The Tradition of Tail Docking

I don't have a docked breed. I have friends who do, and who feel passionately about the matter. Sometimes this passion is beyond my comprehension, I have to admit.

For instance, the current kerfuffle in the world of Rottweilers, apparently, is whether or not the AKC breed standard should include a description of a correct undocked tail. Personally, I think they can either say nothing and end up with every European Rottie with a rotten tail over here where the judges don't know what's wrong with it, or they can ban undocked Rotties from the ring altogether and lose pretty much all international competition, because most of Europe has now banned the practice of docking. Either one seems like a bad outcome to me, since it's all about something non-genetic in a forum that's supposed to be all about fitness to breed, and I doubt every tailed Rottie in Europe is completely devoid of good genes. However, I'm not a Rottie person.

I've asked what the justification for docking is, and I've had a couple of answers, but the upshot is that traditionally the Rottie pulled carts and was a cattle drover. Now, there are carting breeds with tails and cattle dogs with tails, but--okay. Tradition has spoken. We have here an argument from tradition. I herd sheep with my shepherd, which is about as traditional an activity as you could want.

However, I have some problems with arguments from tradition, and the big one is that traditionally humans can be a pretty rotten species. For instance, if you have one of the large South American breeds that descended from the Spanish mastiff types, you might have trouble feeding it a traditional diet. You see, they were fed the quartered remains of the Inquisition as it took place on this side of the Atlantic. If you want to run down to Pet Supermarket and see if they have a nice bag of kibbled unbeliever in between the no-grain lamb and the Olde Fashioned Midden Heape special, go ahead. I'll wait here and you can report back, but I suspect that's a special-order item.

Given that we've abandoned traditions before, it may be time to find a fresh argument for things like tails. I can understand cropped ears: many breeds have very delicate ears that are easily shredded if they gallop through a thorn bush as dogs seem to be crazy to do, and cropping toughens the edges. Docking a Dobe I kind of get, as they have very slender tails which are easily broken when they clear something too solid off your coffee table. But a Rottie tail? It's just like a shepherd's tail. Solid, nice curve, normally carried low enough that if it was interfering with a cart, the dog's trotting hocks would be, too.

So I still don't get it. Comments are welcome if you think you can explain it better, honest. I'm open to being convinced. I'm not militantly anti-docking or anything, I just don't understand.

PAWS bill in House and Senate

The full text of the Puppy Uniform Protection and Safety Act, Senate form, is available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:SN03424:@@@P. Enjoy. It's an exercise for logicians. I mean, the exercise parts seem reasonable though unenforceable, seeing as we don't have enough USDA employees to inspect our slaughterhouses, never mind trying to determine the appropriate amount of exercise for a Pekingese. The weird part is the beginning, defining a high-operations breeder as someone who produces more than 50 puppies a year for sale as pets AND owns at least one intact bitch over the age of four months.

So, if you own an intact bitch over four months (personally I don't like to spay that young) but produce fewer than 50 puppies per year by her (oof!), you should be fine. Likewise, if you don't own even part of a reproductive bitch but successfully pull more than 50 puppies out of a hat, you're fine. Presumably that last is meant to put rescue operations in the clear. However, also, if you produce more than 50 puppies but they're not being sold as pets -- work, say, or show prospects -- it sounds like you're still in the clear. Since anyone can claim they're producing working or show prospects, this pretty much defangs whatever is left of the bill. It's in large part a dead damn waste of ink and time. The only real hazard in it for most respectable breeders is for those who take the extra care of their dogs to co-own them, which can increase the number of puppies you produce in a most unfair manner if you co-own ten of your dogs for their own safety.

Now, if we were funding the USDA to actually enforce the already existing animal welfare laws and giving them the artillery necessary to go after Joe Redneck's huge and heavily-guarded chicken-wire puppy mill operation once they're done cleaning up our food supply, that would be great. As it is, this bill makes a lot of mild-mannered law-abiding retirement-age dog fanciers who adore their critters very nervous and accomplishes very little else. It also, incidentally, completely overlooks catteries.

Scentwork for Show Dogs: Stage 1

In my last post I talked about the need for training to keep a show dog (this includes obedience dogs!) safe in a world where not everyone is sympathetic to crating practices. Whether the person releasing the catch is an animal-rights activist or a child looking for a playmate doesn't matter to the health and well-being of your dog! Today we look at the first stage in training your dog to find the person most likely to be at every one of his shows. I will assume it is my reader, and simply say "You."

First, you need a good recall on your dog -- not a formal front sit, but the ability to bring him to you without too much stress about distractions. Since a conformation dog is usually trained to work for food treats already, he'll learn to trot to you for "Here!" and a goodie pretty quickly. If he then glues himself to you instead of wandering off to let you call him again, fling another treat with a "Find it!" or "Get it!" command. After a few days, you can start the next stage.

