Anti-Docking Alliance (A.D.A.) |
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The Campaign Against the Docking of Dogs' Tails (and cropped ears) |
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TAIL DOCKING -
a veterinary perspective
RCVS Tail Docking WORKING Party
The original
reasons for docking, or tailing as it used to be known, are lost in the mists
of time. Hints, however, can be found
in the writings of eminent people such as veterinarians like Youatt, or those
involved in dog breeding or showing.
One such is Captain Jocelyn Lucas, M.C. who wrote several books on dogs
in the 1920s including Pedigree Dog
Breeding, The Sealyham Terrier,
and Hints on Dog Management. In this latter booklet, the foreword of
which is written by no lesser person than Charles Cruft, he includes an explanatory
section on docking. It is pertinent to
quote the first two paragraphs in full.
"The docking or cutting of the tail of certain breeds is permitted by the Kennel Club, notably Fox, Irish, Sealyham, and Airedale Terriers, Spaniels, Poodles, etc.
Docking is not merely a fashion, for it has a practical
origin. All running dogs such as
Hounds, Greyhounds and Retrievers - animals used to catch as well as pursue
game, have their tails left long, so that they can twist and turn, using their
tails as "rudders." Dogs such
as the Spaniel used for hunting out game but not for catching it, formerly had
their tails cut to impede them. Thus
the bobtailed Sheepdog was originally docked to prevent him catching
hares."
This is a far
cry from the current reasons put forward by the Council of Docked Breeds which
centre round hygiene, and prevention of possible future injury, in an attempt
to justify a procedure which is a tradition.
At least Larry Elsdon and others, in the Docking Debate of the mid 1980s
at a BSAVA/Beechams Breeders' Symposium in Loughborough, admitted that the main
reason they wished to see docking continue was that they liked the look of
their breeds when docked and felt they had a right to carry out the procedure.
In recent
times veterinary interest in docking was rekindled at the BVA Congress in
Dublin in 1969 where, by a large majority, members attending the AGM voted
their opposition to the procedure. As a
result, in 1973, the RCVS included in the Guide
to Professional Conduct a statement to the effect that "it cannot be ethically correct for a veterinary surgeon to carry
out the docking of a dog's tail except in cases of disease or injury. However, whilst the docking of dogs' tails
remains permissible in law, and in particular, whilst the law continues to
permit the docking of the tails of dogs under certain conditions by lay
persons, The Council does not feel able to go so far as to say that the docking
of dogs' tails by a veterinary surgeon for non-therapeutic reasons would amount
to prima facie evidence of conduct disgraceful in a professional respect."
Opposition continued to mount and in 1985, at a BSAVA lunch in the House of Commons hosted by Dame Janet Fookes MP, MPs were briefed on the topic. Surprisingly some were unaware that short tailed dogs such as Boxers were born with tails and immediately asked questions in Parliament about the procedure.
In the summer of 1989, the veterinary profession were invited, through the RCVS, to put the profession's view point to the Home Office. The BVA, and its major Division, the BSAVA, confirmed their opposition, stated clearly in their policy statements, and compiled democratically from members' opinion, to non-therapeutic tail docking in dogs. Supporting evidence included, amongst other arguments, observations and assurances by dog behaviourists that the tail was an important and powerful communication tool for the dog; the Royal (Dick) Veterinary School retrospective survey of 12,129 clinical cases involving tails that showed there was no reduction in the incidence of tail problems in docked dogs; and a recording of a Radio 4 broadcast in the "Punters" series that concluded that tail docking was unjustified and inhumane.
The case put
to the Home Office during that meeting concluded with the urgent request that
primary legislation be introduced to ban the non-therapeutic removal of dogs'
tails in the UK.
The Minister,
Douglas Hogg, was visibly impressed with the arguments put forward by the
profession, and asked the RCVS what its action would be if he decided on a
compromise solution and banned non-veterinarians from performing the procedure
by removing the exemption that
permitted this in the Veterinary Surgeons Act.
He was advised at the time that the Council of the RCVS would be likely
to make it unethical for veterinarians to remove tails for non-therapeutic
reasons. It seems that the Home Office
took their eventual decision in the belief that tail docking would cease as a
result of the appropriate amendment of the Veterinary Surgeons' Act, rather
than introduce the primary legislation, so clearly requested by the RCVS.
