Dog shows are the beauty pageants of the canine world, and the name of the biggest is far from pretty.
“Crufts” is inelegant, difficult to say, and sounds like “crusts”. Cruft is bad enough as a last name, but putting the s sound on the end makes it almost unbearable. It sounds like the name of a kind of growth, but instead it’s “The World’s Greatest Dog Show.”
Crufts has been laboring under the weight of the awful name its founder imparted to it for over 100 years, and to its credit the name doesn’t seem to have slowed it down. This timeline is riddled with much larger entry counts than the last time the entry count was mentioned, and the show keeps moving to larger venues.
If you’re into dog shows, the Crufts YouTube channel is quite good. The show itself is magnificently British with an almost brutally upper-class atmosphere, which is strangely riveting. Also dogs are awesome. If you agree, check out our infographic on how dogs evolved from merciless wolves into sweet goofballs drooling on our sofas.