Editor’s note: Dr. Lee Pickett has retired, but Creators continues to distribute columns from her archive. This one is from 2022. Q: Our Rottweiler has a docked tail, as do many dogs in the U.S. While ...

At one time, dogs weren’t pets. Instead, they had jobs and consequently had a docked tail. Dogs worked on farms and in the military and helped with hunting, fighting, ratting, and baiting. That’s not ...

The issue now is over the length of the tail remaining after docking. In the past decade some breeders started cutting tails closer to the quick, possibly in response to judges who found the shorter ...