Champion Barking

Roy Kerridge

Cruft's Dog Show separates the sheep from the goats, in my opinion. As I gazed around the crowded hall at Earl's Court, I decided I was in a Gathering of the 6,000. The assemblage of dog-owners, dressed in pale pastel colours, could have been a mix- ture of jumble sale organisers, country and western fans and Methodists in their decent ordinariness. No mercenary Japanese dog- breeders could be seen. During Harold Wilson's troubled reign, when the dismant- ling of England began in earnest, the Royal Family and the Dog Family proved two such durableiinstitutions that they had to be explained away rather than disposed of. Fashionable opinion decided that they were there to earn foreign money, one for the tourist trade and one for the dog-export industry. So much was made of commercial dog-breeding that mere pet-lovers went into hiding and the money-mad took over. Alsa- tians and poodles were so over-bred that they dwindled away into nothing, limp creatures with sunken hindquarters.

As soon as I entered the show at Earl's Court last week, and saw the fond smiles of the owners and the trusting looks from their pets, I could see that normality had been restored. These dogs were family friends, not canine units from a conveyor belt. The Show had been spread over three days, and this was Friday, when Toys and Hounds were on display. Rows of wooden benches, divided into dog-filled compartments, sur- rounded a large show area with a grand- stand. Here and there, waiting-room chairs formed large circles in which sub-shows took place, breed by breed. Owners did not resemble their pets as a rule, but in the ring adopted a dog-like gait so as to keep in step with their animals.

Pomeranians, with impudent smiles of triumph on their tiny faces, strutted impor- tantly around the ring. Their owners had previously brushed them into orange fluff- balls, their tails swept across their backs to merge with their ears into balls of canine thistledown. One Porn, with pert little legs, briskly performed the goose-step, as self- satisfied as Mussolini in his prime.

Maltese terriers, hidden by their silky coats, submitted patiently to endless comb- ing. One had its long moustaches plaited in- to pigtails, and seemed to be begging me not to laugh. I wouldn't care to own a toy dog, or one of enormous size, but I like to look at them. My first visit to Cruft's as a small boy had been notable for an immense dog, a lion-burger, and for the fairy-like chihuahuas exhibited in glass-fronted cases like peep-shows. This year, no dogs seemed so small or so large as in 1948, when Cruft's was getting back into its stride after the war.

The name of Rhodesia is commemorated by a splendid leonine hound, the Rhodes- ian ridgeback. 'Zimbabwean Ridgeback' doesn't sound quite the same. Before strok- ing the ridged back of one these heroic beasts, I asked the owner if it was safe to do so. He told me to go ahead, and went on to say that in Africa the ridgebacks kill lions by sneaking up on them in the long grass and biting through the tendons in their legs.

`He'd kill you if I gave the word!' the man's wife suddenly interrupted, looking quite fierce herself. Evidently she meant the

dog, not her husband, for she went on t0 say 'If he hit me, the dog would kill him! One word and he'd be dead!' Both husband and I turned pale, and I hurried on to the grandstand. Agility trials were taking place in the main arena. Dogs raced beside their masters and on the corn' mand of 'Over' or 'Through' they leaped across hurdles or dived into tunnels, ran LIP and slid down a seesaw and juinPed through a tyre suspended by ropes. Black and white sheepdogs from the Forest of Dean were the best at this.

Many south Welshmen and west country- men had brought their dogs to Cruft's, their bluff pipe-smoking humour seemingly appreciated by their pets, who looked uP at their faces and grinned. More mistresses than masters were present, and plenty of teenagers and children fussed around their pets. As the day came to an end, bunion youngsters could be seen curled up on rugs in empty pens, fast asleep. Sometimes a child slept with one arm round a dog. Borzois, with their long aristocratic faces and delicate gait, carried some of the, romance of Tsarist Russia into the lives of their English owners. Great hairy Irish wolfhounds touched a string of the harp that played in Tara's halls after a successful wolf hunt, as the mead cups went round. Regimes that ended in our own times were commemorated by Pekinese dogs destroYed or eaten in Red China but safe in England , and by Tibetan prayer wheel dogs from tile sacked monasteries of Lhasa. These 110w work their legs in the air to no purpose, mystifying their suburban owners. Fond of dogs, I am still more entranced by wild animals, and so I was very inter- ested in the Finnish spitzes. Dark-eYeli ginger-haired dogs, spitzes resemble Oa huskies in shape when they stand, but when curled up yet alert they look wild, like foxes or dingoes. Creatures of the Northern forests, their heads dart about, ready for danger or for the chase. `When he runs away, I 'phone all the farmers and tell them', a spitz-mistress said `Otherwise they might shoot him as a fox:5 True he has a curly tail, but when he frightened it straightens out and looks like: brush. Spitzes are hunting dogs in Finland' and if a bird flies into a tree, they'll stano:, the bottom barking and wagging their tail' from side to side as a signal'. So like small dingoes did the spitzes ape pear, that I wondered if both breeds cam from a common ancestor. Dingoes were °,i's inginally hunting dogs brought to Austra,.! e by the Aborigines. Some scholars trace 1„°, Finnish people to the Magyars and to tile; East, and it's possible that both ding°0 and spitzes are domesticated versions of Asiatic wild dog, the dhole. Running ,. to packs, wild, fierce and free, dhole are til `Red Dog' of Kipling's Jungle Book. c Most naturalists now claim that dornestlt., dogs are descended from the Indian w°,,lai with perhaps a touch of Egyptian jack a in. I like to think that Rover has, more exotic pedigree, taking in strains fro

