The Manitoba Veterinary Medical Association (MVMA) has passed a strong new motion banning members from docking the tails of dogs. This cruel and painful cosmetic procedure, performed on puppies to meet outdated “breed standards”, involves the routine amputation of all or part of a dog’s tail. This not only causes severe pain but can also lead to long-term complications. Given these serious risks and the lack of a benefit to dogs, tail docking is opposed by a growing list of veterinary associations and animal welfare groups. Around the world, more jurisdictions are enacting laws to ban this harmful practice.
The MVMA has now added tail docking to a list of other cruel procedures that members are prohibited from performing, including ear cropping dogs and declawing cats.
Strengthening Protections Against Animal Mutilation
While this move is cause for celebration for dog lovers across Manitoba, it is important for the province to follow up by clearly banning these practices in law. This will ensure strong penalties are in place to prevent breeders who are not MVMA members from continuing to dock dogs’ tails. In 2018, Nova Scotia passed a strong animal protection law banning tail docking, ear cropping, devocalization of dogs, and cat declawing. Anyone who mutilates animals for cosmetic reasons in that province could face up to six months in jail and a $25,000 fine for a first offence. Similar laws are in place in Quebec and PEI.
The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and many European countries have also banned tail docking and other unnecessary cosmetic surgeries on animals—a position supported by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association. Within Canada, veterinary associations in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, PEI, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and New Brunswick also prohibit vets from performing cosmetic procedures including docking the tails of dogs or declawing cats. Ontario remains the outlier, with no restrictions on cosmetic mutilations.
Ending Cosmetic Mutilations for Good
Despite a growing consensus that mutilating animals for human aesthetic preferences should be outlawed, the so-called “breed standards” published by the Canadian Kennel Club still call for dogs’ body parts to be sliced off. Many dog breeders dock tails themselves, with some attaching tight elastic bands to the tails of newborn puppies, cutting off blood flow and killing the appendage. Animal Justice applauds the MVMA for its strong, progressive, and science-based move to protect dogs and puppies from needless suffering! Now is the time for the province of Manitoba to modernize its Animal Care Act to make all cosmetic mutilations of dogs and cats a thing of the past.
