Taking Dogs Seriously Marie Fox Summary

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Faryn Griffin Christina Hitchcock Composition II 22 October 2017 In “Taking Dogs Seriously?” Marie Fox states that “the practice [of tail docking] entails cutting or crushing skin, bone, cartilage, muscle and nerves of the tail of a puppy less than a week old.” This common procedure began in ancient Rome. The surgery can be performed in two different ways. One way includes using a scalpel to surgically remove part of or the entire tail. The second way is to use a rubber rings (latex bands), which are tight around the tail and causes sloughing (to remove or shed dead skin) of the tail (“Cosmetic Tail Docking: an overview of abuse and report of an interesting case”). The Romans believed that by docking their tails it could prevent diseases, …show more content…

Depending on a tails position, it can mean a wide variety of things. If the tail is raised higher, it might mean confidence or aggression. If a tail is lowered, it might mean fear or submission. A very common meaning for a wiggling tail is excitement, playfulness or comfort (Leaver & Reichmen, 378). Another way dogs use their tails as a form of communication is through hunting. For example, some dogs that are used in hunting, specifically bird dogs, will point out where exactly the birds are located. Their tails stick straight in the air to give the owners or hunter a que on where the birds are at. Their tails are also used to communicate with other dogs. In “Behavioural responses of Canis familiaris to different tail lengths of a remotely-controlled life size dog replica”, S.D.A. Leaver and T.E. Reimchen use a study to experiment how dogs would react to another's whose tail was short/moving, long/moving, short/still and finally long/still. They created a life sized model dog that had black fur, somewhat like a Labrador Retriever. Their study concluded that the dogs smaller than the model were suspicious. However, they were suspicious to the model no matter what size the tail was and whether it was moving or not. The dogs that were larger than the model stopped more times than not when the tail was short. The main conclusion from the study was that “results, thus, provide that the signal communicated by …show more content…

In fact, 42% of people thought that cropped ears and short tails were apart of a dog's genetics (Katelyn E. Mills, et al., 9). Both cropped ears and short tails happen because people get to choose whether or not they want those characteristics in a dog. Now, some breeds do have “bobbed tails” that are in the offspring of certain breeds (Welfare Implications of Tail Docking-Dogs). To denounce the act of tail docking, people need to become more educated on the dangers and negative affects that come along with it. Nothing will happen if not enough people know about the

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