Tail docking a spaniel?

[Buchan]

Most vets don't like docking and won't dock. Some vets don't like docking, but will do it rather than it be done in a less than ideal fashion. Very few actually claim a benefit.
Breed a spaniel with a more robust tail and the issue disappears.

 

[jall55]

Most vets don't like docking and won't dock. Some vets don't like docking, but will do it rather than it be done in a less than ideal fashion. Very few actually claim a benefit.
Breed a spaniel with a more robust tail and the issue disappears.

Starting to wonder if you know what a spaniel is ?

 

[Buchan]

Starting to wonder if you know what a spaniel is ?

A rather delightful dog that is a pain in many hands, but fabulous when well trained.

A bit like their owners

 

[nick.308]

its ok just saying breed out the faults but generally everything man touches turns to crap. We are like vermin on this planet.....
when we have been on this planet for so long and pheasant shooting for hundreds of years how come haven't we sorted it yet if its so easy...

 

[GDhunting]

Avoids damage and infection especially in thicker cover etc.

 

[VSS]

its ok just saying breed out the faults but generally everything man touches turns to crap. We are like vermin on this planet.....
when we have been on this planet for so long and pheasant shooting for hundreds of years how come haven't we sorted it yet if its so easy...

Do you think that the spaniel appeared on this planet fully developed in its current form?

 

[Apthorpe]

Most vets don't like docking and won't dock. Some vets don't like docking, but will do it rather than it be done in a less than ideal fashion. Very few actually claim a benefit.
Breed a spaniel with a more robust tail and the issue disappears.

Great. Could you point me towards some suitable breeders?
As VSS has said, breeding spaniels with better tails is easy, and it has always been obvious that tail docking is painful. And that doing it has a cost. These facts are not in any way new discoveries, and will have been equally well known for at least 200 years. Therefore, it is logical that plenty of breeders will have bred strains without this problem.

 

[Pelyma]

It is a mutilation, but permitted in the Mutilation Regulations.

Most of us don't like docking because a) it hurts b) it is of questionable benefit

All animal sectors are reviewing these historic (traditional dare I say) mutilations as we learn more about the harm and have evidence to question the tradition.

Can I ask how many litters you have docked? Many vets are against it and have never actually seen it done; in fact by far the majority have never even bred an animal of any sort. Your only comment so far is that pups feel pain but nothing about the ongoing pain that a dog suffers with a damaged tail, does that not count? I don't have spaniels but we do have the dew claws on our whippets done, most of the noise comes from pups being pulled out of the nest not from the amputation.

 

[VSS]

Great. Could you point me towards some suitable breeders?
As VSS has said, breeding spaniels with better tails is easy, and it has always been obvious that tail docking is painful. And that doing it has a cost. These facts are not in any way new discoveries, and will have been equally well known for at least 200 years. Therefore, it is logical that plenty of breeders will have bred strains without this problem.

The sarcasm does you no favours.

If you've been reading the thread (which I hope you have, as you started it) you will be aware that breeders have not developed strains with shorter or more robust tails. They could have done, at any point in the development of the breed, but chose instead to breed long tails and cut them off.
Whether or not that practice is still acceptable in the light of our greater knowledge of the way in which animals feel pain and suffering, is a moot point. Some say it is, some say it isn't. If, on balance, the general consensus is that it isn't, breeders still have the option to resolve the issue through genetics.
However, any suggestion of doing so will be fiercely resisted by a lot of rather ignorant traditionalists who believe that to attempt to do so would "destroy the breed". Same sort of dull attitude as a few of the posters in this thread have demonstrated, seemingly of the opinion that the current spaniel cannot be improved upon, and any attempt to do so would ruin its working ability. Totally groundless fears.

