Once upon a time the BBC broadcast a documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed (Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) that depicted dog breeders and the Kennel Club of Britain as a group of half-wits, responsible for catastrophically undermining the health of dogs.
In response to this rather biased account some breed clubs chose SILENCE as their PR strategy. The Kennel Club, on the other hand, wheeled out spokesperson Caroline Kisko who via the Net made some statements rejecting the views expressed in the documentary.
In true Web 2.0 fashion Ms Kisko also joined in a webchat to put forward the Kennel Club’s perspective.
Amongst the myriad responses to the documentary littered across the Net, Terrierman, a North-American blogger, slammed Ms Kisko for being a liar (The Kennel Club: When Truth is Incovenient, Lie), refuting her claim that: “”90 percent of dogs will not suffer from health problems that have a detrimental impact on their quality of life.”
As evidence Terrierman directed his readers to The Kennel Club’s breed survey (PDF) which reveals that 37 percent of the 36,000 dogs surveyed by The Kennel Club have “at least one” health condition –and this in a population of dogs with an average age of only 5 years.
Naturally, Ms Kisko didn’’t like being called a liar so she emailed Terrierman and asked him to retract the statement . But he didn’t. Instead he publishesd the email and reiterated in a new blog post (Caroline Kisko is a liar) that she’s a liar on account of her interpretation of a bunch of statistics.
For good measure Terrierman ticked off Ms Kisko for trying to dodge responsibility for her statements made as spokesperson for the Kennel Club:
[...]Ms. Kisko says that she is merely representing [The Kennel Club], and I should direct my ire at that nameless, faceless organization rather than hold up any one individual, such as herself, who is actually doing the lying to the public.
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