Puppy Farming Charges Roil Brit Dog Circuit

LONDON
(Reuters) – Something sinister is troubling Britain’s usually genteel
world of dog-showing, and at the center of it all lies one question:
Who called Mrs Joyce Mann a "puppy farmer?"

Mann, this year’s Crufts Best of Show judge and wife of its chairman
Peter, had been targeted by a fax campaign to highlight her mass breeding
of Yorkshire Terriers in the 1960s — puppy farming — a practice common
at the time, but now considered unethical.

"This has all the ingredients of a Miss Marple mystery," said
Beverley Cuddy of "Dogs Today" magazine. "Dog showing is
still very much a gentle middle-class pursuit, but it does have this other
side.

"When people get obsessed, only winning counts, and the dog becomes
irrelevant," she
added.

from Reuters