I have been fighting exactly the same argument from Welsh hill farmers for years, with regard to genetic improvement of the Welsh Mountain breed of sheep. So I got together a small group who were interested, and we decided to go it alone, without the support of the breeders associations. We're now the biggest collaborative breeding project in Wales (if not the UK), we've DNA sampled tens of thousands of sheep, we're the first sheep breeding project in the UK to use genomic selection methods, and we attract a considerable amount of government funding.
With the methods of genetic evaluation and statistical analysis available to us these days, progress is rapid. We're also able to make very accurate predictions of the likely outcomes of different matings.
All of this stuff could equally easily be applied to breeding dogs, if anyone were sufficiently forward thinking to undertake to do it.
Or you could just keep on cutting the tails off, instead of breeding animals that were properly fit for purpose. At the moment the choice is yours, but it might not always be. So why not get ahead of the curve?

 

[finbar]

Makes me laugh that vets won't dock a pup at the legal gap of 3 to 5 days old,
But are more than happy to take a rake of money off you to sedate the dog "risky in itself" and take its nuts off.
Is that not mutilation too. ?

Only people who benefit un docked spaniels are vets
The only people who benefit flat roofs are roofers . Docking the way forward

 

[Apthorpe]

The sarcasm does you no favours.

While many of the comments above have invited it, there is no sarcasm in that comment.

If you've been reading the thread (which I hope you have, as you started it) you will be aware that breeders have not developed strains with shorter or more robust tails. They could have done, at any point in the development of the breed, but chose instead to breed long tails and cut them off.

I find this a difficult line of reasoning to digest. It is and always has been obvious to even a child that cutting a puppy's tail off is painful and unpleasant. This is not a discovery new to science, nor reflecting a change in human nature. It simply does not make sense to reason that people have chosen to breed a fault into a dog just so they can cause suffering cutting it off. Nor does it make sense to suppose that the reason the fault still exists is because every dog breeder in the past two centuries enjoyed causing pain to their dogs. It completely defies reason.

Whether or not that practice is still acceptable in the light of our greater knowledge of the way in which animals feel pain and suffering, is a moot point. Some say it is, some say it isn't. If, on balance, the general consensus is that it isn't, breeders still have the option to resolve the issue through genetics.
However, any suggestion of doing so will be fiercely resisted by a lot of rather ignorant traditionalists who believe that to attempt to do so would "destroy the breed". Same sort of dull attitude as a few of the posters in this thread who seem to be of the opinion that the current spaniel cannot be improved upon, and any attempt to do so would ruin its working ability. Totally groundless fears.

It seems to be an equally dull attitude to presume ignorance as being the sole reason why 200-odd years of breeding effort has resulted in animals vulnerable to tail injury.

I have been fighting exactly the same argument from Welsh hill farmers for years, with regard to genetic improvement of the Welsh Mountain breed of sheep. So I got together a small group who were interested, and we decided to go it alone, without the support of the breeders associations. We're now the biggest collaborative breeding project in Wales (if not the UK), we've DNA sampled tens of thousands of sheep, we're the first sheep breeding project in the UK to use genomic selection methods, and we attract a considerable amount of government funding.
With the methods of genetic evaluation and statistical analysis available to us these days, progress is rapid. We're also able to make very accurate predictions of the likely outcomes of different matings.
All of this stuff could equally easily be applied to breeding dogs, if anyone were sufficiently forward thinking to undertake to do it.

I don't quite understand where the idea that dog breeders or farmers are particularly backward comes from, other than the presumption that one is more intelligent or knowledgeable than the other people. (This is odd, because I seem to remember that you find that an objectionable characteristic in others.) Nor does it seem a constructive criticism.

Or you could just keep on cutting the tails off, instead of breeding animals that were properly fit for purpose. At the moment the choice is yours, but it might not always be. So why not get ahead of the curve?

I don't want to breed spaniels. I only asked for advice on some I had been offered. I don't feel particularly responsible for the fact that some have taken this off into an argumentative thread about how people should breed dogs or sheep.

