Reply to comments about prophylactic tail docking.

Before I reply, I’d just like to reiterate the fact that this isn’t a topic I know a great deal about. This is just my opinion based on the facts that I was given during the debate. It isn’t something that I myself have researched.

Firstly, I don’t advocate the cessation of immunisation of babies. Nor do I advocate the immunisation of puppies. I do however, think that there is a great difference between an injection and (what in my opinion constitutes as) unnecessary mutilation. This however, is beside the point. As Emma mentioned during the debate, the subject of the debate was the prophylactic docking of dogs tails, not immunisation, castration or any other procedure.

I shall expand upon ‘I don’t think that anyone left with a point of view that was different to the one they arrived with’. As far as I was aware, the only people at the debate who were in favour of docking were dog breeders. They were there to argue their case. They were not there to be persuaded otherwise, or to take what the ‘against’ side had on board. I’m a psychology student, and the dog breeders present at the debate fit beautifully into Leon Festinger’s (1957) Cognitive dissonance theory. If a dog breeder continued to dock the tails of their dogs despite evidence that this practice was wrong, that breeder would then experience discomfort. The breeder would then seek to reduce this discomfort, which could be done by either changing their behaviour (stop docking the tails)or by coming up with reasons to justify their behaviour (believing that they are actually reducing the pain the dog will experience in the long run).

The fact is, there wasn’t a single point raised that (again, in my opinion) justified prophylactic tail docking. One gentleman who was a member of BASC even stood up to say that he took his undocked dog on shoots with him and had no problems.

As I’ve said, this isn’t a topic which I’m passionate about, and I am prepared to be convinced that tail docking should be allowed, if someone gives me a good argument. As of yet that hasn’t happened.

Mr McCullough, your point about a rise in Scandinavia makes no sense as far as I can see it. Of course clinical amputations will have gone up! If we just consider the breeds whose tails are docked, prior to the ban there will have been a 0% rate of tail amputations because the dogs didn’t have any tails to amputate. After the ban, yes some dogs will require clinical amputations due to injury – no one has denied this. But what is ‘alarming’? (apart from emotive?) Exactly what percentage of working dogs which were traditionally docked require amputations?