Digging deeper, we find a less glamorous ancestor to canine beauty pageants, an embarrassing bone in family closets that makes even royalty seem no better than anyone else. Animal baiting and dog fighting are impolite subjects to breach in preshow pits of Westminster or Crufts where contestants rat their bichons and ribbon their Yorkies. Still, this relatively recent aversion to employing dogs in other capacities hasn’t prevented fanciers from making the bulldog into one of the most popular breeds of all time. As we’ve already seen, dog shows have an undeniable heritage in blood sport events that drew English spectators of all classes to villages, towns, and cities across the realm where they occurred like clockwork for centuries. Ugly and brutal gladiatorial hobbies have a much longer history than those dainty processions fanciers know and love, and royalty played no small part in keeping them popular. Bulls, badgers, and bears were once standard fare in public amphitheaters throughout the kingdom, and it was often the upper echelon that set the tone for highbrow entertainment and examples of right and wrong. Lions, tigers, and other exotics were raised in royal menageries for command performances. Richard III even created an office called Royal Bearward to ensure fresh victims would be on hand at all times for impromptu matches. Elizabeth I craved cat fights and always enjoyed a good goring, encouraging her court and countrymen to do the same. So did James I, who hired a professional impresario named Edward Allyen to stage these odes to animal cruelty. A producer of plays and an actor, Allyen, like Charles Cruft, his spiritual heir, did what he was told.24 Some early dog-show producers in the nineteenth century were actually “converts from the darker side of dogdom.”25
By the nineteenth century, when dog shows took the place of cruder diversions, people of good breeding had decided it was no longer fashionable to see animals suffer in this style. Aristocracy and higher nobility became driving forces behind the humane movement that helped to put some distance between society’s born leaders and certain “disreputable associations”26—and to prevent mongrels from being born. As soon as it became a crime to throw beasts into pits or chain them to stakes, high-born English scrambled to sever all ties, not with their shady blood relations who’d done the dirty deeds and encouraged bad behavior all along, but with society’s lower orders who’d followed their example and were, it was suddenly being said, the only creatures capable of enjoying such base pleasures! Prim and proper Victorians were pleased to see a leading breeder of fighting dogs had renounced a vulgar vocation and renamed his frowned-upon establishment a “Canine Palace.” The reformed English bulldog could now fight to regain the affections of a nation to whom it had heretofore been a hero. Meanwhile, sensitive sorts of the upper class had sworn off lion baiting, though they continued terrorizing foxes for fun.
Looking back on some of aristocracy’s other strange animal hobbies to which respectable outfits like Westminster and Crufts owe at least some recognition, it’s clear that not all ties to the past are flattering. Far from the sophisticated, high-toned urban affairs organized by modern kennel clubs, that famous event of 1859, held in the bustling commercial center of Newcastle upon Tyne, didn’t take place in a stadium, a palace, or a pub, but in a more mundane locale for social exchange called the New Corn Exchange. The “dog section” wasn’t very glamorous, but a novelty no one knew would last, a tawdry sideshow to a bigger beauty pageant devoted to—fancy chickens!
“The new feature of the addition of Sporting Dogs to the show of Poultry was a great attraction,” reported the Newcastle Courant to a throng of local yokels with little else in the way of entertainment but the spectacle of unusual pets and the people who could afford to keep them.27 Before the leisure class took to parading refashioned dogs across the stage, they warmed up on a few other species. In fact agricultural “improvement” took many forms in the nineteenth century. “Fancy fowl” were among several guinea pigs to get makeovers from England’s landed gentry and higher nobility up to Victoria and Albert, who became avid collectors of beautified birds, pigs, and oxen.28 The idea of crowning a farm animal might sound bizarre today, but “hen fever” had a powerful draw. The thought of a handsome hen or comely cow doesn’t register with most pet owners, but in the years leading up to dog shows, the whole barnyard was being refashioned for appearance. Chickens were made chic with dazzling plumage and regal headdresses. Steers were status symbols with fine coats and massive fat that hung off enormous frames, casting them into striking angular shapes. Other species were subjected to the same taste for geometrical precision soon to work its magic on dogs, and those naive folk art paintings of rectangular cows seen in shops today are accurate reproductions. Beasts of burden as decorative objects? The pursuit of perfection had taken a wrong turn somewhere down a dusty country road. While genuine advances were being made elsewhere in agriculture, a kind of short-lived counterrevolution was under way in upper-class farming. That same retrograde pull, a drive in the opposite direction of progress that kept the new middle class fixated on predemocratic notions of good breeding and hereditary honors, had also corrupted farm animal breeding. It was almost as though members of the decadent upper classes, whose real influence was declining rapidly, were struggling to keep an upper hand in the only way they still knew how: as arbiters of taste.
