Death by poisoning is never pretty.

Gasping for breath, exhaustion, convulsing, spewing vomit, pouring out saliva and excrement—these are the symptoms that precede the poisoning victim’s death, and such was the violent passing that had been suffered by the stiff on the slab in Lauw, Belgium, on March 6 of last year. A wonder to behold, with his entire life before him, he’d been crowned salutatorian of his class only hours before.

“He was my dream boy,” Aleksandra Lauwers, his constant companion, told me. “We just understood each other, always were together. Life without him isn’t the same anymore.”

He died like a dog, because he was a dog, but not just any dog. He was a champion show dog named Thendara Satisfaction, nicknamed Jagger, who had just triumphed as second in his breed (Irish setter) at Crufts, the 124-year-old dog show—the most important dog show in the world—in Birmingham, England.

“Only the best get to Crufts,” said Sandra Chorley-Newton, who has been showing Irish setters there for 45 years. And Jagger was one of the best, an immaculately bred combination of “a million things: movement, soundness, tight construction, elegance. The red coat is the crowning glory. It’s what’s underneath the coat that counts.”

It was after the show, back home in Belgium, that Jagger began having such difficulty breathing that his alarmed owners called a veterinarian. By the time he got there it was too late: Jagger had collapsed and died. An autopsy found shocking evidence in the dog’s gastrointestinal tract: pieces of beef neatly folded with poison inside.

On Facebook, Lauwers posted a photograph of her beloved setter performing “dog therapy for elderly people” at a retirement home. “To [the] person who has done it, [I] hope you can sleep well knowing you have killed our love, family member and best friend to our son,” she wrote.

The tragic news soon shook the show-dog world, first reaching Jagger’s co-owner and exhibitor, Dee Milligan-Bott. A veteran of 30 years of showing dogs, Milligan-Bott had stood triumphantly alongside Jagger in his prizewinning performance at Crufts only the day before. Now she heard inconceivable words from her partner in Belgium: Jagger dead! Jagger poisoned!

But how? Show dogs such as Jagger are watched more closely than visiting dignitaries. “We knew every movement [Jagger made],” from the dog’s home in Belgium to a hotel in Birmingham, then to the Crufts show ring, and back home again, Milligan-Bott told me in March. The entire time he had been led on a double leash alongside his half-brother, Thendara Pot Noodle, who had won Best of Breed in the Irish-setter category. “If he had eaten something, the other dog would have as well,” said Milligan-Bott.

At 29 minutes before midnight on Sunday, March 7, Milligan-Bott dashed off a desperate e-mail addressed to the press office of the Kennel Club, the venerable organization that runs Crufts. The club’s president is Prince Michael of Kent, and its patron is Queen Elizabeth II.