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in January that the ‘experience of Spain’ and its bombed cities showed that high explosive and incendiary attack was more likely than gas – although owners of cats and dogs should practise wearing masks so ‘their pets would become used to the ghoulish appearance of their owners’ and recognize their muffled voices. ‘Should hostilities eventuate, there is no doubt that the abandoned dog and cat will stand in the greatest need of concerted action to put an end to their suffering,’ he wrote.
    He even covered school pets, ‘such as rabbits, guinea pigs, etc., housed on school premises for the primary training of children in the care of, and kindliness to animals, [which] will have to remain in the charge of the care-takers of their respective institutions’.
    Crufts Dog Show for 1939 meanwhile, held at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, on two chilly February days, attracted ‘thousands of dogs’. Among the many highlights were large contingents of Pekingese, Wire Haired Fox Terriers (the super-fashionable dog, like my aunt’s poor doomed Paddy, of the time), Welsh Corgis and Chow Chows.
    â€˜Ivor of Dunkerque’, the Wire Haired Dachshund exhibited by Air Vice-Marshal Sir Charles Lambe (famed as the ‘first Englishman to own a German Wolf Hound’) proved a champion. The Zoological Society of London exhibited a Husky. Tibetan Mastiffs and Basenjis from the Belgian Congo provided an exotic touch.
    There was a whiff of decadence as war clouds gathered beyond the judging ring. The
Daily Mail
’s Patrick Murphy witnessed ‘dogs dressed in Angora wool jumpers with Magyar sleeves’ as well as ‘quite sizeable dogs wearing trousers’.
    Best in Show was Mr H. S. Lloyd’s Cocker Spaniel ‘Exquisite Model of Ware’ for the second year running. More would be heard of Mr Lloyd when the nation’s pets faced a sterner test than even the judges’ bench at Crufts.
    On the other side of town, the Dumb Friends’ League’s kennels at Shooters Hill, Blackheath, run by Colonel and Mrs W. M. Burden, were home to an increasing number of refugee dogs – such as ‘Barbara’ who featured in the 1939 report, the pet of two Jewish children, Elizabeth and George Mayer. They had written this heart-rending plea:
    We two children have got a permit to emigrate to England. But we can’t come because we must leave our dog ‘Barbara’ alone. It was a present to us for our birthdays two years ago. At that time Barbara the dog was only two weeks old. We have brought her up and she has been accustomed to us in such a way that she would fret if we would leave her.
    But also we are not able to live without her. We know that Barbara must be quarantined for the first half of the year but we have not sufficient money to pay for her keep. We are very poor refugee children and we love Barbara, who would die if we abandoned her. Therefore we ask you if you would keep her for six months free of charge or if you have a good friend who would pay the expenses. We can show the papers that the ancestors of the dog were born in Scotland.
    The League was proud to announce it was meeting the costs of boarding Barbara, as well as ‘all these foreign dogs’ in their statutory six-month quarantine.
    The Canine Defence League could not have done more to extend the paw of friendship. It dramatically reported the success of its Quarantine Fund for Refugee Dogs appeal. ‘As a result of the help thus given, the future of the pitiful canine outcasts from Central Europe, for whose care the League has so far assumed responsibility, is now assured,’ it was reported in
The Dogs Bulletin
. It really was terribly moving:
    Many of these refugee dogs’ masters and mistresses arrive in this country with little else but the clothes they wear and it speaks volumes for their affection for their canine friends that in some instances they have denied