“The object of the English fancier,” noted naturalist William Tegetmeier, shifted away from food production and toward wasteful pursuits such as “the production of large globular crests perfectly free from white feathers.” An eerie prediction of dog shows to come, fanciers of “ornamental fowls” became obsessed with “exactness of colour and marking.” Large, edible breasts were no longer fashionable, and “reachy” birds were courted for their skimpy figures, long, aristocratic necks, and fragile limbs.29 The term “mongrel” was applied to any animal that didn’t measure up, and the more elegant and useless a farm animal could be made, the more social standing its owners gained from lavishing time and money on breeding, raising, grooming, and parading it around a pen. For practical purposes, status value had in many ways emerged victorious by the end of the Victorian Age. To enlighten Anglophile American social climbers across the pond who were eager to rise on the perfect heads of finer farm products, new publications offered instruction in proper pig feeding, feathering, and the optimal use of canine coloratura. Country Life in America, a monthly manual devoted to helping Americans imitate English landed gentry, offered advice on everything from window-box gardening and front porch design, to nature painting, catching brook trout, using the right soaps to achieve a rosy rustic skin tone—and “Dogs” just before the “Poultry” page of every edition.30 When superior canines emerged as preferred pets for better homes and gardens, breeders wasted no time in revamping entire facilities to keep pace.31
Yet despite the many social benefits that well-bred animals showered on discriminating shoppers with their pelage and plumage, all was not well in the Land of Fancy. Beauty, as the French say, comes with a price, and that price is suffering. “The artistic manipulation of genetics,” as one cattle historian calls the drift from practical uses to purely cosmetic concerns, brought the message, to anyone who cared to listen, that art could sometimes be immoral.32
Before the same lessons could be learned, and ignored, in the dog fancy, very similar downsides to inbreeding for appearance and pedigree were noticed among other beasts embellished for the stage. Bulls, it was true, could no longer legally have dogs set upon them in bloody fighting pits. But being valued like tropical fish for shape, size, color, and sheen was taking a toll. Infertility and illness appeared to be as rampant among fancy farm animals as they were in royal families. “Perfect” show cows and pigs were observed to be slow, sluggish, even stupid. Not unlike refashioned bulldogs in later years that could barely hobble around for the judges, massive bovine and porcine carcasses with less than reliable legging had to be wheeled in on carts to competitions, then airlifted on pulleys into the ring for observation.33 Luxuriant skin that fanciers found attractive gave pigs difficulty in walking, and excess “l
eather” on faces led to the same vision problems seen in bulldogs, Shar-peis, bassets, and many dog breeds exaggerated for that style today. Birds that were tweaked “from the farmer’s into the gentleman’s fowl,” Tegetmeier noted, had enormous top hats and heavy burdens. Not only did dandy birds not have enough meat in the right places to make them salable at market, they were “bred with tufts so large that they can scarcely see to feed.” For the same reason, today’s Wheaton terriers wander into lampposts on their way home from the groomer. Exaggerated crests on poultry presaged the over-the-top afros that would one day crown the heads of Dandie Dinmonts and bichons frises, or the foppish tufts towering atop so-called Chinese crested dogs. “Super-abundant feathers or comb” foretold our overstuffed golden retrievers with their conspicuously plush, impractical plumage. Certain strains of hen became as “delicate and difficult to rear” as any shivering lapdog with matchstick legs.34
Then there was that most peculiar fetish among fanciers, an inexplicable fascination with flush surfaces, the same trend that Edward Ash would call “the craze for dished faces.”35 As our best friends grew flat-headed and feeble-minded, Tegetmeier remarked that pigs were being “bred so ‘dish-faced’ that they have lost all profitable character.”36 Pugs followed pigs, and many dogs bred for “expression” in the ring would over time become virtually faceless, opening a whole new market for special disk-shaped kibble, like Royal Canin Pug 25, because these breeds can no longer even pick up food normally. These and many more freakish sideshow deformities were first imposed on the barnyard set, and dog show audiences also came to expect entertainment to the extreme.
