Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine attitudes towards canine and humans foreign Others in the British pedigree dog-showing community, asking how both individual dogs and wider breeds are shaped by notions of purity and contagion.

Paper long abstract:

In January 2012, UK immigration policy was relaxed, allowing puppies as young as 15 weeks to be imported into the country from mainland Europe. Many dog breeders involved in the pedigree dog-showing community were already concerned about European political intervention in their breeding practices. Now, the community was beset by new anxieties at the much publicised influx of European imports, and to many this seemed like the final nail in the coffin of the Great British Show Dog.

Concerns about puppies bred by supposedly unscrupulous 'puppy farmers' from Eastern Europe increased as more foreign bred dogs began to appear on the UK Kennel Club's registry. This led to acute concerns that the country's borders were not being policed properly and that puppies with falsified vaccination records would enter the UK, bringing with them the risk of diseases such as rabies. The perceived threat meant that arguments against importation invariably returned to the issue of purity, especially as many of the imported dogs had coat colours not generally recognised to belong in their breeds. These non-standard colours were taken by many as visible evidence of the genealogical impurities that threatened to contaminate Britain's purebreds.

This paper will examine these issues by exploring 'breeds' as multi-species communities of humans and dogs. It will ask how immigration has exacerbated long-standing tensions between the wellbeing of individual dogs and that of their wider breed. In doing so, it will consider how communities and bodies are shaped by anxieties about purity and contagion.