Sasson-Brickson G. The bobtail trait in Australian shepherds — part I: a historical perspective and docking Regulations in various countries. Aussie Times ;March-April Risk factors for tail injuries in dogs in Great Britain. Vet Rec ; Strejffert G. Milne, E. The Truth about Cats and Dogs. Book Guild Publishing, ; Association between tail injuries and docking in dogs.
Vet Rec ; Behavioural responses of Canis Familiaris to different tail lengths of a remotely-controlled life-size dog replica. Behaviour ; Thrusfield P, Holt M. Association in bitches between breed, size, neutering and docking, and acquired urinary incontinence due to incompetence of the urethral sphincter mechanism. Behavioural observations of puppies undergoing tail docking. Appl Anim Behav Sci ;4: Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology ; The emergence of adolescent onset pain hypersensitivity following neonatal nerve injury.
Molecular Pain ; Canine homolog of the T-box transcription factor T; failure of the protein to bind to its DNA target leads to a short-tail phenotype. Mammalian Genome ; Emily G. Patterson-Kane Sheilah A.
In the United Kingdom tail docking can only be carried out by a registered veterinary surgeon. You may still see adult dogs with docked tails, as the docking may have been performed before the ban was introduced. But you should never buy a puppy with a docked tail. If you get a dog from a breeder, make sure that they do not dock tails. There are also a few breeds, such as the Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog, or the Australian Shepherd which is actually an American breed which carry a genetic mutation that means some individuals are born with short stumpy tails.
Ear cropping involves the surgical removal of a portion of both of ears and is traditionally performed on specific breeds such as boxers, great danes, doberman pinschers or schnauzers. The practice was common in dogs bred for guarding, fighting, and hunting small animals and the historical reasons for ear cropping are similar to those for tail docking owners said they wanted to reduce the incidence of ear injuries and make it harder for their dogs to be caught by the ears.
Although few dogs are used for such purposes now, some breed fanciers argue that cropped ears are part of the historical breed standard. Others, including RSPCA Australia regard the practice of ear cropping as an unnecessary and detrimental to the welfare of the animals concerned.
Tail docking is painful Advocates of tail docking claim that it does not cause pain or discomfort, as the nervous system of puppies is not fully developed. Pro-docking claims The few remaining advocates of tail docking give a range of unconvincing explanations to defend their views. Is it legal in other countries? Skip to: content. When it comes to canine communication, much of the tale is told by the tail.
It is well known that dogs broadcast a lot of information about their emotional state and intentions using their tails. Observing tail signals can tell us whether a particular dog is happy, worried, or threatening.
The specific motions that the tail makes—like whether the tail is held high or droops to a lower position—combined with the speed that it moves conveys a lot of information.
While all of this may be generally well known, people forget that in order for the tail to be an effective means of communication there has to be enough tail to be visible.
Consider for example a note that I received about a Labrador Retriever named Molly. It read in part:. After her accident [involving a collision with a motorcycle] the vet had to amputate her tail, leaving a stump of only around two inches.
She recovered okay and still has a personality that is good with people and kids just like before the accident but something has changed in her dealings with dogs. We always took her to an off-leash dog park not far from our house and she always had good relations with the other dogs. A few have actually snapped or growled at her, which never happened before. The idea that the tail length of a dog might affect its ability to communicate is something that I have been thinking about for a number of years.
Certainly common sense should tell us that docking significantly limits the usefulness of tail signals and thus reduces the effectiveness of a major channel of communication in dogs. This issue concerned me, but for a long time I could find no data in the scientific literature that addressed the question of whether dogs with short or missing tails had signaling problems. I decided to try to shed some light on the matter so I carried out a fairly simple observational experiment.
In our study we observed dogs interacting in a confined city park area where dogs were allowed to be off leash. We tallied encounters between dogs. Most of these or 88 percent were typical canine greeting behaviours, often followed by play behaviours including the usual chase games.
The remaining 49 encounters contained an aggressive element on the part of one or more of the dogs involved. In , Scotland reversed a decade-old ban on tail docking for some breeds of puppy if there is sufficient evidence that they will become working dog, despite concerns raised by veterinary and animal welfare organisations.
Tail docking should be banned as a procedure for all breeds of dogs, unless it is carried out by a veterinary surgeon for medical reasons eg injury. Puppies suffer unnecessary pain as a result of tail docking and are deprived of a vital form of canine expression in later life. Research published in Vet Record found that approximately dogs would need to be docked in order to prevent a single tail injury.
We continue to call for a complete ban on tail docking of puppies for non-therapeutic reasons across the UK.
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