I am somewhat conflicted because the weight of evidence from spaniel owners is that docking is very much a necessary harm, while the opinions I had hoped for - that docking was unnecessary seem to have come accompanied by some apparently spurious reasoning from several posters, along the lines of "everyone else in history has acted like a fool or a rogue, luckily I know better". What I had hoped for was that they might be able to support the hope that either that it is possible to get spaniels without this vulnerability, or some credible opinions that tail injuries are rare and relatively trivial.

As you say, I have been reading the thread and I am still trying to reconcile your comment #10 with your comment #37. There seems to be a logical incompatibility.

By now, there is a lot more noise than light, and I've decided to pass up on these pups and let them live a probably non-working and fairly sedentary suburban life somewhere else.

 

[Dunwaters]

The sarcasm does you no favours.

If you've been reading the thread (which I hope you have, as you started it) you will be aware that breeders have not developed strains with shorter or more robust tails. They could have done, at any point in the development of the breed, but chose instead to breed long tails and cut them off.
Whether or not that practice is still acceptable in the light of our greater knowledge of the way in which animals feel pain and suffering, is a moot point. Some say it is, some say it isn't. If, on balance, the general consensus is that it isn't, breeders still have the option to resolve the issue through genetics.
However, any suggestion of doing so will be fiercely resisted by a lot of rather ignorant traditionalists who believe that to attempt to do so would "destroy the breed". Same sort of dull attitude as a few of the posters in this thread have demonstrated, seemingly of the opinion that the current spaniel cannot be improved upon, and any attempt to do so would ruin its working ability. Totally groundless fears.

I have been fighting exactly the same argument from Welsh hill farmers for years, with regard to genetic improvement of the Welsh Mountain breed of sheep. So I got together a small group who were interested, and we decided to go it alone, without the support of the breeders associations. We're now the biggest collaborative breeding project in Wales (if not the UK), we've DNA sampled tens of thousands of sheep, we're the first sheep breeding project in the UK to use genomic selection methods, and we attract a considerable amount of government funding.
With the methods of genetic evaluation and statistical analysis available to us these days, progress is rapid. We're also able to make very accurate predictions of the likely outcomes of different matings.
All of this stuff could equally easily be applied to breeding dogs, if anyone were sufficiently forward thinking to undertake to do it.
Or you could just keep on cutting the tails off, instead of breeding animals that were properly fit for purpose. At the moment the choice is yours, but it might not always be. So why not get ahead of the curve?

Where do you stand on human male circumcision at birth?
Following your and @Buchans logic, it should be banned until a constricted foreskin makes it medically unavoidable in adulthood.

 

[Apthorpe]

Where do you stand on human male circumcision at birth?
Following your and @Buchans logic, it should be banned until a constricted foreskin makes it medically unavoidable in adulthood.

Well, the answer to this is obvious. Given that neither intelligence nor scientific and medical knowledge are in short supply among the Jewish community, you won't be surprised to know that these days Jews are born with no foreskin at all. They may control the world, but they're not barbarians.

 

[Dunwaters]

Well, the answer to this is obvious. Given that neither intelligence nor scientific and medical knowledge are in short supply among the Jewish community, you won't be surprised to know that these days Jews are born with no foreskin at all. They may control the world, but they're not barbarians.

You’ve neglected to mention the other major proponents of the procedure..

 

[Apthorpe]

You’ve neglected to mention the other major proponents of the procedure..

I did. Perhaps they may barbarians who are not so amply supplied with intelligence, scientific or medical knowledge?

 

[Dunwaters]

I did. Perhaps they may barbarians who are not so amply supplied with intelligence, scientific or medical knowledge?

You may wish to reconsider that statement.
There’s a lot of evidence to support the contention that the cohort I think you are referring to were amply skilled in science, philosophy, medicine mathematics and astronomy.
They did and do have a few difficulties with some basic Christian beliefs, but that’s just life.

 

[VSS]

I find this a difficult line of reasoning to digest. It is and always has been obvious to even a child that cutting a puppy's tail off is painful and unpleasant. This is not a discovery new to science, nor reflecting a change in human nature.

I think it does reflect a change in human nature. Many things that we now know to be cruel and hurtful were previously considered acceptable.