Hopefully your dog already has a "Wait!" at his crate door. If not, it may be worth establishing one, even if it means rapping his nose with the door a couple of times. For one thing, it makes your life much easier if you can collar him as he stands nicely inside instead of lassoing him as he bolts past you. If you have a good wait, also, it's much easier to practice the find-you game alone at least part of the time.

Here goes -- either on a wait command or with the crate door closed and a helper on alert, go about ten feet from the crate and duck partway behind some object. Call the dog when you are partway visible, so that you can see if he's wandering utterly elsewhere and wave food as needed. Tree trunks are fine, doors are fine, but work in a familiar place with few distractions at first. Do some of your training outdoors on plain mowed grass, and some in your house or, if you have access to one, an empty training room.

On your outdoor trainings, work with an awareness of the wind. Sometimes you should be upwind, some downwind, some crosswind. When your dog is reliably coming to you, go entirely behind the obstacle before you call, and have the dog wait longer. Experiment with having a helper release the dog and no recall. This way, you learn if he pops out or stays in. Gradually increase distance and hide time. Different breeds will show different innate preferences for searching out their human: most scent hounds will drop their noses to the ground, while many herding and sporting breeds will quarter with their heads high, seeking air scent. Since a dog has different dominant senses from a human, you will probably see a transition from using sight to using scent early in the training.

If you cannot get the dog to seek you out at all without calling him, and he instead stays nicely in his crate, congratulations! Practice in more interesting places until you're sure he'll stick even at the commotion of a show, and skip my next two posts.

A Few Words on the Law and Pickup Trucks

My friend over at The Endangered Owner brings a bit of underreported news to light regarding what an officer may consider grounds to pull over a dog owner here. The gist is, a woman and her daughter were pulled over for having a few Parson/Jack Russell Terriers visible in the back of the pickup truck under a camper top, and the officer was concerned for the dogs' well-being. Endangered uses the word "criminalized," which I find a bit strong considering the woman appears to have been charged with neither crime nor misdemeanor, merely inconvenienced and perhaps a bit frightened at being pulled over. However, it's a little worrying that in cool weather a police officer would be concerned about dogs in crates and under cover. If he was a bit strict with them, rather than being Andy Griffith, recent incidents such as the shooting of the Baltimore animal control officer or the shooting deaths of four might explain why our policemen aren't so mellow as they may or may not have been in the good ol' days.

However, one way and another, this raises a different question for discussion. When would the officer be justified in pulling over a dog owner out of concern for the dog? I've seen dogs dying of heat stroke in the back of pickup trucks, clearly a matter of owner negligence, because someone didn't think about how in the summer a truck bed is a perfect frying pan. One fellow sitting at a gas station ladling ice over his German Shepherd's head looked genuinely regretful, and probably wouldn't have minded if a cop had pulled him over half an hour sooner -- his dog would have had much better odds of survival than she appeared to. Other owners seem to feel their dogs will be fine if crated, but the crate isn't secured or doesn't provide shade or both. The breeze in the back of an open-topped truck just carries away the dog's moisture the faster, making him dehydrate sooner. It exposes him to all the fumes of the great outdoors on a highway -- exhaust, gasoline, and the vapors of hot pavement, all of which can ruin his scenting ability when you arrive where you're going. If he's not tethered or crated, he can fall out; if he is leashed down, he'll get decapitated in an accident or hanged if he does try to jump and the tether is a little too long. So, gentle readers, DON'T PUT YOUR DOG IN THE UNCOVERED BACK OF A PICKUP. Save yourself a heartbreak or an animal cruelty charge, or quite possibly both.

The camper-top helps. It provides shade and keeps the worst of the weather off. In conjunction with crating and with the windows open, it keeps the dogs pretty safe from the outside world of climate and injury. Personally, though I've hauled a dog that way a couple of times, I hate it. If the dog isn't sharing the passenger compartment with me, I don't know how hot she's getting, whether she's complaining, whether she's knocked her water bucket around or vomited on herself, or any of the other things I can keep track of fine by ear and nose. At that level, it's a personal choice. The good part about the camper top is that you don't have to leave your passenger compartment so wide-open when you park for lunch; you just have to get the back of the truck in the shade.

This discussion suggests another question, though: that of ownership versus guardianship. As best I understand the distinction, I own my stereo but have guardianship over my child, as in "This note must be signed by a parent or guardian." The stereo, or anything else I own, I can treat however I wish: it is a thing without its own interests. If I wish to take it out back and beat it with a sledgehammer, that's my right. My child, on the other hand, despite being mine, I genuinely believe is better off living in a society where his parent can do no such thing without severe punishment. Should we own our animals or be their guardians? I consider them to be beings with interests, and so vote for guardianship. This doesn't mean they'd have the right to vote (for instance) any more than my infant does; it just means their interests can be taken as existing for legal purposes. They cannot be beaten, starved, electrocuted, or what have you by the people they live with.