Apparently Dog Show Competitors Need to Be Screened for … Cocaine?
Welcome to the world of illicit dog show doping and anti-doping measures.
Photo via Unsplash, Kevin Seibel Splinter dogs
Not once, in all the times when I’ve found myself half-heartedly watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show from a bar or brewery on a weekend afternoon, have I wondered aloud “How many of these dogs are doped to the gills?”
That was apparently lax of me–an inexcusable lack of suspicion on my part aimed at the dog owners and trainers who are so desperate to win an all-important canine competition that they’ll take any performance-enhancing shortcut necessary to bring home the Milkbones. Turns out, there’s a whole anti-doping, screening industry that serves the competitive dog show world in much the same way as athletes are tested in other professional sports settings, and just as in the pro sports world, pets fail the drug tests all the time for reasons both intentional and accidental. That said, it’s apparently quite easy for dogs to fail the tests, because of the truly rigorous standards on medication that major competitions hold them to. Which is why it’s rather shocking to read that the owner of a prize-winning rottweiler in Finland recently found out his dog had been suspended from competition thanks to a positive test for cocaine, of all things. What, did he get hooked on the stuff while serving as a police dog?
“It was a terrible shock,” said owner Mervi Wiberg of the test result on her unnamed rottweiler. She then offered up an extremely plausible theory that the dog had somehow encountered “cocaine residue” while in the course of its daily journeys into the outside world. Or as the credulous dog owner put it: “When you’re in public places, residue can end up on your hands. Animals explore the world by taste, so exposure can happen very easily, even through their paws.”
Alright then. I suppose that is technically possible on a purely theoretical level, although I can think of a rather simpler scenario in which one’s dog could end up being exposed to a little bit of “residual” coke. But it can’t be that, given that Wiberg apparently insisted that “no-one in her family circle has any connection with drug use.” Case closed! Actually, what I’m more confused by at the end of the day is the fact that it apparently took six months for the owner to receive the test results for her dog, after the rottweiler competed at a dog show at the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre in December. Why not just wait to process the tests until after next year’s competition, at that point? Regardless, the dog in question was subsequently suspended from future events. Ironically, the rottweiler had been participating in competitive tracking, directly using the same nose that a human being would be using to hoover up the cocaine, so I rather doubt that any use of coke in this scenario could be genuinely construed as “performance enhancing” from the dog’s perspective.
Meanwhile… in Finland
That said, when you go down this rabbit hole it turns out there’s a whole host of other reasons why a competition dog might be on other drugs or medication that gets them banned from competing. An owner might use a sedative or tranquilizer to keep a dog calm or still during judging or handling, or the opposite–a stimulant–to make them more full of energy or perky for judges. Painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs are perhaps the most common elements of “dog doping,” being used to help a dog perform a high-agility routine more flawlessly or smoothly, particularly if the dog has any underlying physical ailments. There are apparently even some deeply unscrupulous owners who have used anabolic steroids or hormones in an effort to build canine muscle mass, or banned cosmetics to “improve” a dog’s appearance. Can you now detect a glimpse of the latent insanity you’ll find just under the surface of nearly any niche hobby, like dog show competitions?
For this reason, most of the major dog shows you might actually be aware of, like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, have what amounts to strict zero-tolerance policies toward the use of any drugs or medication in dogs, even doctor-prescribed or medically necessary ones. That effectively means that dogs that need medication can’t compete in said competitions at all, as the shows are meant to identify the most “perfect” and aesthetically pleasing dogs in a way that by no means has uncomfortable eugenic overtones. As the American Kennel Club observes, “competing while medicated means the dog will be disqualified,” so don’t even think about it.
Nevertheless, it sounds like positive doping tests for dogs still happen all the time at these things, although surely the test results coming back with “cocaine” still registers as something of a novelty for the dog show officials. The Finnish Kennel Club, which suspended the poor rottweiler who had been dabbling with nose candy, said that “just under 10% of the samples we take come back positive,” which must ultimately equal dozens or hundreds of doping dogs each year at the end of the day. That’s a lot of medicated mongrels.
Which all just makes me wonder: How rigorous is the catnip-testing program for cat shows, and is the kitty crack known as Churu banned as well?
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