It seems to be an equally dull attitude to presume ignorance as being the sole reason why 200-odd years of breeding effort has resulted in animals vulnerable to tail injury.

It's not the breeders of the past 200 years who were dull. They were using the techniques and knowledge available to them at the time. And docking tails was an easy and acceptable option. Like cropping ears on fighting dogs, or dubbing the wattles and comb of fighting cocks.
What is dull is the lack of uptake of modern methods among modern breeders.

.

As you say, I have been reading the thread and I am still trying to reconcile your comment #10 with your comment #37. There seems to be a logical incompatibility.

No, they're not incompatible comments, and I stand by them.
Personally, I have never felt it necessary to dock the tails of any dogs I have owned of breeds that are tradionally docked, and based on my own experience would not acvocate docking. However other posters with more experience of those types of dogs have reported damage to the tails of undocked dogs, so, based on their opinion I accept that under those conditions a shorter tail may be desirable.
I maintain that those dogs aren't truly fit for purpose if they can't do the job that they were bred for without sustaining injury or undergoing surgery, and suggest that a permanent solution lies in genetics.

". What I had hoped for was that they might be able to support the hope that either that it is possible to get spaniels without this vulnerability,

Well you've had it from myself, a livestock breeder with some knowledge of genetics, and @Buchan, a vet, that spaniels could be bred without this vulnerability. If only people were of a mind to do so.
So really, it boils down to how long will it be before docking is banned outright, and is any spaniel breeder's association sufficiently forward-thinking to use up-to-date methods of genetic evaluation in order to remain ahead of the game?

 

[Buchan]

Can I ask how many litters you have docked? Many vets are against it and have never actually seen it done; in fact by far the majority have never even bred an animal of any sort. Your only comment so far is that pups feel pain but nothing about the ongoing pain that a dog suffers with a damaged tail, does that not count? I don't have spaniels but we do have the dew claws on our whippets done, most of the noise comes from pups being pulled out of the nest not from the amputation.

I am very happy to tell you that I have docked none, and that I refused to do so in my first practice, and would have happily walked rather than dock the litter. I have seen it and (when much younger) held puppies for it. It isn't just the pain of the procedure, it's the harms that result from the docking (further pain, incontinence, risk of hernia) and depriving the dog of a vital means of communication.
I don't deny tail injuries exist and that injuries are more commonly seen in spaniels than other breeds, but equally those who are pro docking have to accept the existence of the other harms I have described. For me the risk does not justify the docking. A paper from 2010 calculated that 500 dogs would have to be docked to prevent one dog from injury, that's not great odds for me.

 

[finbar]

Can anyone on this thread remember getting their umbilical cord cut No
No memory of our first injection
Same as pups
Now you get a dog who regularly damages there tail it is constantly tucked between it’s legs they can remember pain
A beat & pick up on a few diy shoots no big money just lads getting together like minded
The amount of people who come a long to beat maybe for the first time with there dog
Dipping there toe into field sports nearly all regret no getting there spaniels docked
Story’s blood up walls licking it all night
Need a go on seen some rite good dogs but owners drop out before end of season siting tail damage
We all Carnt be wrong

 

[jall55]

I am very happy to tell you that I have docked none, and that I refused to do so in my first practice, and would have happily walked rather than dock the litter. I have seen it and (when much younger) held puppies for it. It isn't just the pain of the procedure, it's the harms that result from the docking (further pain, incontinence, risk of hernia) and depriving the dog of a vital means of communication.
I don't deny tail injuries exist and that injuries are more commonly seen in spaniels than other breeds, but equally those who are pro docking have to accept the existence of the other harms I have described. For me the risk does not justify the docking. A paper from 2010 calculated that 500 dogs would have to be docked to prevent one dog from injury, that's not great odds for me.

The paper must be a load of codswallop then if you look at the spaniel owners on here - unless of course the other 499 sit on peoples laps all day
The paper needs to examine working dogs