“We are the tiniest production company on the planet — there are more dogs here than staff,” Jemima Harrison tells me when I am arranging a visit to her farmhouse, in Wiltshire in the west of England. She isn’t exaggerating. There are two and a half staff — Harrison herself, who writes, directs and produces films; partner Jon Lane, co-producer and cameraman; and part-time researcher Rachael Turner. And there are at least seven dogs: five full-timers, one of which attempts to eat my tape recorder, and two in transit. Harrison, in between making documentaries, runs a dog rescue center.
While her company, Passionate Productions, is small, it is also noisy. It may, indeed, be the Jack Russell of the film world — limited in stature but capable of a loud yelp and fearsome nip. As the Kennel Club, bastion of the dog world, organizer of Crufts and for 135 years ruler of dogdom, is finding out.
In August, BBC1 broadcast Harrison’s disturbing film Pedigree Dogs Exposed, which argued that highly selective breeding was damaging the health of many pedigree dogs and undermining their genetic diversity. Several organizations, including the RSPCA, the PDSA and leading charity the Dogs Trust, have responded by pulling out of Crufts. Sponsor Pedigree has also jumped ship, but claims this was a commercial decision rather than a moral statement. And, potentially most serious of all, the BBC is reviewing whether it should continue to broadcast the show — next year’s Crufts takes place at the National Exhibition Center in Birmingham, England, in March. Dogdom is in uproar. So-called whistleblowers who helped Harrison with her film have been frozen out and allegedly subjected to hate campaigns by traditionalists.
The Kennel Club has taken Harrison to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, complaining that the documentary was unfair (they were especially angry to be likened to Nazis in their alleged commitment to a doggy version of eugenics), but she is unrepentant. “I got a very emotional e-mail from a senior figure at the Kennel Club after the program,” she says. “They were incredibly upset. They thought it was a travesty, but obviously the Kennel Club were never going to be happy with the program. The Kennel Club has remained largely unchallenged for 135 years and it needed doing. That sort of pomposity and arrogance needed puncturing. I don’t really care how many people I’ve upset if it gets a better deal for the dogs.”
PHYSICAL DEFORMITIES
Harrison’s argument is that the breed standards overseen by the Kennel Club have caused an exaggeration of certain characteristics that has taken some breeds further and further away from the originals, causing physical deformities that are harmful to the dogs. There is also a separate, but related, issue concerning the decline in genetic diversity caused by the mating of dogs which are closely related and the use of “super-sires,” champion dogs which are deemed highly desirable in a pedigree and, through artificial insemination, can now produce many litters. Some critics accuse breeders of “playing God” with dogs. Amazingly, all these animals — from the chihuahua to the great dane — are descended from wolves. Harrison says the “plasticity” of the dog — its malleability in the hands of breeders — has been its greatest enemy.
RSS