...n future, routine practice to improve the health of these dogs will be to mate small-nosed and long-nosed breeds - for example, a pug with a Jack Russell or a bulldog with a Staffordshire bull terrier....

Pedigree Dogs Exposed showed puppies bred with inherited diseases and deformities and featured pugs with breathing problems, bulldogs unable to mate or give natural birth, boxers with epilepsy and a prize-winning Cavalier King Charles spaniel with syringomyelia, a condition that occurs when a dog’s skull is too small for its brain. 

The graphic footage provoked an outcry and led the BBC to scrap the TV coverage of the world’s biggest dog show, Crufts, after 42 years - even though it regularly attracted audiences of 14.5million.

The follow-up programme, which is to air just 10 days before this year’s Crufts at the NEC, Birmingham, will show that puppies are still being bred to standards that encourage unhealthy dogs and lead to their suffering.

This is despite the Kennel Club, which polices pedigree dogs, introducing sweeping changes.

The new programme is to focus on the poor health of pugs and bulldogs, flat-faced dogs known as brachycephalic breeds. These dogs often suffer from blocked airways.

Dr Oechtering, the world’s leading expert in treating flat-faced dogs, is shown performing a two-hour operation to clear the airwaves and widen the nostrils of a four-year-old German pug, called Cissie.

He said: 'It is unbelievable that we need invasive surgery just to repair the basic needs of the dog. Breathing is the most basic need and this is no way acceptable from any ethical point we have today.

'The whole veterinary profession is faced more and more with the situation that we are becoming the repair troop for small animal breeders. We should totally stop breeding brachycephalic breeds. Breeders have shown they are not able to breed healthy animals.'