan.
He introduces me to two of his dogs, Pop Tart and Jigs. ‘You can tell when you get them out of the car whether or not they are going to show,’ he says, stroking Jigs with the back of his hand. ‘Sometimes they look as miserable as sin and you just think, I may as well turn around and go home.’
‘What do you do if a dog never shows?’ I ask him, proud to be picking up the lingo.
‘Sometimes you have to find it a pet home, but this gets tricky once they get past six months because you get attached to them. Unfortunately, some people give their dogs away once they are made up to champions.’ He looks defeated. ‘The competition is over, and they just aren’t interested in them any more.’
My four days at Crufts are brought to a close with the crowning event, Best in Show. I am lucky enough to be given front-row tickets, right behind Clare Balding presenting live on Channel 4. I don’t really know how this happened; I would just advise anyone coming to an event like this to write beforehand and claim to be writing a book.
The winners of each group category are displayed before the audience, while the lady on the tannoy reads a summary of the breed characteristics. ‘The Irish terrier is an honest companion. Stout-hearted, with a lot of spunk, he is independent, smart and strong-willed. He makes a wonderful pet, loved for his curious and plucky nature and his excellent sense of humour.’
I had been told from my first day at Crufts that there could only be one winner of Best in Show: Ricky the standard poodle, who had swept the board this year, winning competitions all over the world. And lo, it was. Did this mean that the whole thing was a fix? I didn’t think so, but who knows. What I do now know for sure, however, is what it means for a dog to show its socks off. What a diva!
I leave the event with mixed emotions. I’m not sure the showing world is always that kind to dogs, but I guess putting up with a few days a year of floofing and waiting around isn’t a big price to pay for an adoring home, so long as it is that way. I preferred the classes where dogs are allowed to have fun, like the working classes, the dancing dogs, the agility and the flyball. The dogs in these competitions were so full of energy and enthusiasm, their little tails wagging their whole bodies from side to side, all chasing the ultimate high of being declared a ‘good boy’. Thank goodness none of these dogs made it into mine and Dotty’s ‘dog with the waggiest tail’ classes all those years ago, now that would have been some serious competition.