There was mention by Clare Balding of people saying that Cruft's is ghastly and cruel. The show had a woman from the KC on saying how hard they work to ensure nothing but the best treatment for the animals, and that canine welfare is at its heart. She didn't exactly defend the law on tail-docking, though, and the KC seems to have taken a typically woolly stance on it. Gundogs will be exempt, so I suppose anyone who has a gundog breed, even if it only sits in a shiny 4x4 in Kensington, will insist their tails are cut off.
I don't know if the Scandinavian countries which outlawed this some 20 years ago don't do any hunting with dogs, but if they do, it would be interesting to know if having a tail has proved an enormous hindrance to their work?
Equally interesting, then, are the arguments - now presumably fatuous - that were put up to defend docking. Oh, the wild animal could grab the dog's tail, it got in the way of bushes, it could be tangled up in branches, blah, blah. But why would a true hunting dog - a Saluki - maintain its tail, while a bird-retrieving dog (not battling for its life, presumably, with a dead mallard) need its tail cut off? Can our breeders help out? But, I digress: tail-docking was done in Roman times because of DOG TAX! If you docked your mutt's tail and called him a hunting dog, you paid no tax. If he retained his wagger, you did. So, all about saving a few ducats and nothing at all to do with the mechanics of swimming, chasing, or retrieving. And long after the departure of the Romans and their docked dogs, we've kept the practice.
h34r: 
