Some of the working breeds are better off without a tail, since they get it stepped on, hung up in stuff, and just generally beat to shit by virtue of them *BEING* working dogs. Far better, IMO, to have an aussie cattle dog's, ferinstance, taken off once, very early in life, rather than in sections throughout its life as he keeps breaking chunks off it from repeated injuries. Hell, I even knew a Lab like that once - she wagged so hard as her owner was leaving to get groceries that it looked like she'd smacked the end of her tail against the wall hard enough that she split the tip of her tail and painted the walls with blood splatters as she ran around the house, apparently wagging all the way. When the owner got home, talk about looking like a murder scene... Done with something like a chainsaw, maybe... On about 15 people or so! It *LOOKED* much worse than it actually was, thankfully. The actual wound was less than half an inch long, but since it was right at the tip, every wag must have been about like slinging a wet towel around. No amount of bandaging could keep her from breaking it open again and again and having the tip go putrid - sometimes in as little as a couple hours. She eventually recovered, but by the time she did, she was down to a dobie-stub. Turns out that's the way we should have gone from the start, but hard to foresee that kind of outcome. It took multiple "take another joint off the tailbone to get rid of the gangrene and try to sew the end shut - Again. OK, here's a bottle of a different kind of kidney-kicking antibiotics - you know the drill..." incidents to get her to the stub that finally healed. Would have been kinder (had we been able to predict it) to just take it in one quick snip at the start.
