Designer dogs - Four-legged Frankensteins

IT might not have been the 200th birthday present he would have anticipated but Charles Darwin, who did so much to help us understand natural evolution, would have been pleased to see that the macabre freak show that passes for the biggest dog show in the world has had to mend its ways in the face of huge public and peer criticism.

Crufts, which opens this week, has got a pariah rating from the BBC, who won’t be covering the event for the first time in 40 years. The show’s main sponsors have ended their association with an event more associated with dogs cruelly modified to match a contrived Frankenstein ideal rather than for health or function.

The RSPCA has also withdrawn their support.

Too many breeds have been rendered incapable of a full and active life by breeders pursuing ever more bizarre and freakish standards.

However, no matter how accurate the criticism of the extremes of dog breeding is it is underlined by a considerable degree of hypocrisy.

Though a chihuahua, a St Bernard, a bulldog, a papillon or Portuguese waterhound (now The First Pooch after one was chosen by Malia and Sasha Obama) may never feature on a menu outside of Korea we fret far more about them than we would about a battery hen or a factory piglet.

Once again we confuse sensibilities with principles.