I have just read that hills have pulled out of crufts sponsorship

Think we will see a lot of this and it will be more to do with a down turning economy than any moral reason, but companies will try to save face by jumping on the bandwagon

Obviously just my opinion but I would bet within the not too distant future Hills will change to a Vet only food and then, depending on sales, pull out of the UK altogether.
Jeff.

Rumour has had it for a while that Hills as we know it wouldn't be around long ;)  No real surprise!
(Jeff's 'opinion' is spookily similar to my own BTW) :-D

Where i worked at a vets they were changing from Hills to Walthams for this reason.

Hills have already reduced the size of their breeder team and may disappear from shows. Shame as I have just started to use it

My vets are moving to Arden Grange and Royal Canin from Hills.......

Yippee Crufts will be a dog show again!
Angela

Nah - we still have to get rid of the stalls with garden furniture, car accessories, windmills et al ;)   If only the 'absolutely nowt to do with dogs lot' would take the hump and the high road THAT would make it more like a dog show again!

Never liked um anyway so no bad thing!

not a bad thing , the more that pull out the more space we have for the important things like the dogs, no great loss same as pedigree never visited the stall when it was there anyway far to busy watching the rings and dogs,
carolann

Hmm - I agree that a lot of these companies will be pulling our of Crufts for financial reasons rather than moral ones, at the moment.  My puppy Isla has gone right off the James Wellbeloved puppy kibble (lamb) she has been eating since I had her and has decided she LOVES the Hill's SciencePlan puppy food which I was given as a freebie from the vet - so I will be sorry if they pull out of the UK altogether.  Mind you none of my others dogs have ever liked it!

Snowflake

Nah - we still have to get rid of the stalls with garden furniture, car accessories, windmills et al  PMSL

You wander round crufts, no dog products, no dog food, but wheel chairs in one corner,  kitchen manufacturers in another,  next it will be the electic beds and their will be a queue to try it out and rest their feet :-)

Maybe we should ask Jamie O if he wants to expand his Ministry of food..!!

now if we had relexologists, chiropodists etc  that would be great!

"now if we had relexologists, chiropodists etc  that would be great!"

I have often thougth that, when walking past the stand which does the shoe polishing - what a missed marketing opportunity, keep the chairs, do away with the polish and do foot rubs not shoe cleaning!

or a nice massage!!! fancy and indian massage my self.

"Maybe we should ask Jamie O if he wants to expand his Ministry of food..!! "

Oh per-lease! I love Crufts (sorry, one of the plebs I know!) but if Jamie Oliver gets involved in running any aspect of it I shall boycott for sure! :)

You can be quite sure there is a queue of companies wanting to take stalls at Crufts, so I dont see there being vaste empty spaces where once pedigree etc were.

Don't worry I love Crufts as well, so do most of us patricians! :-)

>not a bad thing , the more that pull out the more space we have for the important things like the dogs

hmmm wonder if that will happen of whether they will "downsize" crufts and get rid of a hall :(

hmmm wonder if that will happen of whether they will "downsize" crufts and get rid of a hall

Look on the bright side, one less hall means an hour less walking :-D  I, personally, will be checking out the walking frames/wheelchairs otherwise I won't be taking mother with me for much longer.  I have to say i often look at the walking boots whilst I'm at Crufts, something to do with sore feet no doubt ;-)

i went to my first last year and i have to say i loved the shopping as well as the showing- the dog related shopping though- bought a brilliant book (on mastiffs), bought a gorgeous bronze for mum and dad (of a bulmastiff), bought loads of sweets (of a dried meat variety)... can't say i gt my shoes shined though. perhaps a shows with doggy shops crufts is nice? or am i the only one?

I've always wondered what Crufts would be like if all the Trade Stands were put in one hall.  I would imagine it would make it easier to negotiate round the place and if you didn't want to shop then you could avoid that hall. 

> I've always wondered what Crufts would be like if all the Trade Stands were put in one hall.  I would imagine it would make it easier to negotiate round the place and if you didn't want to shop then you could avoid that hall. 

That sounds to me like a perfect solution but I expect they want to be where the most traffic is.

> Don't worry I love Crufts as well, so do most of us patricians!

Jeff Cruft :-)  ???

I'd like:

Fast lanes for dogs, dedicated walkways for people with dogs so that they can get to and from rings, exits and exercise areas

Keep trade stands away from hall entrances and stairways

Actually I like the stands but, people who are browsing move slowly, stop, or change direction without notice which is a nuisance when you need to get somewhere and a hazard to dogs!!

I took my then 8 month puppy to Discover Dogs last year and was amazed when some woman bumped into us then said "F***ing dogs are everywhere" !!

Crufts is one of they shows that I seem to always get ill after it, 3 years running I have the cold and aching body.  Yet I travel all over the same distance thoughout the year any other time.   I wished it would shrink a bit.

It would be great if they could drop at least one hall - it's far too spread out and adds so much walking from ring to ring and then at the day's end to the group/BIS show areas by which time my feet and legs have seriously given up LOL.

If they'd ditch all the non-doggy trade stands it would be a huge improvement IMO and I may even go more often ;)

Haven't been to the Horse of the YEar show since it moved ot the NEC, but looking at the website this year I saw they had a designated "shopping Village", and if you wanted you get get a shopping only ticket!  They also keep the GP away from the stabling/excercising area,  so horses only on ivew in the actual ring - wish it could  be worked out that way for the dogs, and not just for the group/BIS ring.

> I have just read that hills have pulled out of crufts sponsorship

Well I have just been to a Hills Pet Nutrition Training Seminar at work and the lady doing it was astonished when I asked her about this. She said she had not even heard of any rumours that Hills might be pulling out of Crufts, and they are definitely not going to start just concentrating on their Veterinary range and put their pet range on hold. She said that their profit is almost exactly 50-50 between the two ranges.
She was going to look into all this though, but it all sounded very strange to her indeed.

This is from Dogworld
The news about Hill's was less expected. A spokesman confirmed that it would be withdrawing its Crufts sponsorship and that there would be no stand, but no official statement had been made at the time of going to press. It was said to be a 'purely commercial' decision; the influence of the programme Pedigree Dogs Exposed - which prompted the RSPCA and Dogs Trust to pull out of Crufts - is unknown.