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Westminster ditches Pedigree over pro-rescue commercials
I thought reputable breeders were supposed to be all about rescue?
The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is on TV Monday night, and the humans and canines in our household remain eager to see which breeds win. The hound group leads off the evening, followed by the toy group, the non-sporting group, and the herding group. Best of Show won?t be crowned until Tuesday night.
Yes, we know we could watch streaming video coverage of breed competitions during the day. But we?re supposed to be working then ? not wondering how to pronounce ?Xoloitzcuintli?. (That?s a new breed recognized by the American Kennel Club and debuting at Westminster this year.)
But there?s a shadow over the nation?s preeminent canine competition in 2012, if you haven?t heard. Well, ?shadow? may be going too far, but there?s certainly a controversy. The WKC has dumped long-time show sponsor Pedigree dog food. Club members didn?t like Pedigree?s ads, which promoted pet adoption by showing sad-eyed shelter dogs waiting for what rescue groups refer to as their ?forever homes.?
Long-time show spokesman David Frei told the Associated Press that the Pedigree ads took the wrong approach.
?Show me an ad with a dog with a smile. Don?t try to shame me,? said Frei. ?We told [Pedigree] that and they ignored us.?
According to the AP, Frei added that, ?Our show is a celebration of dogs. We?re not promoting purebreds at the expense of non-purebreds. We celebrate all dogs. When we?re seeing puppies behind bars, it takes away from that. Not just because it?s sad, but it?s not our message.?
OK, I don?t think one has to be a PR genius to inform Mr. Frei that he?s stepped in something. ?Shame?? ?Puppies behind bars . . . not our message?? That?s going to come across badly, particularly from a club that doesn?t want just anyone as a member ? as we?ve written before.
Yes, those ads were heart-wrenching. But how many families across America got their family pet by going to a shelter, as opposed to buying a pure-breed that?s show-ready? The WKC would have been better off just saying it was a business decision, and leave it at that. Now they?ve gotten cross-wise with a substantial presence in the dog world, the rescue and shelter community.
Twitter is aflame with negative comments on this, to the extent that the WKC is the canine one percent, and maybe there should be an Occupy Show Ring movement. If you don?t believe us, search ?Pedigree? on Twitter and stand back.
Can?t we all get along? Yes, there?s been some tough media coverage lately of the problems that humans breed into their canine friends in search of a particular appearance. We?re thinking here of the New York Times Magazine piece from last November, ?Can the Bulldog Be Saved??
But underneath, dogs are mostly the same. That?s what the most recent research indicates, anyway. Given the vast diversity in size, shape, and coat among dogs, scientists thought their genetics would show similar diversity. But the latest research into their genetic makeup shows they aren?t that different, according a recent National Geographic cover story. If dogs were cars, they?d be different bits of sheet metal tacked over remarkably similar chassis.
?The difference between the dachshund?s diminutive body and the Rottweiler?s massive one hangs on the sequence of a single gene,? writes Evan Ratliff in NatGeo.
Maybe we should remember that while watching the Russian Wolfhound, say, in its flowing trot around the WKC show ring. Underneath, he?s just a pound puppy with long hair.
Re: Westminster ditches Pedigree over pro-rescue commercials
I actually agree with him on this, and recently posted so on Facebook (I actually "borrowed" a friend's status, so I don't want to take credit).
Also:
http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/02/was-the-westminsterpedigree-split-really-about-pet-adoption.html
Was the Westminster/Pedigree split really about pet adoption?
The New York Times covered the story, reporting WKC spokesman David Frei as saying, "We want people to think of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show as a celebration of the dogs in our lives. ... Show me an ad with a dog with a smile; don?t try to shame me."
Pedigree responded by saying Westminster was actually against the cause of shelter dog adoption in and of itself, particularly the adoption of mixed breed dogs rather than purebreds.
I have no idea of what's really behind the split, but as I read the Times piece, I was struck again by the great divide in how different people try to "sell" pet adoption. Despite research from the Ad Council that found people are not motivated to adopt pets by sad pictures of pets behind bars or stories of suffering, those types of messages are still constantly being used by groups whose stated goal is to get pets adopted.
What those messages do is two-fold. First, they make people feel miserable and overwhelmed. They also tend to make people break out the checkbook. That's right; they're good for raising money, not finding homes for pets.
And Pedigree knows that. From the Times article:
Also interviewed in the article was Sandra DeFeo, the executive director of the Humane Society of New York, who was quoted as saying they chose to focus on uplifting images of shelter pets in their promotions. She added that people "need to know" that animals are suffering and dying, but that they can't handle it.
