Do I need to dock/clip the tail of my Rottweiler puppy

What kind of cages, and why? That is something people do when they are away from home at work all day, and their puppies are too young to be trustworthy. It is your job to housebreak your dogs: to train them that it is only okay to urinate and defecate outside the house. After about six months they should be completely trained. If you don't know someone who can explain the method for housebreaking, there is a lot of information on the internet. It's a little too long to post here.

In any case, no dog should be confined to a cage (we call them kennels, not cages), except when being shipped to a new location. Dogs need to be active, especially a Rottweiler. Confining him in a kennel every day is cruel and uncomfortable, and he will react by not liking you.

It's very important for your two dogs to become bonded companions, because they are members of the same family. One will assume dominance (usually the large one but sometimes dogs surprise us) but that's not a problem. You need to introduce them to each other and teach them to play together while they are still puppies. If they develop bad habits when they're young, it will be extremely difficult to correct.

Dogs reach about 90% of their adult size and weight in one year. In six months he will be roughly 75%.

Absolutely not! Birds' bones are hollow to make them light enough to fly, even though chickens don't fly any more. This makes them very fragile, so when the dog chews on them they splinter, and pieces get stuck in their throat. Dogs can die from this. Never give a dog a bird bone, raw or cooked.

Many things were once considered proper, and we now realize they were cruel and evil. Remember slavery? Honor killings? Female mutilation? Polygamy? Just because our ancestors did something does not make it right.

Tail docking is not the worst thing you can do to a dog, and I do not actively campaign against it because I only have a finite amount of time and energy. I concentrate on more urgent problems like ending war, racism, and discrimination against women. Nonetheless I do agree that tail docking is wrong and I do not respect people who do it.

Yes, he will use an anesthetic so the dog feels no pain during surgery, and if he does a very good job the dog will feel only little discomfort for a short time after the surgery.

But it's still a stupid, pointless thing to do. The practice was initiated because Rottweilers were used for work on farms and their tails would get caked with mud, making them heavy and uncomfortable, and even causing infection. This was 2,000 years ago. You are not going to do this with your dog, so you have no reason to do something that was done 2,000 years ago.

It was started by the Romans. They also kept slaves, treated women as second-class citizens, and killed people who were not faithful to Jesus.

Are you going to do those things too?

We will all believe this when I see it! Preparing a dog for the show circuit is grueling work and a tremendous commitment of time and money. You have to groom him constantly so his fur is perfect, and you have to train him to walk properly, sit absolutely still, not bark, and allow the judge to touch various parts of his body to check his bone structure--and all of this while lots of people are watching and making noise!

You don't strike me as a person who has enough self-discipline to do this.

If the Malaysian Kennel Association does not require Rottweiler tails to be docked, then the judges don't care and they will not reject him for it. The American Kennel Club does require it, so our Rottweiler breeders have no choice. You do!

Not if it's not required by the association.

American Kennel Club.

You don't have to remind me that my country is a curious mix of highly advanced civilization and utter barbarity.

It's just inertia. Everyone is used to seeing them that way. Just like in the early 20th century, everyone was used to seeing female humans covered from neck to toe and they were outraged when they started wearing more fashionable, comfortable clothing.

That's not true. Horses have been bred for about five thousand years to be strong enough to carry passengers without discomfort or injury.

During that time we have only succeeded in developing one breed of dog that has no tail, the Pembroke Welsh Corgi, and even they are not consistently tailless.

That's like saying that since it is torture to take a dolphin out of the water, the kindest thing I could do for you is to throw you into the ocean.

Besides, as I said before, horses have been fully adapted to riding, in several thousand generations of selective breeding.

 

The problem young horses have is that they are pack-social animals (like humans, dogs, gorillas, lions and several other species) so they all have the alpha (pack leader) instinct to a greater or lesser extent. Young animals of pack-social species usually play dominance games as preparation for adulthood. A horse would automatically resist the domination of any other creature, but to be dominated by a tiny one like a human is very embarrassing, so they resist it very strenuously.

Full-size horses bred specifically for riding weigh 1,500-2,200lb (700-1,000kg). To carry a creature on their back that has only 10-15% of their own mass is no hardship, especially since they've been "designed" for it. The equipment and protective gear humans carry in many sports weighs more than that.

There are hundreds of dog breeds. If you pick any one, the probability is high that no one at all on SciForums has one. Lhasa Apsos are very popular in America because they're not very active and don't mind being left alone for long periods, and as far as I know I'm the only person here who has one. Fortunately Mrs. Fraggle and I have ten of them, so we're doing our best to keep the average up.

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Now that has got to be the most bizarre hybrid I've ever encountered. We have had both.

• Maltese are highly intelligent, very energetic and agile, have very good eyesight (for a dog, about 20/80 on the human scale), love everybody, work as circus performers, like lots of company, and regard you as lord and master.
• Lhasa Apsos have the IQ of a sack of hammers, can sit on a sofa for hours, are legally blind, love their family but are suspicious of everyone else, work as watchdogs, don't play well with others and tolerate long periods of solitude, and regard you as a really nice roommate who buys all the food.

In other words, Maltese are dogs for dog lovers, Lhasa Apsos are dogs for cat people.

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