I atleast know that ear docking is a common practice for mastiff and bully breed owners, just because they tend to get allot of hygiene issues with all the loose skin. Docking the ears just makes for less maintenance long term.Just out of curiosity, Esox...is it also illegal to chop off dogs' ears and tails in "blighty"? I recall my father explaining to me when I was a young child how, when he was a youngster in the "Old Country"(rural Ukraine, in this case), dogs' ears were usually left alone, but the tails were often removed by the simple expedient of biting them off...the biting being done by the dog's owner. I was horrified.
Q: "Why would they do that, Dad?"
A: "Veterinarians were not even in existence then, not where I grew up, anyway."
Q: "No, no, I mean...why would anybody want to cut off a dog's tail?"
A: "It looks better; everybody did it..."
Oh, okay...that explains it...
The last dog which my father owned, and which I inherited and kept until her death a number of years later, was a beautiful little MinPin...my wife always referred to her as a Lhapso Fatso...which was also, coincidentally, the only dog which my father ever purchased, as opposed to all the rescues we had as I was growing up. She had her ears and tail "done", and I am pretty sure that he bought her because he liked the look, but knew that I would be aghast if he had it done to a pup that came to him au naturel.
"Normal" is a dangerously weird word.
As for docking of the tail I see that commonly in large dog breeds that can have tails as thick as a baseball bat. I imagines it's so ya don't end up with bruised legs from just petting the dog.
My dog Cadee had both cropped ears and tail ( not our choice, we got her as a rescue from an abusive owner that was running a puppy mill). The only downside to cropping the ears that we noticed was that ppl would be afraid to go near her because they couldn't read what mood she was in with the lack of ear signals. She was such a sweet heart tho, lol she'd turn into a puddle on the floor everytime someone pet her. I still miss that dog, she was by far the best dog I ever had. She was a pure bred cane Corso mastiff btw.