I think she's mixing up her messages. When you're working on shelter reform, absolutely, you need to spread the word that animals are suffering and dying needlessly, due to antiquated practices that can and must be changed.
But when you're doing adoption, tragedy and misery don't work. Most people outside the rescue community (most of the members of which, by the way, already have all the pets they can adopt) want the adoption of a new family pet to be a happy experience. In both the Ad Council's research and that done by PetSmart Charities, people have demonstrated concern over adopting from shelters as being depressing and upsetting. How on earth does showing these miserable images address that concern?
It doesn't; it reinforces it. It might raise money for the organizations running the ads, but it doesn't get people to adopt shelter pets.
So I, for one, am glad to see someone calling that type of adoption ad into question. And I ask Pedigree, and anyone else who supports (or claims to support) pet adoption, to really consider if their ads are serving that goal, or setting it back.
They need to be educated.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I think there is a time and place for people to realize what goes on in shelters, and maybe it's because of the personal experience that I have had, but what I think about when I think about adopting B is all of the good aspects - how excited I was to find "my dog", the way I felt connected to him right away, the way he sat on my feet within minutes of meeting him. And when I personally encourage people to adopt, those are the things I tell them. Not the doom and gloom of life in a shelter - the wonderful and amazing life they can have with you.
From a PR standpoint, the saying "Any publicity is good publicity" is not true. Positive PR can work wonders and while I agree that showing positive stories only is "sugarcoating" things, if "sugarcoating" gets more animals adopted, then I say do it.
I honestly think the spokesperson from that story was not prepared or well-coached to be fielding those questions and had someone better informed done the interview, it would have turned out differently.
I feel the same way - the commercials evoke very different feelings for me (glad I'm not the only one who has to change the channel when ASPCA comes on so I don't start bawling). I think both types of commercials/media can and should exist because both types of myths really need to be debunked. The ASPCA commercials seemed more aimed at the myth that there is some wonderful place that pets go when they are given up, whereas the Pedigree commercials seem to be aimed at the myth that dogs in shelters are inherently damaged and try to promote adopting a shelter dog. As PP said, it seems that different approaches are effective for different goals (fund raising vs. adoption).
Either way, I think that the comments made by the WKC guy were not well considered and make it sound like he/WKC don't support mutts/rescue/shelters or have misconceptions about them (only mutts are in shelters, etc.) when that is probably (hopefully) not the case. Now, if WKC had dropped Pedigree because of the quality of their food, I might have been on board with that...
I feel like you can't have one without the other. If all adoption commercials were smiley and happy, that would be a lie. If they're all dark and depressing, that would also be a lie. To completely disregard the need for both types of information is ignorant. (I say that in reference to the man in the article, not anyone on here.)
Should the majority of adoption ads be happy? Sure. I can get behind that. But the "darker" ones have their place, too. What is that Albert Schweitzer quote? "Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight." Pretending the shelter system is all puppies (haha) and rainbows isn't going to help anyone, and it certainly isn't going to make it true.
On a personal note, I've never thought the Pedigree adoption commercials were all doom and gloom. I've loved everyone I've seen, and I've always thought they were fairly upbeat.
Snow!
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DI also don't think that the breeder-knowledgeable Pesties (like TLB, peaches and TBM) ever said that ALL reputable breeders are involved in rescue of their breed of choice.
And this split with Pedigree doesn't mean that now NO reputable breeders are involved in rescue.
I believe they've also stated that there are non-reputable breeders involved in showing dogs.
This whole thing was really interesting to me this year, because Booker's breeder actually brought it up when I picked him up last August. I don't remember how it came up, but she was incensed by it. Said a lot of her colleagues were very offended by the promotion of mixed breeds during the biggest pure-breed dog show of the year. She was disgusted by this attitude, but then again, the "puppy" page on her website is designed so that you have to scroll through a long paragraph urging prospective buyers to check out a shelter, instead. And I don't think all breeders are anti-rescue. Another breeder we were talking to here in town always has a foster (not of her breed) living with her. Once a good home is found, she brings in another one.
I'm not really shocked, though. I'm actually amazed that the AKC finally broke down and allowed "All-American" breeds to compete in performance events. When I started competing with Griffin, you could do an ILP (PAL) registration and that was it. He got one easily enough because he was a ringer for an AmStaff, but when I tried to get one for my ex-boyfriend's dog, I had trouble. I tried with a couple different breeds, got denied, and kept re-applying until he was finally accepted as a Plott Hound. They've never really been "pro-dog," they're pro-purebred-dog, and I think the only reason they're making accommodations for mixed-breeds at all is to improve their public image.