Three cheers for the RSPCA. Yes, it might be an anti-hunting political party with charitable status. But it has also just announced that it will be having nothing further to do with Cruft's.
If breeding from brothers and sisters, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, and grandparents and grandchildren is not cruelty to animals, then nothing is. If the result that pugs, for example, are so inbred that, although there are ten thousand of them in Britain, there are in genetic terms only five hundred distinct individuals, is not cruelty to animals, then nothing is.
If the situation whereby fifty per cent of Cavalier King Charles spaniels have heart problems, and many have a truly horrific condition in which their brains are the wrong size, is not cruelty to animals, then nothing is.
If the fact that dachshunds, bull terriers, beagles, basset hounds and those German shepherd dogs bred for show are freakish, unhealthy parodies of what they ought to be, and used to be, is not cruelty to animals, then nothing is. (The German shepherds still used by the Police are the real, healthy ones, scorned by the world of dog shows.)
If the plight of most bulldogs, which now cannot mate without assistance and cannot give birth naturally, is not cruelty to animals, then nothing is.
If the destruction of newborn Rhodesian ridgeback puppies because they are perfectly healthy rather than having the mild form of spina bifida required by the "breed standard" is not cruelty to animals, then nothing is.
And so on, and on, and on.
Her Majesty, no less, must now decide. Patron of the RSPCA? Or Patron of the Kennel Club?
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