Basically, it was a television documentary about how ruthless and vile pedigree dog breeders can be, and how the so called 'dog lovers' are actually driven by money and status within these circles.
There are a number of pedigree breeds in the UK now which are so inbred and shaped by human's desire for an asthetically pleasing dog, that we have done terrible harm to the breeds as a whole, and individually. Rhodesian Ridgebacks have a 'ridge' on their back but not many are born with this, it is infact a defect caused by
spina bifida which can kill the dogs, meanwhile in the Kennel Club's guidelines, if there are any Ridgeback puppies which do not have the said ridge, they are ordered to be culled. This means that they are essentially artificially reversing what would normally be natural selection - killing the best dogs and allowing the ones with major defects to continue to pass their genes.
In Pugs and Bulldogs, they are very likely to have respiratory problems as man has bred these breeds to have very flat faces, unfortunately there is no 'reduction' in the amount of 'face' it has, it's just squashed back into the head - these rolls of skin block airways and lead them to die what would be abnormally early.
I think that the King Charles spaniels have the worst deal though, they have been bred to have a distinctively shaped head, of which the cranial cavity is far too small to contain it's brain which leads to fitting and extreme pain.
20-08-2008
Pedigree 
