“Crategate” exploded in Mitt Romney’s campaign for the US Republican leadership, just as his Irish Setter Seamus’ bowels did when he was strapped in a crate on the roof of the family car for a 12-hour ride. This story finally hit the media this week. Protestors used the publicity around the Westminster Dog Show held this week in New York City to garner attention for what Romney did to his dog.
And the winner of Westminster has caused great excitement in the once-yearly media attention paid to dog shows. But another Westminster story got buried by the other two.
Westminster dropped Pedigree as a sponsor. Why? Because they didn’t like the ads that Pedigree runs during the broadcast. They were “too sad”, they said, showing shelter dogs in cages. The wrong image of doggyness, evidently, to display while the Olympic athletes of dogdom showed their stuff.
How weird is this? Usually in advertising, it’s the sponsors who pull out because they don’t like what the ‘sponsees’ are doing. Westminster must be a very expensive event to put on. Pedigree presumably has the big money needed in that it has been a major sponsor of Westminster for the past 24 years.
I’ve been impressed that Pedigree holds a shelter fundraising drive during Westminster and that their ads show the other side of the dog world – dogs that are lucky to get any food no matter what quality, that don’t have someone worrying about tartar buildup on their teeth. I’ve thought their Westminster ads shelter dogs are a good antidote, the yin and yang of “man’s best friend”.
It’s fun watching beautiful show dogs. I ooh and aah, then look at my own. I have a purebred who probably started out in a show kennel. A Standard Poodle, he became a puppy mill breeding dog. That’s behind him now and I hope he’s forgotten it. I look at the Poodles in the ring, with their leonine hair. “You could look like that” I tell him, in his short serviceable clip. He could, but I’m not willing to put the time and effort into it. I worry about ensuring he’s well fed, his coat mat-free and his body exercised.
When watching Westminster, I’ve got a purebred reality check beside me. If I didn’t have him? Maybe I’d think wow I’d like a dog just like the one on tv. Go out, spend a fortune on a puppy, not have the interest or time to put into showing (which is a full-time job, not a dabbling hobby), and the dog becomes too much work and – that’s how dogs end up in shelters and pounds. Not all of course, but enough.
What I’d like to see in Pedigree’s ads are the purebred Poodles, Mastiffs and Cocker Spaniels that are in pounds and breed-specific rescues. The mongrels in them make no explicit connection to dog shows or breeders. If that connection was made, 
Westminster might have a valid reason to object. But would it be grounds to fire a sponsor?
Dog breeders, of all people, ought to know about the neglect and abuse of dogs and ought to be outraged about it. Dogs are their vocation and avocation. What’s wrong with Pedigree reminding us that there are dogs desperately in need? The Westminster Dog Show and the AKC ought to be doing that themselves.
