Americans saw themselves as rightful inheritors of English-style eugenics. No less of their identity was invested at the other end of the leash where they could distinguish themselves from anyone without the means to be seen with pets that might as well have had price tags tied to their collars. Dog shows and breed registries were slower to thrive in the United States than in the UK, owing to the brief interruption of a civil war, but no time was lost in catching up, and by the twentieth century, the AKC and Westminster were purveying widespread snootiness almost as well as the Kennel Club or Crufts. Having no royalty for sponsors, the closest to the genuine item was Freeman Lloyd, that imported English image consultant who helped Americans forge their alliances with “pure” blood through pet ownership. Lloyd presented the fancy’s eugenic mission unflinchingly in an essay on “correct conformation” for the American Kennel Club Gazette and Stud Book in 1943. “As a matter of fact,” he instructed, “the head and face of a dog, like those of human beings, are usually an accurate gauge of character, and the art and science of phrenology may be applied to the former as well as to the latter.”15 A similar Gazette article penned by another established expert appeared in 1947, despite the grim lesson the world had just learned on which way this eugenic madness led. “What is important is the creation through competition of a better breed,” the article commented, explaining the importance of breed standards in dog shows—and sounding like a manifesto for social Darwinism.16
“But in the parlance of the Old Virginia Gentleman, he must be treated like a white man,” was the dog advice to sportsmen in a self-help manual called The Gentleman’s Dog: His Rearing, Training, and Treatment. For author C. A. Bryce, MD, this meant “something more than crusts and kicks and sleeping on the ash-pile,” treatment more befitting a man of color, we can safely assume. “You cannot expect to raise a decent self-respecting dog unless you think enough of him to give him comfortable, clean, and well attended sleeping quarters.”17 Like many dog authors wearing two hats, this doctor doubling as a canine aficionado helped impress upon Americans the resemblance between well-bred pooches and well-bred people. Like Dr. Stables and others, Dr. Bryce clearly believed that better addresses, good marriages, and segregation were ways to prevent mongrelization or miscegenation in both species. And yet breeding within a gene pool restricted to members of certain preapproved colors, combined with environmental input from the right people, even the most devout eugenicist knew, were no guarantees of superiority. Freeman Lloyd, a hunter, hound historian, show ring judge, and canine art collector, stressed the role of an expert eye in handing down final judgments after inbreeding “the best to get the best.” Determining the very best required the seasoned taste and knowledge of a proper white gentleman with discriminating taste, a man like Lloyd himself. The English arbiter, whose writings introduced aristocratic Labrador retrievers to Americans, explained the need for balance between inner and outer dog that could only be determined by men who knew better than they, especially in his own personal breed of choice. There were springer spaniels, Lloyd cautioned, and there were “‘springers’ whose ‘long’ pedigrees appear well on paper, but whose appearances proclaim ‘a nigger in a woodpile.’”18
In hindsight, golden retrievers, yellow Labs, and Anderson Cooper’s brown-and-white blue blood begin to look like blond-haired Hitler Youth to unseasoned neophytes lacking Lloyd’s expertise. Until very recently, the fancy has held the reins on canines, enjoying virtually unchallenged authority and absolute power in matters dog-related. The show culture and its priorities have dominated breeding, not only determining how champions and house pets should look but also influencing in subtle ways the choices of candidates to lead the blind and sniff out bombs. For generations, kennel clubs and their associates have made up, like eugenicists of old, a powerful circle that enjoys society’s utmost respect and operates free from meddlesome outsiders.
But nonmembers have been bolder of late. At the risk of seeming impertinent—or being called an animal rights extremist—a fun exercise for simple spectators with a fondness for dogs might be to step back and consider the dogs themselves, or at least wonder what’s been done to improve them as our servants. After a century and a half of tinkering with former hunters, herders, guarders, and multitaskers, is it really so unreasonable to ask the experts for a progress report?
Looking for signs of improvement, the first item to strike an untrained eye might be the utter lack of resemblance between modern-day show breeds and their ancestors who performed specialized tasks that helped humans survive and flourish for thousands of years—jobs they stopped doing the moment they stepped into show rings. A standardized springer spaniel looks nothing like its said ancestor, a general type of dog bred, not to conform to any specific look or to win prizes, but to help hunt birds. Downton Abbey, the series about an aristocratic family that debuted in 2010, features a yellow Lab that looks little like the breed did as recently as the early twentieth century.19 Show people defend as their raison d’être the careful preservation of “traditional” types, “correct” form, “pure” blood, and “ancestral” lines. They claim to protect the sacred union of “form and function,” but the two were only ever related in very general, commonsensical ways, and not decided by a long list of demanding rules like breed standards, which are constantly subjected to new interpretation by judges. Show champions, and their offspring we keep as pets, haven’t done any real work in ages, and their looks show it, say those rare eccentrics who refuse to breed nonfunctional dogs with chests too barreled to fit into fox holes, or absurdly plush coats and theatrical drapes of skin that impede movement and hinder vision. Yet kennel clubs, breed clubs, conformation judges, breeders, and assorted fanciers—the ones supposed to have all the taste and knowledge about dogs—seem to have a poor faculty even for pure esthetics. As for function at this end of the leash, it has been known for some time that show ring judges typically have no practical experience whatsoever with the former herders, hunters, guarders, and sentries they’re evaluating. They do not hunt. They are not shepherds. They don’t tend to be policemen or soldiers.