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the world's rarer and stranger wild dogs' Why do some pariah dogs in Spain have tortoiseshell blotches, reminiscent of the bloodthirsty wild African hunting dog? In-

dian pariah dogs so resemble the wolves of that country as to form an intermediate species, half-wolf, half-dog. Perhaps wolves domesticated men, and threw their lot in with us out of pity for our

helplessness in the hunting field.

Not far from the spitzes at Cruft's could be found the pharaoh dogs, prick-eared as in their sacred days of glory. Some of the by of ancient Egypt has been preserved ny Hamitic tribes as far south as the Congo, and the Basenji `barkless dogs' of the Pygmies, also on show at Cruft's, may have been bartered from the descendants of priests of Anubis. Thinking of empires of yesteryear, as I looked at my old friends the

Chihuahuas of Mexico, made me wonder if these miniature Toys could trace their Pe, digree back to Don Coyote. Coyotes, or

brush wolves' as they call them in Canada, are a New World species. Red Indians own- ed dogs before white people came to America, and one extinct breed, the Hase Indian dog, was nothing more than a black and white coyote. A wild dog which has had no part to play M creating domestic dog-kind is the fox.

Recently my sister saw a grey fox near Lon- don that may have been one of the Arctic• foxes released by the Animal Liberation

Front in their assault on the fur trade. Instead of 'liberating' animals that have never learned to hunt, and persecuting In- dian businessmen as if they were at Grun-

Wick, these fanatics might have persuaded the fur farmer to tame his foxes and sell them as exotic house pets. Then we might

have seen white fluffy foxes at Cruft's.

On Saturday (`Terriers and Gundogs') I was attracted to a friendly brown and white Pointer, Jolly Miller of Lufbra, or 'Miller'

for short. He belonged to Anne Dawson of Penrith. Absently stroking the jolly Miller, Iaat in a dog pen and yarned about Penrith- ns we knew in common. When last in Penrith, I had found a large e. nclosure of high-spirited wolves in the local Wild Life Park. Reversing the natural order of things, I am rendered wild, or un-

domesticated, by the magical presence of wolves. Racing round and round the large enclosure, wildly exhilarated, I was follow- ebd by the whole pack, lithe bounding

. casts, their tongues streaming from their Jaws. They may have been after me with malevolent intent, as whenever I stopped they flung themselves upwards at the wire

ace with great force. However, I prefer to think that they wished to adopt me. A

Mowgli, I know no sport more thrilling than 'running with the wolves'. _ Cruft's ended on Sunday night, when the Best of Show was announced. I could not stay until the end to see this, but had time to a. dmire the Utility and Working Dogs, including poodles, Pyrenean mountain dogs and samoyeds. A most independent 'reed, samoyeds can understand their !taster's every command but take absolute-

ly no notice. When called, they toss saucily

amused glances over their shoulders every now and then, in case the human gets lost. Named after a cannibal tribe of Siberian Eskimos, samoyeds sometimes take part in sledge dog-races in Scotland. They resemble white huskies with a sense of humour, and I was pleased to see them again, as I once owned one named Snowlady Zely of Frostilands. Their fur can be spun into wool, and I spoke to a lady whose samoyed jumper had been stained pink by elderberry juice. Pyrenean mountain dogs, like giant samoyed-St Bernard crosses, stood nearly on bear-like paws. One of them, Champion Barking Snow Monarch, was owned by a genial Cornishman looking like a retired colonel from the better sort of regiment.

`They're guard dogs in the Pyrenees, pro- tecting farms from wolves, bears and rob- bers', he told me. 'They were first brought over here — oh, in the Thirties some time —by Madame Harper-Trois-Fontaine.'

I would have liked to have heard more, but Champion Barking had to go into the ring. So last but not least, I called on the poodles, who were being combed, clipped and sprayed with perfume by their anxious mistresses. Introduced to Vanitonia Rochester, a solemn black poodle, I was told that he had been groomed for five hours at home before setting out. Although originally of a working breed, he could no longer swim after ducks for fear of his bouffant hairstyle dragging him down.

`I must have a poodle!' my sister exclaim- ed. `If I can't have one, I'll have a baby in- stead, as a pet-substitute'.