The time is fast approaching when veterinarians will be forbidden to dock dogs’ tails. The South African Veterinarian Council has declared that tail docking for cosmetic purposes will be an unethical practice from June next year.
Veterinarians, dog owners, sporting enthusiasts and kennel club officials are divided on the issue. The dogs’ view of the matter has not been ascertained. A debate about the arguments for and against the docking of dogs’ tails is carried in the current issue of the veterinarian’s professional magazine, Vet News. In it, Dr PJ Viljoen argues that the primary reason for docking the tails of dogs used for hunting is to protect them from injury.
”Working gun dog breeds have to work through heavy vegetation, often thorny, where their fast tail action can easily lead to torn and bleeding tails that are painful and extremely difficult to treat … Wingshooters — breeders of working dogs — field-trial dogs and veterinarians who own gun dogs agree that if tail docking is banned, the dogs would suffer and that failure to dock constitutes animal cruelty,” he writes.
He told the Mail & Guardian that the tails of gun dogs are docked at two-fifths to half their length, which means that they remain nearly as long as the undocked tails of breeds in which appropriate tail length has been selected over generations of breeding.
Viljoen’s views are contested by Monique Viljoen-Platts, who argues that the proportion of hunting breed dogs used for active hunting purposes is minute, and the proportion of those engaged in hunting that damages their tails is as small. ”Routinely docking puppies in order to prevent injury seems to be an extreme reaction to a small risk,” she says, adding that a dog’s tail is vital to successful defecation.
Animal behaviourist John Faul is adamantly against docking. ”Dogs communicate with their tails and when dogs lose this ability, social behaviour is negatively affected.”
The veterinary council’s decision places it on a collision course with the Kennel Union of Southern Africa — its breed standards require the tails of some breeds to be ”customarily docked” — and with gun dog associations, which regard the failure to dock the tails of working dogs as unethical.