Why The Westminster Dog Show Made Me Appreciate Mutts
I spent three years among dogs with bloodlines like British royalty. In our world, they would be earls and duchesses. Their names are in stud books that go back countless generations. They are the product of centuries of careful breeding to make them the most perfect versions of themselves.
Eh. I like mutts better.
It’s not that I didn’t like the dogs I met at dog shows around the U.S.–including the most prestigious of them all, the Westminster Dog Show. They were beautiful specimens: athletic, combed to a high sheen, well-behaved. The only dog that growled at me the whole time was a Petit Basset Griffon Vendéen (shortened in the dog world to “PBGV”) at a show in Tennessee. It belongs to our beloved former vet, who shows dogs on the weekends. Maybe her dog thought I was a little too friendly.
The dogs on the dog-show circuit—a never-ending tour of big cities and small towns all over America, a rolling caravan that I came to think of as “Dogland”—have to meet brutal guidelines just to step into the ring. Each of the American Kennel Club’s 200 recognized breeds has a written standard that outlines what a prime example of the breed can and cannot be. Some breed standards run thousands of words. A brief rundown of flaws that can disqualify a dog from competition:
Doberman pinscher: Overbite of more than three-sixteenths of an inch, or underbite of more than one-eighth inch.
Papillion: All white or not having any white.
Shetland sheepdog: Height of less than 13 inches or more than 16 inches.
Dogs that meet all the rules and make it to the top of the show world are just about physically perfect. I spent a lot of time with a Samoyed named Striker who won more than 100 dog shows all over North America. One time I asked his handler, Laura King, to tell me where Striker fails to meet the Samoyed breed standard, which runs to 1,600 words. The only thing she could think of was a slight discoloration on the inside of his lip.
None of this is by accident. Breeders choose the puppies they believe to be “show quality” when they are just a few weeks old. (The other dogs in the litter are deemed “pet quality.” Dogland is the only place where that phrase serves as a dig.)
The ones who grow up to be champion show dogs are then bred with other champion show dogs to produce, naturally, even more champion show dogs. But that process, repeated over generations within a breed, leads to what people in Dogland refer to as “line breeding.” What it means, in practice, is that show dogs are inbred.
Inbreeding is fairly common among all types of animals. Intensive inbreeding, in situations like the show-dog world, can have long-term medical effects. That’s because recessive genes that could get muted by crossbreeding get amplified instead. This means that nearly every breed of purebred dog has chronic health problems that never get fixed. In 2015, a group of researchers analyzed the records of nearly 89 thousand dogs that came through a California veterinary hospital over a 15-year span. They found that purebreds were more likely than mutts to have any of 10 different genetic conditions—everything from cataracts to dermatitis to bloat (a distended stomach condition that can be fatal).
Perfection always comes with a price.
Thinking about that price led me to think about the parade of dogs I’ve been lucky enough to know throughout my life. Nearly all of them have been mutts, and you could tell just by looking at them. The dogs I’ve loved have had crooked teeth and scrawny butts. They walked a little sideways or drooled from one side of the mouth. They were all, in their own way, perfectly imperfect.
My wife and I had the great luck to live with a yellow Lab mutt, Fred, who arrived in our lives as a stray puppy in the ditch in our old front yard. We never figured out exactly what else he was. Our vet thought he had some German shorthaired pointer in him, which made sense, because occasionally he’d stop in the middle of the yard and go on point. As far as we could tell, he was never pointing at anything in particular. Something in his DNA must have told him he should point now and then, just to keep up the family tradition.
Fred wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in a show ring. His back end sometimes strayed when he walked, like a fishtailing car. But he was the most loving and lovable dog I’ve ever been around. Never once, in his entire life, did he harm another living thing. As far as I know, he never even ate a bug.
It broke our hearts when old age, and a tumor on his liver, finally got him. But he made it to 14 and a half years—more than two years longer than the average life of a purebred yellow Lab. I think of that now as extra innings, free baseball, a second helping of dessert. He blessed our lives and part of the blessing was how long he stayed.
There were many purebreds in Dogland that I would have taken home in a second if I’d had the chance. It was breathtaking to watch them sometimes, like being in the front row at an NBA game. But if you gave me all the dogs in the world to choose from, I’d start with the ones that are a little lopsided, asymmetrical, funky. Our quirks are features, not flaws. Give me a mutt.
Want To Bring Your Dog To Work? Here's Something For YOU To Chew On
First day on the job: A familiar blanket or basket can make the dog's first day at your office easier. Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa
Let's say you want to take Fido to work with you. He's great company and doesn't like being home alone. Besides, having the furry fellow in the office could boost employee morale.
Here's something for you to chew on before Fido can be promoted to office dog:
First of all, you'll need the permission of your superiors. The dog needs to be well socialized, vaccinated and dewormed. And your co-workers should be willing to go along.
"If someone on staff is afraid of or allergic to dogs, you should naturally be considerate of them," says Lea Schmitz, spokeswoman for the German Animal Welfare Federation.
Assuming these qualifications are met, she advises setting clear rules for "harmonious togetherness" before the dog's first day at work. This includes stipulating what the dog is permitted to do at the workplace, and what not.
"It's conceivable, for example, that the dog is permitted to be in its owner's office only, but not in other offices or common rooms," Schmitz says. This can be set down in guidelines by the employer.
In addition, co-workers should be briefed in advance on how to treat the dog. As pleased as they may be to have a pooch in their midst, Fido should be allowed get acclimated to his new surroundings in peace. Constantly being petted and scratched behind the ears isn't always appreciated.
If there's already a dog - or dogs - at the workplace, the newbie should be made acquainted with the veterans "on neutral territory" before its first day at work, advises Markus Beyer, founder and chairman of the Berlin-based Federal Association for Office Dogs (BVBH).
It's also a good idea, he says, to show the dog the workplace in advance on a quiet day - a weekend, for instance. The work situation could also be simulated for half an hour or so.
From day one at work, the dog should have an undisturbed retreat - if possible, neither in a pass-through area nor draughty corner with a lot of noise. An ideal place is directly next to or under the dog owner's desk, says Beyer.
Familiar objects such as the dog's basket from home can give it a sense of security, he says, and a chew bone or toy can help keep it occupied. The toy shouldn't squeak or make other noise though.
Before work, you should give Fido a good workout. "To work undisturbed, and so the dog settles down, it's also important that it goes to its designated spot - its basket or blanket, for example - on command," remarks Schmitz. You can train this with the help of dog treats.
Don't forget to allow for breaks so the dog can do its business. And your lunch break should be dedicated to the pet, she says. "During the walkie, the dog should have a chance to romp around."
"As a rule, the office situation shouldn't be unduly stressful for the animal," adds Schmitz. A trial day on which all involved parties are able to size each other up can be useful.
And Fido's first day on the job doesn't have to be a full workday, points out Beyer. The new office member can be broken in gradually.
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Trump VP Contender Kristi Noem Writes Of Killing Dog – And Goat – In New Book
In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon famously stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.
Tulsi Gabbard repeats false Hillary Clinton ‘grooming’ claim in new book
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In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.
But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.
What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.
Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.
She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.
By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.
Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.
Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.
When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.
Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.
“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”
Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.
“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.
Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.
Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.
At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.
“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noem adds: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”