A tale of tails!
A tail is, depending on your thoughts, a wonderful thing for a dog to have or a whip to be beaten round the ankles or thighs with! Historically, some breeds used to routinely have tails docked at birth, for example the dobermans, Rottweilers and boxers. Some working dogs are still regularly docked.
From a legal perspective, routine tail docking is now illegal, and The Animal Welfare Act 2006 banned tail docking in England and Wales other than for medical reasons and with exemptions for certain types of working dog. For these exempt working dog puppies, this docking has to be carried out by a vet and they have to see certification that it will be a working dog (for example a firearms certificate/letter from a gamekeeper, a certificate on behalf of a rescue body to show it will be a rescue dog, a certificate on behalf of HMPS, a certificate on behalf of the police authority) and be satisfied that the dam is a working breed and that the puppy is less than 5 days old. The puppy also has to be microchipped. Owners of docked puppies should receive a certificate when they collect their puppy to show it has been legally docked. By law, owners are not allowed to show dogs docked in dog shows where the public pay to enter, unless they are demonstrating working ability.
There are some dogs that are born without a tail. These are called bob tailed. Breeds such as the bulldogs (English and French) and corgis would be examples of these breeds that can be bobtails. A curly or ringed tail curls over the dog’s back in a spiral or curlicue. Examples of breeds with these sort of tails would include Shiva inus and Samoyeds. A sickled tail is a curled tail that is slightly less defined. Huskies have these tails, as do other breeds associated with cold climates and it is though that these dogs can curl up with their tails wrapped around them, even covering their nose! Corkscrew tails are more spiral shaped and form as a consequence of a vertebrae deformity. Pugs and bulldogs are examples of breeds that can have corkscrew tails.
A dog’s tail is a remarkable thing. It is made of a number of small bones which are a continuation of the spinal column. The bones get progressively smaller from the base to the tip of tail. Surrounding these bones are muscles, tendons, blood vessels and nerves. All of this facilitates a wide range of movement in a tail. Most animals that walk on four legs have a tail - not just mammals but reptiles too.
A tail has many functions. One of which, and what most people think of when they think of a tail function, is that of communication. A dog wagging its tail could be communicating that it is happy. However, tails are so much more than wags - crocodiles for example will use them for propulsion! And a dogs tail wagging means more that you might expect. How the dog wags the tail determines what communication is taking place, a slow wag low down can mean something quite different to a very fast high wag. A dog’s tail placement can also be useful in determining their mood or feelings; for example, a high tail carriage usually means that they are happy, confident or comfortable, whereas a low tail carriage usually means that they are scared, worried, or in pain. A dog’s tail placement can also be useful in determining if and where an injury might have occurred. They also have a physical role. A tail provides a counterbalance for dogs when they are turning, both on land and in water, so it helps with balance and quick movements. If you watch a dog swimming, whilst a lot of the propulsion is coming from the limbs, the tail is often being used as a rudder. They also help raise the dog’s rear end when it is jumping which aids in rotating the dogs front end downwards after the reach the highest point of the trajectory, so that they land on their front feet. Dogs will use whatever portion of tail they have for this counterbalance, but the shorter the tail, the more acute the angle at which the tail is bent when turning. Seeing pictures of the same breed taking jumps and turning - as often occurs in agility shows - with and without a tail, really demonstrates the difference in the forces being put through these dogs’ bodies.
Those without a tail have to bank, or angle, their bodies sideways - considerably more so than a dog with a tail, because of the lack of counterbalance from the tail. This torque puts considerable force through the whole body, and whilst the longterm physical effects are not known, it could be hypothesised that increased forces through the body in what would be a biomechanically different way to that the body was naturally designed for, could lead to a higher risk of injury.
So should we be routinely docking tails in the specific breeds that are allowed to be docked. Again, my feeling is that ideally we would be preserving the full tail given the myriad of benefits it provides to the dog, both from a communication and physical perspective. Whilst we don’t have clear research about the physical effects of a lack of tail to the rest of the body, logic would suggest that increased forces through the body in a variety of situations could well increase the risk of injury, when the whole point of docking was to try and prevent injury in these working breeds.