“There are hundreds of dogs in Britain,” explained an episode of the BBC’s hit comedy series Little Britain. “The biggest, the Blue Setter, is as tall as the Houses of Parliament. The smallest, the Boodle, is invisible to the naked eye.” Exaggerations aside, since these madcap amusements began, there’s been a clear tendency toward exaggeration. Some dogs have grown so gigantic that they fall apart within a few years. Others have shrunk to be so fragile that the slightest stress leaves them lame. Certain breeds have backs stretched so thin that chronic pain is the only alternative to mercy killing. Though these deformities are as much the fault of the judges’ interpretations of breed standards as the standards themselves, demanding rules invented for the earliest dog shows suggest the seeds of dog destruction were sown as early as the 1860s.
For no better reason than to multiply the ways to win, arbitrary categories were imposed for size, coat color, and any features that could be homed in on and heightened. Groupings by “Small Class” and “Smallest Dog under 3 lb.” distorted stature on a whim. “Large Dogs,” “Large Bitches,” and “Large Variety Class” stretched the rubber band in the opposite direction. “Toys” proved that size, any size, still mattered, so long as it was exaggerated. “White Scotch,” “Fawn Scotch,” “Blue Scotch,” “Black-and-Tans,” and “White English” defined dogs by their coat colors. “Smooth-haired Terriers” and “Broken-haired Terriers” expanded the hair-splitting to include another concern irrelevant to dogs that no longer worked. “Small Black-and-Tans,” “Large Black-and-Tans,” “White Terriers under Six Pounds,” and “White Terriers over Six Pounds” combined other obsessions. “Rough-coated Toy Terriers” created more opportunities for winning prizes.
Canine classes multiplied to dizzying heights, just as social honors were mass-produced in human heraldry. Fanciers spun meaningless distinctions from thin air, and even hunting and sporting breeds were subjected to demands that had nothing to do with utility or health, and everything to do with making show dogs jump through conceptual hoops on stage and giving their owners more reasons to feel special. A run on pointers in these early years led to ribbons being offered for “Large Pointers,” “Medium Pointers,” and “Small Pointers.” The same distinctions were applied to bulldogs. “Spaniels” were segregated into “Large” and “Small,” and bull terriers were divided into “Large,” “Small,” “Male,” and “Female,” to which more categories were added for weight. “Any Other Variety” made room for further improvement, and “Extra Class for Non-Sporting Foreign Dogs” seemed an afterthought, as did “British or Foreign Lap-dogs,” and “Any Variety, Confined to Londoners” was snooty even by a snob’s standards.
“In Variety over 30 lb. Mr. F. Gresham cleared the board,” recalled one major player in early dog shows. “The other classes call for no comment.” A final prize was offered for “Best Monster Dog”—which might have been awarded to all of the above.37
CHAPTER FOUR
EUGENICS, YOU, AND FIDO TOO
Performing live on national television can be stressful. Trying to coax your dog into doing the right trick at the right time can be downright daunting.
Several years ago, my lovely mutt Samantha and I were about to have our fifteen minutes of fame on Good Morning America. Sam had just won first prize for “best ball catcher” off camera the day before, and millions of viewers awaited the end of a kibble commercial when my rescue dog from an ASPCA shelter would single-handedly subdue a tennis ball with pride and panache for the world to witness, thus proving that humble mongrels could do anything their fancy “purebred” cousins could, maybe even better.
