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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Why mongrels beat pedigree dogs As the RSPCA cuts its links with Crufts over concerns about the breeding of deformed pedigree dogs, our writer makes an impassioned plea on the joy to be gained from owning a humble mongrel Former Labour Party Deputy Leader Lord Hattersley, with his dog Buster in St James's Park, London Do not believe that the class war is over. Whether or not it is still fought out in human society, it still rages on in the battle of the breeds. Canis or Homo sapien, I am on the side of the proletariat. I am a mongrel man. A mongrel I was born and it is a mongrel which I want to walk beside me across the hills of home. I am biased. Mongrels are the only dogs that I have ever owned. Bessy was a Scottish hybrid, which my mother used to describe as “mainly Cairn terrier”. Dinah, we explained to the neighbours, was “almost Labrador”. Admittedly, when I was born, my mother owned a pure-bred fox terrier - Mick, the champion rat catcher of the North Derbyshire coalfield. Shortly after my birth, he was found, elegantly balanced on my pram, looking down at me with obviously murderous intent. It is because of Mick - who could not tell a month-old baby from a rat - that I developed the profound conviction that thoroughbreds are stupid. Perhaps my view on pedigree intellect is prejudiced. But there is no doubt that mongrels - or crossbreeds as my dog Buster prefers to be called - are likely to be healthier than their more exalted contemporaries. In-breeding encourages genetic defects - as the haemophiliac Russian royal family will confirm. And the RSPCA has identified half-a-dozen congenital defects that are the result of attempts to produce a perfect specimen. It is barbarous to breed a dog with a brain too big for its skull just to make it look right when it is walked around the competition ring. But the idea of breeding the perfect specimen is wrong in itself. Dogs should be loved as dogs, whatever their shape and size. Dogs were made to be friends not exhibits, status symbols or “positional goods” that demonstrate their owner's aesthetic sensibilities, status, income or fastidious good taste. I am for mongrels because they proclaim the glory of just being dogs - not heads set at the right angles, legs of the proper length or ears suitably pricked. Mongrels are the essence of dog - dog as a virtue in itself. Of course, if you want me to be wholly serious on the subject, I readily agree that thoroughbreds possess those qualities too. But they are expected to have something more. I believe that being a dog is - or ought to be - enough. My mother's last dog was called Sally. She was a bitch of such sublime ugliness that we were able to argue, with absolute conviction, that giving her a home was a moral duty. Sally had long hair at the front and was almost bald at the back and the two sections of her bifurcated anatomy came together in an absolutely straight line around her middle that made her look as though Doctor Frankenstein had sewn her together from two separate parts. But we calculated that she added five years to my mother's life - something else to look after, to admire and to love for being a dog. Sally came from a rescue - an institution whose name was, in her case, justified by the brutal treatment that she had received before she found refuge. There are dogs to be “rescued” all over Britain. Finding them a permanent home is often very difficult. It is callous madness to breed thoroughbreds for sale when there are literally thousands of dogs of every sort waiting to be loved. And not only madness. There is a special sort of vulgarity in wanting a dog only with a particular shape or a special colour. When my dog Buster dies, we will certainly want to fill the hole he leaves in our lives. And if the Battersea, or our local shelter, has a purebred that it cannot place, no doubt we will gladly take it in. But the idea of saying “only this type of dog is good enough for us”, or “only this breed will give us pleasure” would be an insult to dogs in general and Buster in particular. There are too many unwanted dogs in the world for real dog-lovers to pick and choose. Take my word for it, a once unwanted dog can become a joy. We took Buster because the advertisement said “hard to home and lacks social skills with animals and people” and it was close to Christmas and we had an uncomfortable feeling that he might be required to make room for one of those dogs that are bought as presents and suddenly discarded. He was almost a year old. So training began late. And, at the start, he was wild. But he responded to love - to be honest, a combination of love and bribery. When he did well, which meant doing what he was told, he was rewarded. So doing well became a habit. Admittedly, while he was young and foolish, he killed a goose. But that was just another example of his essential dogginess - an aspect that we have mercifully subdued. The result has been 15 years of joy. No doubt, if he had been a real bull terrier, instead of only half, I would have loved him just as much. And had he been wholly alsatian, rather than merely a part, he would have given me just as much pleasure. Though, clearly, in any other manifestations could he not possibly have been more handsome, intelligent or faithful. But, as he is, I do not have to worry that his importance is his cost and his pedigree, or that he has won a cup. He is a dog. I could ask for no more.
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#1. To: Ada (#0)
While it is true that there are some unscrupulous or ignorant breeders when it comes to purebreds, if done rightly, there is nothing like a purebred. As it well-known, I prefer pugs, which are bred to be loving, funny, silly companion dogs. If there were no pugs, I wouldn't bother to get a dog.
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