Great piece in Dog World this week - a sharp condemnation of breeding for form not function from Kennel Club Field Trial Committee Chairman member Alan Rountree. Mr Rountree is a respected field trialler and field trial judge who has made up many field trial champions.
A KENNEL Club General Committee member says he is ‘disgusted’ that some of those present at the club’s annual meeting seemed intent on turning shows into beauty pageants’.
Shows should be about selecting dogs who ‘best represent the breed Standards’, Alan Rountree said this week.
In a letter to this newspaper, he said: "The show world needs to come to terms with the fact that it is a minority. In the real world people want fit, healthy dogs, which in the case of my kind of dogs can do a day’s work, day after day. They do not want a dog held together by hairspray, nor one who is in pain because of the extreme construction of its eyes.
"In short, the show world needs to see itself as others see it. The view is not attractive!”
Read the whole thing here.