This single
move, a "ducking of the issue", has had a devastatingly harmful
effect on the trusting relationship between the dog breeder and the vet. It has led to vituperous attacks on vets in
the dog press, pressure on breeders to change vets to those who would still
dock, regardless of whether that vet could or would service the other much more
important needs of the breeder on a willing 24 hours basis. Vets got the blame for a Governmental action
that Government knew had only one outcome.
Subsequent conversations with the Home Office confirmed this. "Legislation
was not needed to ban this act," they argued. "We
have merely grouped tail removal along with surgical removal of any other part
of the body, and that is all adequately covered by the Veterinary Surgeons
Act. If you do not remove legs and ears
without reason and without special legislation, then you do not need special
legislation to ban the surgical removal of tails." A good, powerful, but naive point.
Further
evidence that Government really intended this move to end docking comes from Hansard, the House of Commons Official
Report on Parliamentary Debates, a verbatim transcript of the Standing
Committee proceedings, on 21 May 1991.
The then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food, David Maclean, in moving the amendment to the Veterinary Surgeons'
Act that would ban docking by lay people with effect from 1 July 1993, said,
and I quote:
"Home Office Ministers with a responsibility for
animals held several meetings with interested bodies, including the Royal
College of Veterinary Surgeons, the Kennel Club, and the Council for Docked
Breeds. Following those meetings and
further consultation by my Department, Ministers
concluded that steps should be taken to phase out tail docking. The veterinary profession is unanimous
that tail docking is a mutilation that is cosmetic, and serves no useful
purpose - and the Government entirely agree."
There can
surely be no doubt as to Government's intention after that definitive
statement.
In 1992 a survey on docking was conducted among the 3,300 members of the British Small Animal Veterinary Association [BSAVA]. Some 2,214 replies were received, a very high response rate of 67%, and of these 92% wished to see the end
of tail docking. This was the mandate and incentive needed for the RCVS Council to rule, on 12 November 1992, that tail docking of dogs, for reasons other than therapeutic or acceptable prophylactic purposes, was unethical, and that repeated unethical behaviour had the potential to be construed as disgraceful conduct.
There seems to
be a very good reason for leaving tails on:
* Tails are there for a purpose and are very useful to the dog for communication, balance and steering.
If other
reasons are needed, the following are relevant.
*
As it is a useful organ, present at birth, why remove it?
*
Why remove all tails of a certain breed to prevent injury in the tiny, tiny
minority?
*
there is obviously some pain
inflicted on removal.
*
Even if this is not severe, what right have we to remove a tail?
*
Normal length tails help to empty the anal sacs. (They certainly help vets to empty them!)
*
There is opinion that the muscles used to wag the tail also strengthen the perineal area and help prevent perineal hernias.
Pain is
present, however minor and fleeting, and it can be measured. Pain is possibly the least powerful argument
as it is so slight. But it is
there. Professor David Morton's study
of the subject (Veterinary Record, 3 October 1992) shows this.
The Royal (Dick) Veterinary School
survey into the presence or absence of tail damage in over twelve thousand
clinical cases in docked and undocked breeds has shown that docking does not
reduce tail injury. The report (Veterinary Record 13 April 1985)
concludes: "Since the odds ratio is
not significantly greater than one, tail docking cannot be recommended as a
prophylactic procedure against tail injuries in any dog population similar to
the predominantly urban one from which the teaching unit draws its cases"
No-one has put
forward a substantive argument for docking except that to ban it is to remove a
traditional right, that certain breeds look better without tails, or that it
doesn't hurt so why stop it.
Breeders of
working dogs, such as Springer Spaniels, have argued that in order to prevent
damage to their dogs' tails when working in close cover, a portion of the tail
should be removed. To my knowledge, there is no
evidence, except anecdotal, to support this.