“Both the appearance and behavior of modern breeds would be deeply strange to our ancestors who lived just a few hundred years ago,” says evolutionary biologist Greger Larson.20 Meanwhile, mere amateurs with an eye for artifice are struck not only by the extreme differences in appearance between the old and “improved,” but by the radical break from breeding practices considered sound for centuries before this sudden attraction to “scientific” breeding in the nineteenth. Traits traditionally along for the ride became essential. In fact, the less dogs have been needed to perform useful work in recent years, the more intensely they’ve been scrutinized for formal perfection and blood “purity.” For eons up to the eve of dog shows, contenders for real jobs were continually outcrossed, not chronically inbred, to various degrees depending on their tasks. Prior to commercial repackaging and the cult of novelty, dogs weren’t sold as promising puppies (or put down as instant failures) based on their markings or relations. They were selected much later, as adult individuals with observable skills and temperaments.21 Humble farmers and idle upper-class sportsmen alike knew that utility, whether this was the master’s survival or his pleasure, depended on a proven ability to perform.
Critics of the fancy say measuring our companion species against beauty-pageant ideals can, at best, distract from more vital concerns like health and ability. At worst, they say, eugenic breeding standards can overtake and ruin entire populations of traditional types. A Dog Health Workshop was sponsored in 2012 by the Swedish Kennel Club, which has historically focused more on health and utility in dogs than show ring conformation. Included was a series on “Selection for Behavioral Traits.” According to speaker Per Arvelius of the Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics at the Swedish University of Agricultural Studies, “If nothing else, more focus on one thing when selecting animals (for example, ‘beauty’) by definition means less focus on something else (for example,
health, temperament).”22 Animal rights extremism, or common sense?
Erik Wilsson, of the Swedish Armed Forces, which employs dogs for no-nonsense military uses, was also on the panel for behavior and breeding. Though Wilsson considers breeds (or preferably, “populations” of distantly related dogs) more reliable than random mixes for his purposes, he adds that breeds as defined by kennel clubs are no guarantee of quality. Outcrossing—mating dogs to those not listed in official stud books, closed for years to new blood by the AKC and England’s Kennel Club—is vital to health and utility. Combined with reliable temperament testing and selection of individual dogs regardless of ancestry or appearance, breeding can sometimes produce better workers. But strict inbreeding for superficial uniformity? “I think exhibitions have only added bad things to dogs. Selecting for efficiency will get a functional anatomy although they may differ in size, color, etc., details not relevant for their work,” Wilsson concludes.23
“Give any show ring enough time,” writes Patrick Burns, traditional Jack Russell man, hunter, scholar, and vocal critic of kennel club practices, “and it will ruin any breed of working dog—it always has and it always will.”24 This would explain why farm dogs, police dogs, war dogs, racing dogs, sled dogs, and many other useful types are not typically even AKC-registered. This is why some breeders who, because of a kennel club’s vast influence or for whatever reasons want its support, are said to outcross on the sly to keep their stock healthy and functional.25 Employers of traditional border collies, Jack Russells, and many breeds eventually split into “working,” “field,” “show,” and “pet” versions, have kept their dogs bred in separate lines, out of show rings, and safe from a judge’s gaze. But irrelevant concerns have influenced even the most useful dogs. Executive director of the US Police Canine Association Russell Hess recalls a time before looks and pedigree had infiltrated police work. “Most of our dogs are imported and not bred in the USA,” he comments sadly on the unfortunate results forty years later. Originally “departments used dogs received by donations and never purchased animals. Many dogs looked like a German shepherd but never came with registration papers and frankly these would outperform registered dogs costing several hundred dollars.”26
Even in choices of appearance that may or may not be along for the ride, outside critics say that dog shows reward precisely the opposite of what they should. David Hancock mourns the loss of traits he has found helpful in dogs, and all because of some inexperienced judge’s idea of “expression.” Current preferences in color-coding and shape in eyes, he feels, are unfounded. “Dark eyes are considered highly desirable in nearly all pedigree breeds of dog and yet the keenest-eyed working dogs I come across are invariably light-eyed.” Eye shape, too, is subject to dispute among hunters on the field and poseurs on the stage. “I always find that perfect oval eyes are the healthiest, yet round eyes are actually desired in some pedigree breeds.” As for ear essentials: “I suspect that prick ears are the natural shape for all dogs and that in pursuit of breed conformity we may have impaired one of dog’s most important senses.”27
Some hunting preferences, like service dog prejudices, may well be based on personal tastes, but many outsiders to the fancy agree that “expression” can work against utility. “The behavior exhibited in the show ring is standing,” writes Janis Bradley, founder of the San Francisco SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers. Breeding “true” for behavior, Bradley cautions, has always been a difficult task, with a wide margin of error. Success becomes all the more unlikely when it’s not even a priority.28 Unfortunately for the dogs, show ring performance doesn’t stop at standing. In as much as behaviors have ever been heritable, or remain as “superficial reminders of the ancestral working dogs,” according to renowned biologist and dog-sled racer Raymond Coppinger, the tendencies displayed on stage might possibly work against pets and working dogs alike.29
