Why Cropping a Dog's Ears Should Be Illegal

To understand why ear cropping came to be a practice, we have to take a look at it's history. It is believed to have started with the Romans, in a time when antibiotics were not available and cuts an animal suffered in a fight with another dog could prove deadly due to infections. Thus, parts of the dog like the tail and ears were cut off early as a preventive measure. Later it became widespread due to the acceptance of Lamarck's theory of acquired characteristics, which proposed that the traits that a parent acquired in it's lifetime would be passed on to it's offspring, and thus dog breeders in his time cropped the ears of their dogs, believing that this would cause their offspring to have short ears as well.

Nowadays, with the advances that we have made in medical sciences, an infection is highly unlikely to be deadly. Dogs are increasing being kept more as house pets rather than guard dogs, reducing the likelihood that a dog is going to get involved in fights on a regular basis. Lamarck's theory has also been disproved by the discovery of DNA. One notable experiment that disproves Lamarck's theory involved the cutting off of tails off generations of mice, with the end result being that no reduction in the length of their tails were discovered. So while ear cropping may have been a necessary measure when it first started due to the beliefs and resources available at that time, it is now no longer necessary.

Proponents of ear cropping claim that while infections may no longer be deadly, ear cropping does prevent infections. The main flaw in this argument is that the ear cropping standard is not being applied consistently across all breeds. Toy dogs like poodles are never subjected to ear cropping, rather it is ¡°guard dog¡± breeds like Dobermans and boxers that frequently undergo ear cropping. Are proponents saying that only Dobermans and boxers suffer from ear infections?

Another argument that is put forward is that owners should be allowed to choose how their dogs should look like. . The problem with this argument is that currently, there are dog breeders who crop the ears of an entire litter of puppies before they even meet a prospective owner. Owners are not given a choice between ¡°cropped¡± and ¡°natural¡±, only ¡°cropped¡±. This also seems to me to be just a lazy way out for dog breeders. It's like saying, ¡°We can't be bothered to breed dogs with short ears, so we'll just perform surgery on dogs to create short ears.¡±

And now I come to the argument whether ear cropping causes pain and trauma in a puppy. While it is argued that for a successful ear crop, puppies show no apparent signs of having any trauma in the later stages of their life, I could also say the same for babies. Despite the various scrapes, cuts and falls they get into, babies tend to grow up into strong, healthy individuals with no recollections of the various mishaps they got into as babies. That still doesn't give us an excuse to poke a baby with a needle since it won't have any trauma and there might be benefits to poking it with a needle that we are not sure can be proved. The crux of the matter that we should be looking at is that like all other surgeries, there are risks and complications involved. Why should we subject a dog to surgery, with all it's risks and complications, followed by months of discomfort while it's ears are being healed and stretched to stand upright?

In conclusion, ear cropping should be made illegal. It is an unnecessary practice. If we want dogs with short ears, breed them.