Dogs do not reverse into cover tail first, and if any part of the body
were to be damaged in such circumstances, it would be logical to suppose that
it would be the long floppy ears of such a breed. However, ears are not cropped or shortened to prevent this. If in the future long tails are shown to be
more prone to damage when dogs are being worked, statistics will reveal this
fact. Many veterinary practices now
have access to computerised records and the veterinary profession would respond
to this. However, without the benefit
of the knowledge of the proportion of Springers that work in close cover to those that are
family pets, it is difficult to justify the mass removal of this organ from the
breed. Indeed working Springers
traditionally have their tails left longer than show specimens.
Tail injuries in dogs are quite uncommon in
practice. Vets certainly see as many
tail problems following docking as in dogs whose tails were not docked. A noticeable number of docked puppies' tails
need re-docking to remove an inflamed or infected callus, or one caused by a
vertebra being left too long. Tail
injuries do not occur often enough to justify the mass removal of all tails in
traditionally docked breeds. Cat tail
injuries, however, are much more common, occurring as a result of fights, and
road accidents especially. Yet no-one would suggest the mass removal of cat
tails to prevent possible injury at some unspecified time in the future.
The argument
for docking, loudly and strongly proclaimed, is that of the removal of a right,
by the people who had that right - the breeders of the docked breeds. The veterinary profession respects that
point of view but, by an overwhelming majority and with a strong mandate,
prefer to argue from the point of view of the welfare of their patient, and not
to cause any unnecessary suffering to puppies.
What of the
largest group of people involved in dogs - the family pet owners. These are the people who for years, in our
surgeries, have been expressing disquiet at docking, at being unable to obtain
pups with tails, or expressing disbelief when they find out that the puppies
were not born without a tail, but that someone amputated them. To test the current attitude of this far larger body of dog (and cat)
owners, a questionnaire has been devised and used in several veterinary
practices in a totally unselected manner.
The format is as illustrated:
Dogs such as
Boxers, Dobermanns, Spaniels, Poodles and many other breeds have customarily
had their tails removed or shortened (docked) at 3 to 5 days old.
For over a year now, it has been illegal for anyone except a
vet to do this.
Our governing body, the Royal College of Veterinary
Surgeons, has advised vets not to do this except where it is beneficial to the
individual dog. We would value your opinion:
q I think puppies
of those breeds should have
their tails
removed or shortened
q I think puppies
of those breeds should not have
their tails removed or shortened
q I own a Dog /
Cat / Both. Breed
So far, with over two hundred returns, the results
make fascinating reading. The overall
outcome is almost identical to the result of the survey of the veterinary
profession itself - an overwhelming 91.5%
against docking. Amongst owners of
undocked breeds it is 97%, and even
amongst owners of traditionally docked breeds it is 81% against docking. As a
check, it was noted that 96.5% of
cat owners are against it.
Of course the
veterinary profession finds docking distasteful. How can we wholeheartedly support the unnecessary removal of a
useful and limb-like organ. We have
thought long and hard about it. We have
looked at scientific evidence of pain, at statistical evidence of injury, at
the attitudes of our young veterinary graduates and our veterinary nurses who
are noticeably upset at the prospect of being involved in tail docking, at our
ethics in performing it, and at the attitude of our enormous client base. These same people comprise most of the
client base of dog breeders. They wish
to see an end to docking.
The Kennel Club altered their Breed Standards in 1988 so that no dog has to be docked. Brian Leonard, Kennel Club External Affairs Officer, stated at Crufts this year that no dog will be marked down in a show for having a tail. He intimated on Radio 2 that education was the way forward, not an outright ban. However an outright ban on showing docked dogs, as suggested by the Kennel Club motion of 99 years ago, would see the end of docking as surely and rapidly as ear cropping was finished some years ago by a similar declaration from the Kennel Club.
Frank Jackson,
in an excellent review article on the subject in Our Dogs (March 1995) entitled Puppy
Dogs Tails - The Historical Perspective - ends with the following
paragraph, and I can do no better:
"The practice of docking dogs is now being questioned all over the world. In parts of Scandinavia it has been banned for over three years, in the UK only vets can dock and few are prepared to risk being harangued for unethical conduct by doing so. The tide against docking is running at different speeds but throughout the world it is running in the same direction. Canute himself demonstrated that the tide cannot be turned."
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The Campaign Against the Docking of Dogs' Tails |
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