“Animal rights extremists” concur on this. “Dogs that carry their heads and tails erect catch the attention of judges, and thus tend to win shows,” writes Stephen Budiansky, author and science contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. “Those are also the marks of a dominant, hence aggressive dog.”30 The reverse may also be true. A study conducted by Kenth Svartberg at Stockholm University in 2005 concludes that the very traits desirable in pets such as playfulness and nonsocial fearfulness, are undesirable in the show ring where many of the breeding dogs are chosen.31 Either way, aggression has become a serious problem in the cocker spaniel (cocker rage syndrome), the springer spaniel (springer rage syndrome), and the gold standard of eugenic perfection, the golden retriever. First stripped of their original functions, some breeds have been made so sickly and disturbed by inbreeding for looks alone that their usefulness, even as decorative household items and symbols of family pride, is in jeopardy. So severe are their problems that behavioral geneticists hope to find in these sad but beautified beasts the genetic component to aggression that continues to elude them.32
Could it be that any improvement in dogs has been made in spite of shows and without the breed standards that champions manage to meet and somehow survive? According to Kevin Stafford, the extreme anatomical features awarded prizes—and very much inherited through extreme inbreeding—prevent normal mobility, communication, and socialization, leading to a host of behavioral problems and affecting a dog’s performance in any capacity.33
None of this is news to observers outside the show culture, and the obsession with breeding true for looks but not behavior has even led a few insiders to risk the fancy’s wrath. “Personally,” wrote Roger Caras, former Westminster host and judge and president of the ASPCA, “I consider it a terrible lack of responsibility for a breed standard not to include standards for behavior and temperament.”34 That was 1982. “Rightly or wrongly,” wrote canine geneticist, breeder, and dog show judge Malcolm Willis in 1995, “it is a fact that dog breeding in most countries is dominated by the show-ring,” where he hoped that breeding would one day favor sound health, temperament, and utility “regardless of physical beauty.” Willis was writing from a university located, ironically enough, at Newcastle upon Tyne, site of the legendary first canine beauty pageant of the nineteenth century.35
The year 1995 was also when the American border collie, descendant of a highly specialized, tightly wound, single-minded, energetic but extremely useful type of dog never meant for show rings, homes, or any environment but the wide open country, was recognized by the AKC. After a long and bitter fight with the US Border Collie Club—“dedicated to preserving the Border Collie as a working stock dog” and “opposing the showing, judging, and breeding of Border Collies based on their appearance”36—the AKC gave up on trying to seduce with prospects of blue ribbons, silver cups, and sidewalk glory. Following a familiar strategy after failing to induct resisters into the fancy’s hall of fame and failure, the AKC redirected its patronage to a new and separate club composed of fanciers inexperienced with working dogs and more receptive to the dubious honor of approval.
Back in England, where this traditional farm dog had evolved over centuries as a roughly similar “collie” type, Willis still yearned for some sign of improvement in 1995. “Although it was decided that a working test would remain for KC registered dogs before they could become full champions,” Willis remarked, worried like a flock facing that herder’s inescapable stare, “the sad truth is that few Border collies have taken this test and still fewer have passed it. With such failure to attend to essential features, it will be only a matter of time before the ill-named Show Border collie will have lost its ability to work.”37 More than a decade later in 2008, the year of the BBC’s boycott of Crufts, England’s Kennel Club felt compelled to backtrack and assign usefulness to dogs bred for looks from the time they were standardized. As though to show the world their refashioned version of the border collie was still “fit for function” despite generations of favoring form, officials set out to reform field trials with “some alterations that will
make the test more relevant to what it aims to assess—a dog’s herding ability.”38 Prior to that, not a single sheep had been sighted on those virtual fields as green as AstroTurf, and not many border collies have been seen since sheep were added to the equation. During the first three years of improved English trials, only nine dogs qualified to take even this limited test of ability.39
Meanwhile, in average homes on both sides of the pond, pet owners swayed by romantic tales of a pastoral figure now deprived of pastures either end up abandoning their silken two-tone replicas for being too difficult to manage, or pride themselves on cramming what remains of their uniqueness into completely inappropriate environments. It’s not uncommon to find these hardwired misfits staring blankly at walls, or trembling and drooling with pupils dilated. “Noise phobia” is said to affect at least 50 percent of pet border collies. Many are prescribed Xanax. Ten percent suffer severely, and the breed has become a subject of study—again, on the genetic basis of mental illness.40
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