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Originally Posted by Wylie's Mom  Anyone interested in this subject should definitely watch the tail docking videos on youtube, to decide whether this is a painful or not painful procedure...and to simply just educate yourself on the process.
As far as any data regarding tail injury increases in countries where tail docking is banned - I have a problem with this data. Let's say we docked the back left leg as standard practice -- well, okay, then we would not see injury reports on the back left leg...however if we then banned the docking of the back left leg - we would then see, of course (!), a huge increase in injuries to the back left leg bc those injuries didn't previously have a way to exist. Just bc there is a "potential" for injury, it does correlate (for me) to amputating that part of the body. No way.
So, that kind of data doesn't do anything to convince me that there is substantial and increased danger in having a tail. They're MEANT to have this tail, for pete's sake. If they weren't, evolution would certainly step in at some point. |
The dog doesn't need his tail to be happy, healthy, run, work, play, live his life - he needs his legs.
Your argument of keeping statistics on missing parts vs. present parts is a non-starter, as tails are not vital to the health or well-being of a dog's life as a leg is. Since legs are actually used as part of daily life when arising, lying down, walking, running, jumping, sitting, etc., their injuries would by far surpass that of tail injury. Besides, in the real world - the whole world over, statistics of tail injury only work if the injuries are actually reported by owners and reported by the vets - and likely rural, farm and deep urban and third world country areas where dogs get little care have very few tail injuries cared for by anybody, let alone vets and very little vet reporting to any oversight or fact-gathering agency. Broken legs even get left to self-heal, so imagine how little a tail injury gets tended to professionally and pain medication given.
Dogs are changing in the natural selection process of breeders, not actual natural selection/evolution, except maybe the few wild packs in deepest Africa and South America and even there game wardens govern some aspects of their lives, which nature would normally govern, usually removing them from the gene pool. In the past, as hunters, dogs used tails as rudders when going into water after prey or during migration of the pack across water or to communicate from afar but very few toy Yorkies today need to hunt through water to live, migrate or to communicate to another field as part of their daily lives.
In 100,000 - 200,000 more years, if left to pure natural selection, dogs might very well lose their tails as they are now living lives of domestication and don't need them to function in their current incarnation. But as breeders are taking over the role of natural selection in dog traits, actual evolution has nothing to do with their appearance and structure now as Mother Nature has been replaced by breeders choosing which features they want in dogs. One day, Yorkie breeders may decide they want shorter muzzles, larger eyes, tinier frames and curly tails - as dogs today nor Mother Nature govern their physical attributes. It's entirely up to us what our dogs look like and the qualities of their lives.