What have the French got against dogs with tails?

[martyn94]

It's usually a pleasure to walk down the quayside to get my baguette. But latterly I've had to front up to (or rather back up to) a couple of very overweight squat dogs with squashed-in faces and no tails at all (I think they may be pugs but I'm not a dogolist). They belong to a new wine bar (which will pretty soon go bust) and are anyway nice dogs, as almost all dogs are in my book. Their breed standard is so absurd that they would look grotesque with or without a tail but that's not their fault. I still don't much like admiring their backsides.

What struck me today was a terrier being walked, in every other respect a handsome well-balanced dog, also with no tail at all. What are people here thinking when they think they have a right to get dogs mutilated in this way?

[CPB]

Some dog breeds are bred tailless;
Boston terrier (which may have been what you saw they are pug like to the untrained eye)
French bulldogs (as above nay have been what you saw as pugs normally have a curled tail a bit like the shape of a pigs tail)
Some bulldogs
King Charles Spaniel
Rottweiler
etc

There are other shorter tail breeds like;
Australian shepherd has two lines; tailed and tail less.
Brittany Spaniel
etc

And then there are those breeds which humans doc; some for appearance which to me too is a bit of an odd one (although I write with a docked Bouvier Des Flandres at my feet, although not through my choice, she was docked by her breeder) and others who like cocker spaniels and springer spaniels are docked to prevent injuries during work (in the spaniels case to prevent tail damage, dislocation and the equivalent of scalping when hunting in cover).

[martyn94]

Some dog breeds are bred tailless;
Boston terrier (which may have been what you saw they are pug like to the untrained eye)
French bulldogs (as above nay have been what you saw as pugs normally have a curled tail a bit like the shape of a pigs tail)
Some bulldogs
King Charles Spaniel
Rottweiler
etc

There are other shorter tail breeds like;
Australian shepherd has two lines; tailed and tail less.
Brittany Spaniel
etc

And then there are those breeds which humans doc; some for appearance which to me too is a bit of an odd one (although I write with a docked Bouvier Des Flandres at my feet, although not through my choice, she was docked by her breeder) and others who like cocker spaniels and springer spaniels are docked to prevent injuries during work (in the spaniels case to prevent tail damage, dislocation and the equivalent of scalping when hunting in cover).

I hesitate to argue the toss with someone obviously more knowledgeable than me. But it seems at odds with my experience to say that King Charles Spaniels or Rottweilers (for example) are in general "bred tailless", though I believe that breeders do now try to select for minimal tails in breeds which have traditionally been docked.

You may be right that my "pugs" were French bulldogs, though they were so fat that it's hard to tell. Everything I can find, e.g. on Wikipedia, suggests that they do generally start with tails (and the breed standard, at least in the U.K., no longer implies that they should be docked). Even if they are not docked, they seem to suffer from even worse health issues than you might imagine from looking at them, but that's another story.

There certainly seems to a belief that some working dogs benefit from being docked, though there seems to be limited good evidence for this. In any event, I would bet money that the vast majority of mutilated dogs that I have seen in France have never worked in their life.