On Sunday afternoon, just as the weekend was drawing to a close, two explosive news items broke. In Nigeria Boko Haram had pledged formal allegiance to Islamic State. Meanwhile, in Belgium, in the unheard of village of Lauw, a dog died. You can guess which story topped the news agenda in Britain all the way to Monday morning.
According to his Belgian part-owner, his other part-owner in Britain and his British handler, Jagger was an ordinary, loving, globe-trotting, competition-winning family pet like any other, not, as some claimed in their breathless reports, worth £50,000.
The irish setter had just finished competing in Birmingham at Crufts, the world’s most prestigious dog show. On his way home to Lauw he fell mysteriously ill and died a protracted and cruelly painful death. By Sunday an autopsy had confirmed that Jagger was the victim of deliberate poisoning: beef chunks found in his stomach were definitely laced with slug killer and two other poisons, suspected to be of industrial strength. Jagger’s British part-owner broke the scandal defiantly on her Facebook page.
Was Jagger the only victim? Several other owners have since come forward. A sheltie had thrown up in the ring at Crufts for no reason. Another dog, yet to be publicly identified, had started passing blood. News of the murder(s) spread rapidly beyond British borders. Everyone wanted to get to the bottom of “il mistero di Jagger.”
Besides the pedigree dogs themselves, two themes run through every Crufts since a dog biscuit manufacturer launched the competition in 1886. The first is the lunacy of all dog owners — and I speak as one myself — that causes otherwise pleasant and pragmatic human beings to French-kiss their pets, dress them in kimonos, spend £20,000 on a dream Samsung doghouse (launched this year at Crufts, it has a tablet for two-way comms with doggy pals, a “push to woof” call bell, a Jacuzzi and a dog-operated snack bar) and to engage in the most savage infighting. These battles give rise to Crufts’ second annual trademark — “furores”.
Advertisement
Before the news of Jagger’s death, for instance, the wrath of dog lovers had been directed online at a member of this year’s Canadian obedience team who had been photographed outside the NEC Arena mishandling a collie. The photograph has gone viral, with death threats attached. A petition is circulating seeking to have the as yet unidentified man arrested.
This year’s other pressing Crufts issue concerns Knopa, a scottie dog from Russia who won Best in Show on Sunday. Knopa’s handler — “She’s American,” British handlers smile coldly — picked the prize-winning animal up by her tail as if she were a piece of taxidermy. “We would never dream of doing that in Britain,” Polly King, a breeder of champion flat coat retrievers, tells me. “She lifted the dog incorrectly. It may be acceptable in America, but not here.”
Meanwhile, Colin, the award-winning pomeranian, is said to have caused some resentment among Ukip-leaning Crufts fans because he is Polish. Beyond the NEC, Crufts’ foes easily outnumber its fans. Ira Moss, who runs the London dog-rescue charity All Dogs Matter, sums up the feelings of many ordinary dog owners: “It’s as if they are trying to breed an Aryan race. Many of them are not even healthy.” It’s strange, she says, to live in a nation of dog owners that mourns the passing of a single red setter while thousands of healthy dogs, some pedigree, are killed in this country every year at the pound.
All breeders are sensitive about how maligned they have become since a BBC documentary in 2008 revealed that breed-standard perfectionists were mating brothers and sisters; daughters and fathers or exaggerating desirable traits that damaged the health and shortened the life expectancy of breeds including bulldogs, ridgebacks, pugs, bloodhounds and german shepherds. The BBC dropped Crufts shortly after the programme was shown. Polly King argues that it was one-sided: “Breeders aren’t horrible, jealous people who murder dogs.”
At first, suspicion over Jagger’s death fell instinctively on other owners and handlers. Who would gain by his elimination, police in Birmingham and parts of Belgium asked. Crufts is so prestigious that winning anything in it is a life-changing event. “It will make any owner really rich,” Anna Webb, a dog trainer, broadcaster and holistic naturopath, told me.
Advertisement
Webb entered her miniature bull terrier in Crufts in 2004. Crufts champions’ offspring sell for thousands, far more than they would fetch otherwise. Then there are the endorsements. “Dogs are fashionable again, aren’t they?” says Moss. “Because of people like Paul O’Grady dogs have become quite on-trend.” Would-be “cat women” are turning to dogs. They like spending money on the multiplying array of dog toys, clothes and organic dog food showcased at the NEC. The face of many of these products will be a Crufts champion.
Until Sunday, poisoning a rival’s dog at competition was unheard of, but less ruthless manoeuvring among competitors was not. Webb says: “When I was an exhibitor in 2004, you were told to watch out for people doping your dog. It’s kind of been known. There are nasty forces at work. We’re talking at the higher levels of dog showing, dogs being doped to impair their performance. It can be bitchy, with breeders telling you not to talk to certain other breeders, even if they are very nice to each other to another faces.”
Judges, she adds, “are only human”. It’s not impossible that they would be prone to bribes, although she doubts it. Molly, her dog, has won some rosettes but never come first. Other individual entrants have been known to wonder whether the high-ups at Cruft’s competition level operate a revolving-door policy.
Kate Bendix, whose dog-training book Top Dog was published last year, says: “People call it dog-nobbling. You can see that there are opportunities for people to undermine their rivals’ chances all over Crufts. I’ve heard stories of dogs groomed to perfection who have had gum stuck in their fur on the grooming tables. There would be nothing to stop you from doing that if you were determined.”
Advertisement
The glaring hole in the breeder-dunnit school of thought is that there isn’t a motive. Jagger was not a top dog. “He wasn’t a supreme champion who was going to knock every dog in the park,” says Webb. “He was just one of 26,000 phenomenal dogs.” Webb thinks that Jagger’s murder is “a case of mistaken identity”. Jagger’s co-owner, Jeremy Bott, agrees; the culprit may have been acting on “a grudge against dogs or the Crufts show”.
Polly King says that it is out of the question that a dog owner would have poisoned Jagger. “There are no restrictions on who buys tickets. One of the problems we have is that when a dog is not in the ring, it is on the bench. Most people sit with their dogs but a lot of people walk up and down the bench and if you’re not at the bench, anyone can slip your dog anything.”
“Any competitive environment can display the very badness of the human condition,” says Webb. “Crufts is a wonderful celebration of dogs. Dogs enrich our pathetic lives that are dominated by greed and ego.”