Monday, June 1, 2009
Owie!
Took a visiting bitch to my vet today for an AI. Usually I do this at home, but the prior two AIs she'd just gone nuts on me, and I wanted to cover all bases. At any rate, while there I ran into a guy from my handling class whose Wire-Haired Pointing Griffon had just had puppies two days ago. They were in for dewclaws--and tails. I watched as the vet docked the tails. There was such a sad little lineup of seven discarded tails. 8-( Taking dews off doesn't bother me in the least when I've watched because they're so small and unnecessary, but I didn't like seeing the tails cut off. I'm glad both my breeds-Cardigans and Labs--get to keep the tails they were born with!
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6 comments:
And the Griffs at least get to keep some tail!
Nothing's as bad as ears, though; my friend who has had Danes forever cropped exactly ONE puppy. She said the vet showed her the half-an-ear strips there on the counter and she went straight from dropping the puppy back at home to a bar! After that she kept them (and finished them) with their ears on.
No cropping/no docking was one of my requirements when I chose Cardigans, and I am so happy to not have to ever make that choice again.
I'm happy you don't have to put your babies through that either. Poor little guys.
That's the whole reason I ended up with a Cardigan to begin with! Well, that and the cool colors. :)
You know, I think Danes and Dobermans are extremely impressive and so streamlined with cropped ears and docked tails, but I could never do it. I'd have to head to a bar, too! It's not that I'm squeamish, it's just knowing that losing part of the ears and most of the tails is totally unnecessary. At some point we're going to follow the UK and stop cropping and docking, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Of course the Dobes may end up resembling Black-and-Tan Coonhounds!
I agree with you on the Dobies - for the Danes (since I lived with them) I know that the perfect baited-up expression is pretty rare and the rest of the time the ears are leaning over or looking goofy. Uncropped dogs always at least look normal all the time.
There IS a problem in some US lines of both Danes and Dobies (and I would assume Boxers as well) where the ear shape is improper. They have very long, round ears instead of triangular ears. They do tend to look houndy when they're left uncropped. However, my little cadre of no-cropping Dane breeders found that big ears, even heavy ears, tended to look great when the dogs grew up.
So when and if the tide changes in the US we will have to work on the long thin ears, but most of the ears will be just fine.
Tails are a very good question - especially with the breeds where an extremely high set is desirable. When those tails are long they go way up to the ears! But I just saw an absolutely gorgeous undocked English Cocker shown, and I didn't find myself distracted by his tail at all. His handler presented the tail nicely and didn't make it ostentatious and the overall impression was very pleasing.
Ny friend Taija, who has a Cardi of mine in Finland, started out in Pems and I think all of hers were undocked. Stacked in photos, they look quite lovely with their long tails. Of course, I don't know how the long tails look when a Pem moves--some may look pretty silly. But I found it fascinating because even with the long tails, posed Pems did =not= look like Cardigans. There was no doubt they were Pems. Which speaks nicely of Pem and Cardi breeders who are working to retain our respective breed types.
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