Ear and tail docking involve surgically removing part of a dog’s ears or tail. This practice, which has been around for centuries, originally aimed to prevent injuries in hunting and working dogs.

I’m about to get a Doberman puppy. The breeder gave me some recommendations on ear cropping, but I’m worried about the cost. Is this medically necessary? Although some breeders recommend tail docking ...

At one time, dogs weren’t pets. Instead, they had jobs and consequently had a docked tail. Dogs worked on farms and in the military and helped with hunting, fighting, ratting, and baiting. That’s not ...

Q: Our Rottweiler has a docked tail, as do many dogs in the U.S. While watching a British dog show on television, I noticed that all the show dogs had natural, undocked tails. Why? A: Many countries ...

Canada’s province of Quebec recently passed an animal welfare and safety act that will ban some cosmetic surgeries on dogs and cats. Effective Feb. 10, 2024, non-essential cosmetic procedures — ...

Two dying puppies dropped off at a Philadelphia animal hospital led to a Pennsylvania SPCA investigation that rescued 12 more dogs from two city properties, at one of which animals were undergoing ...

Dogs that have undergone medical procedures to alter the shape of their ears or the length of their tails seem to acquire a certain combative appearance and there is some new data which suggests that ...

A new European Union regulation on the welfare and traceability of dogs and cats includes a provision that allows tail ...

A couple have been banned from keeping animals for the next three years after pleading guilty to docking the tail of their four-month-old rottweiler puppy. Sign up for the top news stories every day ...

Editor’s note: Dr. Lee Pickett has retired, but Creators continues to distribute columns from her archive. This one is from 2022. Q: Our Rottweiler has a docked tail, as do many dogs in the U.S. While ...