[gracielove]

Originally Posted by yorkietalkjilly

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in dog traits, actual evolution has nothing to do with their appearance and structure now as Mother Nature has been replaced by breeders choosing which features they want in dogs.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.

Most of the long established breeds were created for a purpose. Back then keeping a dog as just a pet was a luxury for the rich. When other people had dogs it was because it had a job to do. No docking was done because the people preferred the look. It was done for a purpose.

Some of the hunting breeds had their tails docked at birth in order to keep the burrs from getting caught in the tail as they ran through the deep brush. Fighting dogs had ears cropped to keep them from being chewed off. Yorkie tails were docked to keep them from being bitten when they crawled in close spaces to get rodents. They would come upon nests of rats or mice that would bite and claw while the dog was doing it's job. Some terriers needed long coats for cold conditions and others needed the smoother coat for other conditions.

Today serious breeders keep the traditional look of their breed out of respect for their history. A person that prefers the long tail can certainly find one. Anyone that wants to stop the real suffering of dogs should do what they can to get rid of puppy mills. That would get rid of 90% of the improper docking in this country.