A dog's bone to pick

As the basset hounds made their way on to the green carpet at Crufts on Friday, a tangible air of excitement swept across the crowd of spectators.

With their floppy ears, droopy eyes and trademark baggy trouser legs they bounded across the room, their paws padding in perfect synchronisation with their proud owners.

One by one they were whittled down by Siegfried Peter, a stern-looking judge from Germany who dismissed the losers with a flick of his wrist. As the forlorn owners traipsed back to their benches, an animated buzz rose from the crowd as fans furiously debated who should have won.

One woman stood alone in the crowd. "The bassets are a desperately controversial breed," she said. "They're meant to be working dogs, trained to hunt rabbits, but look at those folds of skin. Those droopy eyelids can get very easily infected and it can't be comfortable to have so much spare skin. This year's batch looks a little better but there is still so much work to be done."

The fact that Jemima Harrison had dared to show her face at Crufts this year is testament to how determined she is to force Britain's pedigree-dog breeders to reform their ways. Among breeders she is public enemy number one.

Two years ago her film Pedigree Dogs Exposed aired on the BBC and sent shockwaves through the dog-breeding world. Her undercover expose shone a poor light on dog shows, and as a result the BBC and the RSPCA pulled out of supporting Crufts.

A passionate lover of dogs who has her own rescue centre, she had grown worried at how some breeders inbreed their dogs to levels where horrendous health problems were all but guaranteed all in the pursuit of an aesthetic ideal that is lauded on the dog show circuit. Boxers with epilepsy and spaniels with brains too large for their heads were two of the examples she uncovered.

The film prompted three independent reviews, one of which was commissioned by Crufts' owners, the Kennel Club. All of them recommended that large-scale genetic diversification of Britain's pedigree dog breeds was badly needed.

The Kennel Club says it has put safety guards in place, including a doggy dating website designed to increase the gene pool.

But Harrison believes breeders need to confront genetic problems, and she was back at Crufts forcing the debate, and gauging whether judges were still opting for droopy dogs among the Bassets.

- INDEPENDENT