Kim for the most part i agree with you. i have said the same thing about removing dew claws. some feel that they SHOULD be removed because its painful IF the dog rips it off... but i have owned many many dogs in my lifetime and never had one rips its dew claw off.... i even had a dog with double dews.... and never a hint of a problem.
I feel the same way about dewclaws. We do not remove them any longer either. I feel that dewclaws play a very important role in the lives of dogs, in movement, play, grasping objects, etc. I've had two nail injuries over the last 15 years in dogs. Neither of them was in a dewclaw. We've never had a dewclaw injury either.
but while preparing for the IF factor lets remove a whole of other things... reproductive organs MIGHT get cancer - thats the scare tactic people use to convince the naive to spay and neuter.... whats wrong with just quoting the statistics of unwanted pets? i've also owned a lot of intact dogs and never once had one develop cancer... or very many puppies for that matter...
Yep, I'm nodding my head with you. I have done a lot of research among spaying/neutering in pets, and there are just as many problems caused BY these procedures as there have been by not doing them at all. Our main reason for promoting spay/neuter is that most people, sadly, are simply too irresponsible to keep their dogs fully supervised to prevent matings. We've also had intact dogs for years, with no cancer developed. And in 15 years we've only ever had one case of pyometra, and that one case was suspected to be caused by a pre-existing issue after the female had prematurely delivered a litter in which all pups died, and she was experience hormonal issues.
lets also remove ears because they could get ripped, and/or get ear infections, tails can break, or get badly cut and cause infection.... toe nails sometimes give problems because the quick grows to the very tip end so everytime you get the dog's nails clipped he bleeds like a stuck pig AND it hurts! so lets have them declawed while we're at it.
LMBO. Now I'm just laughing. We've never cropped a dog, and never will. And I have to say, in just 6-7 years in Schnauzers thus far, we've never had ONE dog with an ear infection. Go figure.
and whiskers! now... i'm not sure WHY show dog people shave the whiskers off their dogs.. but i'm sure there is a very good reason for it.
I don't get it either, we've never intentionally removed whiskers on a dog. The only case in point might be during grooming (normal grooming, not show grooming) if we are clippering the face, and it's just lost in the hair, but I know what you mean about intentionally removing the whiskers for show, I think it's silly.
honestly its pure ignorance on some parts... people want to prevent injury... emphasis on prevent because if you are hunting and your dog has his ear and half the skin on his face ripped off while you're out in the middle of buginfestednowhere then. ... that was a lot of pain you could have prevented..
I agree it is ignorance on some parts. And I do feel there are some people that genuinely believe it's better for the dogs. I also know there are many breeders who hate doing it, but yet they continue to do it because it's "in the standard". It's in our standard too, but the only way to make a change is to actually take the initiative and DO it. We're not going to let a written word about a body part affect our decision to do what we feel is right for our pets. A dog is a dog, with or without a tail. And after the experience I have had, a dog is NOT a true dog without a tail. I cannot believe the differences I see in expression between our tailed and docked dogs. It's simply amazing how much that tail communicates to people and other dogs. There are others that are just so used to doing it, it would be hard to admit there might be fallout from the procedure, or that the "past" isn't necessarily what's good for our dogs now. There are yet others who would be happy to stop if the standard changed, but who do it for show because it's "what everyone else" does. So it's hard to make generalizations, and I don't try to do that.