Cosmetic surgery ban for pets
West Hollywood’s mayor plans to introduce legislation that the AP calls cosmetic surgery — for pets. What does the ban really entail?
West Hollywood’s mayor plans to introduce a motion Monday that would prohibit ear cropping, tail docking, debarking, defanging and other surgical procedures performed on animals for “noncurative” reasons.
I don’t think those items are necessarily cosmetic. Yes, tail and ear cropping can be but you can blame those problems on breed registries. Debarking and defanging sound cruel to me. I don’t have any of these procedures performed on my dogs and never will. In my case, they are unnecessary. However, contrary to this notion that it’s cosmetic, some procedures do serve a purpose. Some hunting dogs have ears and tails cropped to avoid getting tangled in brush and thickets. And some of these procedures have their origin in dog fighting. Pit Bull ears and tails were cropped so that fighting dogs had nothing to grab a hold of. Dog fighting is now illegal and folks continued this tradition for appearance. Some Pit and Molosser owners who engage in wild boar hunting still crop ears and tails so the wild hogs can’t grab hold of the dog and to avoid injury from brush and such.
The state of California tried this a while back but it did not happen.
February 9th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
A ban in West Hollywood? So people who want to do such things to their pets just drive a couple miles extra to go to a vet outside town limits…
February 9th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
I saw a debarked dog once, right in the middle of a urban neighborhood. This was a big dog and he barked constantly, and if he hadn’t been debarked, the neighbors probably would have tarred and feathered the dog’s owners and burned their house down. The dog didn’t seem to mind and was happily barking away, rarf! rarf! rarf! just the volume was way down.