A longtime veteran of New York’s annual Great American Mutt Show at public parks around the city, Sam was a mix of at least three different breeds, or perhaps no breeds at all. She’d earned her “recognition,” as the AKC says of specimens it deems “pure,” not in show rings, but on the agility field, where beauty is as beauty does and posing doesn’t count. Sam had delighted audiences with her natural athleticism and an exhaustive list of difficult feats. She’d competed against a number of contestants for the spot on this latest televised affair and was handpicked over more likely candidates, in the public’s opinion, for fetching with flair. My shelter dog of no “desirable” coat color had whipped the fancy pants off a black Lab everyone just assumed would win. She’d trumped a springer spaniel, humiliated a golden, given a shellacking to a setter, and effectively neutered a Portuguese water dog whose political connections didn’t help him in the least.
Now all we had to do was wait for them to cut from that kibble commercial and show the world the stuff of which mutts were made. Sam and I awoke early that morning, both of us biting at the bit and ready to go on live television. The show’s producer sent a limousine that brought us to the studio, where I learned we weren’t going to have the full fifteen minutes of stardom, but a mere seven seconds, a possible recipe for failure. Sam was a born ball catcher, but unlike some of the more single-minded, single-purpose dogs programmed to repeat the same exact performance, my lovely lady, quite frankly, had other interests in life.
Sam and I nervously awaited our cue to perform. Adding to the stress, no one in the studio could say exactly when that confounded kibble commercial would end and my non-retriever’s miraculous retrieving powers would be crammed into a few precious seconds of TV time. My task was to keep my multitasker in a heightened state of retrieving frenzy, to force her better instincts into an unnatural mold, at least until she went out live to repeat the performance that had impressed the judges off camera. I watched the monitors above, and someone handed me a basket of tennis balls. I was told to start throwing and not to stop, so that when Sam’s defining moment arrived, she would appear to be acting seamlessly and effortlessly in her very best form. This was less about catching balls than catching the perfect catch on camera, and I began to feel like that sad sack in the Warner Brothers cartoon with a singing frog that only sang when no one else was around. I threw and threw and threw, trying to keep Sam’s attention and prolong her will to play. She caught and caught and caught, giving each and every ball her best shot with stunning precision, leaping and grasping at least twenty electric-green orbs in midair with nature’s own style, spontaneity, vibrancy, and verve—all but the one that went out live to millions of viewers across the nation.
A few minutes later, when the dust had cleare
d and all the balls had stopped bouncing, I learned that the only shot Sam had missed, at the very end when her interest was waning—the ball that rebounded off her teeth, ricocheted from the white picket fence surrounding the stage, and landed square in the audience—was in fact the one that really counted. We’d fudged our defining moment and there was nowhere else to go but home. Another kibble commercial started rolling on the monitors above. George Stephanopoulos cast a disapproving glare as we were ushered out the door, tails between our legs.
Does a dog need to have a certain look to behave in a certain way? Seeking some explanation for our present-day obsession with predictability, many are surprised to find the trail leads back to eugenics, that dirty word recalled with fear and loathing but a set of assumptions that have as much to do with pets as they once did with people. Few know that many of our core beliefs about bloodlines, appearance, and skill retain more than a tinge of those ugly theories that have made some people and pets seem superior for their complexion or ancestral profiles, and others inferior for having substandard markings or a checkered past.
Most upright citizens have officially sworn off applying eugenics to humans these days, but for some strange reason, they continue to breed and buy their dogs along old eugenic lines. Anderson Cooper was shocked and appalled on his show in May 2012 to report that forced sterilizations of “undesirables” were conducted by the tens of thousands in the United States until as recently as the 1970s.1 But at home, he had a Welsh springer spaniel, a breed born to what AKC writer Freeman Lloyd once called “a doggie family that has existed in its approximately pure state for many hundreds of generations.”2 Despite its illustrious past, Cooper’s brand of choice is now prone to a number of serious health issues and has an average inbreeding coefficient higher than that of first cousins.3 Blood “purity” has worked against the springer, which has been subjected, like many breeds, to the same outdated theories of “better breeding” that get pups culled for having the wrong coat color, make “good” families feel superior to not-so-good ones—and get millions of innocent people killed for their ethnic or racial background. Sterilization, euthanasia, segregation, holocausts, and judgments at Westminster all have a common heritage in eugenics, and despite the fact that English isn’t among the many languages that still use “race” and “breed” interchangeably, we have no excuse for not knowing or caring about this history.
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