The Missus and I always eagerly await the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, but this year we won’t look at it the same way after this development (via the New York Times):
Tired of Sad Ads, Kennel Show Takes ‘Dog With a Smile’ Tack
Prancing purebreds and pound puppies do not mix, or at least they will not during the televised broadcasts of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show this year, after the club cut ties with Pedigree, a longtime sponsor, in part because of Pedigree’s commercials featuring sad-eyed mutts up for adoption.
“We want people to think of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show as a celebration of the dogs in our lives,” said David Frei, the club’s director of communications and the host of the show for over two decades. The Pedigree advertisements, showing quaking and abused homeless pets, are in stark contrast to the coddled and cosseted animals that strut around Madison Square Garden during the two-day show, which begins [today].
So there’ll be none of this sort of buzzkill advertising:
According to the Times, the club’s director of communications David Frei told the Associated Press, “Show me an ad with a dog with a smile; don’t try to shame me.”
The Westminster Kennel Club doesn’t need Pedigree to shame it. It’s entirely capable of doing that itself.
Campaign Outsider 
This is terrible. Anybody who’s been to the SPCA or any shelter for dogs will know what these poor animals have had to go through and how they still find it in their hearts to love. Dogs are the way they are because we created them to be that way over thousands of years. As a species, it is our responsibility to care for them.
I don’t have a dog but I will go and cuddle my little rescue Sammy extra hard. And probably get scratched for it. That bastard.