Crufts 'popular amid controversy'

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The Kennel Club said 28,000 dogs had been entered this year, the third highest figure in the show's history.

Last year's record crowd of 160,000 visitors could also be matched when the event starts in earnest on Thursday, the Club added.

Breeders at the show's launch at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre (NEC) rejected recent criticism.

Both the RSPCA and major sponsor Pedigree have pulled out of partnerships with the event, while long-standing BBC television coverage that has in previous years attracted over 14 million viewers worldwide has also been dropped.

Josie Baddeley, who has bred dogs for 35 years, rejected claims made by a BBC documentary in August last year that Crufts, the world's largest annual dog show, allowed damaging breeding practices that caused disease and deformities.

But Ms Baddeley, whose Gordon Setter Lottie is back to compete after winning Best Puppy in Breed two years ago, conceded that non-registered breeders could be a liability.

She added: "Good breeders will only breed good dogs. The Kennel Club have a list of all the breeders; they have a list on which they put people's puppies, and they wouldn't put them on that list if they weren't suitable to go - and if they (the breeders) are not registered with the Kennel Club then there might be some underhand breeding going on."

At the time of the Pedigree Dogs Exposed documentary, The Kennel Club condemned many of the assertions over breeding malpractice as "far from accurate".

The following month, after years of pressure from campaign groups, the RSPCA broke its ties with the event amid speculation over Crufts' emphasis on pure breeds. The move came after the RSPCA's chief vet, Mark Evans, appeared in the programme, comparing Crufts to "a parade of mutants".