Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) asks The Veterinary Council of India (VCI) and Kennel Clubs to stop promoting this cruel practice with immediate effect
  
Acting on a petition by Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO), the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) has issued an advisory stating that non- therapeutic tail docking and cropping of ears amounts to mutilation and constitutes cruelty to animals and is a punishable offence as per the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.


The statutory body has directed the veterinary council of India to stop promoting this cruel practice and has asked the Kennel Clubs not to register dogs whose tails have been docked and ears clipped. Tails and ears of 2-5 days old pups of certain breeds such as Boxer, Doberman, Cocker Spaniel, Great Danes etc are cut. Tails of dogs have many useful functions, including maintaining balance and body language. If a tail were not useful to a dog, natural selection would have eliminated it long ago. The fact is that, with very rare exceptions, most breeds of dogs are born with tails. There is considerable scientific evidence that docking can lead to complications, including death of the pup.
  
Globally, in many countries like Australia, England, France, Netherlands, South Africa and several others, cosmetic docking of tails or cropping ears of dogs is banned. In England and Wales, ear cropping is illegal, and no dog with cropped ears can take part in any Kennel Club event.
 
We appreciate alertness of Snehal Bhavsar of FIAPO member organization- Gujrat SPCA who brought this issue to our notice. The advisory would not have been in its present shape without persuasion by FIAPO chairperson- Dr. Chinny Krishna (Blue Cross of India ) , FIAPO trusteeNorma Alvares (PFA Goa) and FIAPO Governing board member- Ms.Anjali Sharma (NOIDA SPCA) who continuously pushed the matter with Animal Welfare Board of India chairperson. We highly value sensitivity shown by the AWBI chairperson Gen. R.M.Kharb. A big thanks to our volunteers Helen Christy and Mridu Minocha who gathered information on the antiquated practices and helped us to prepare strong arguments in this case.
  
This advisory is a significant step forward, which will not only save pups from cosmetic surgeries but will provide AWOs, SPCAs and animal activists the necessary tool for bringing the perpetrators of this practice to book. However, for this advisory to be effective will require AWOs, SPCAs and animal activists to gear up and initiate action against individuals who continue to indulge in these practices. The actions that you as a concerned citizen can take are described below.

How can you help?
Your role will be to spread this news rapidly and extensively with a wider audience such as vets, kennel clubs, animal welfare organizations, media people, animal lovers and general public so that they know about the truth behind cutting tails and ears of 2-5 day old pups. Share this with:

1. Media people so that it reaches wider audience
   
2. Post it on animal related blogs/ websites
   
3. Share on facebook page/ twitter accounts
   
4. Personally, share this with pet owners, animal lovers, friends and family
   
5. Print  copy and give to your local veterinarian
6. Print a copy or forward it to the local SPCA and request them to display it for public to read

If you still find someone continuing to dock tails and/or crop ears, here is what you can do:

1. File a written complaint against the veterinarian, if you know who he/she is, with Veterinary Council of India at  [email protected] ; 011-26184149, 011-26184354. Additionally, AWBI can be informed at  [email protected] , so that the AWBI can take up the issue with the Veterinary Council.
2. Lodge a complaint at the nearest police station, either individually, or through an AWO / SPCA under Sections 428, & 429 of the Indian Penal Code (Section 428, 429, IPC: Mischief by killing or maiming animal ) . Show them the copy of AWBI circular (attached) where tail docking and ear cropping is notified as cruelty to pups.
3. In the case of extremely obstinate, unreasonable persons who do not see reason, file a complaint in Court under Section 11 of the PCA, preferably through an AWO / SPCA."

Please contact Khushboo Gupta ( [email protected] ) for any clarification or help. Please see below a note on what’s wrong with tail docking and ear cropping.
There is a need for all of us to act as crusaders for animal reforms in India and it will only be possible by putting in joint effort to implement such progressive orders in our individual capacities.Every effort counts and every action will help little pups to escape mutilation!
Click  here to know what's wrong with tail docking and ear cropping?
!! FINALLY ALL DOGS WILL BE ABLE TO WAG THEIR TAILS !!

One minute Badmaash was walking on the road in Gurgaon's DLF Phase III. The next minute she was gone. Her owner Amitabh — who'd been walking a few paces behind her — kept calling for her but the golden retriever just couldn't be found. He spent a troubled night, then began to put up flyers asking people whether they had seen Badmaash. It was an urgent appeal as she was epileptic. Amitabh also got in touch with NGOs which help find homes for lost and abandoned dogs. They told him this was nothing new. Pedigreed dogs keep getting stolen from around the city, they said.What is behind this spate of dog disappearances? The obvious reason is that they're expensive and can fetch a good price. A pedigreed labrador pup, for example, will sell for as much as Rs 18,000, while a pug — the breed made famous by the Hutch ad — will sell for upto Rs 25,000. A stolen pup will sell for about half as much, a neat sum. According to Gautam Barat, treasurer of the animal NGO Friendicoes, "Dogs nowadays are mostly stolen from areas like Gurgaon and Noida because it's easier to transport them out of the city from the suburbs."
He blames the thefts on the fact that the divide between the rich and the poor is getting wider, and that the people who live in the villages around which these satellite townships sprung up see the pedigreed dogs as valuable possessions which they can sell for a tidy profit if they can lay their hands on them."If a pup is stolen, it is sold," says Barat. "If an adult dog is stolen, he or she is crossed and the litter that ensues is sold."The police response to the missing dogs is usually a curt "Should we look for missing dogs or missing persons?" This makes it difficult to put a finger on the exact number of thefts that have taken place so far. But dog lovers like Madhu Goyal — who helps find homes for lost and abandoned dogs — says she sends out four to five emails every month saying somebody has lost a dog. Other associations send out a similar number, say people in the industry. Shampa Dasgupta, who helps run happytails.com, a website that is involved in finding homes for dogs, says the gangs that steal dogs have done their homework. "A neighbourhood is first recced, and the dogs that are targeted are the ones that might be walked without a leash or one that might be walked by a domestic help who seems careless. Then the dog is snatched, usually by two men on a motorcycle."Source: TOI

 Since humans have no tails to wag, they need to look at their best friend for signs they feel happy, scientists say. Researchers at Azabu University in Japan found that dogs have become so attuned to living with humans that they even distinguish a smile, even on the faces of some strangers. Dogs, they said, have an innate ability to recognise each other’s' expressions, but over time they also learned to interpret faces of a completely different species — humans.

For the study, the team trained nine pet dogs using photos of their owners, who were smiling in some of the photos and looking neutral in the others. The dogs were trained to touch their nose to photos of their owner's smiling face. These dogs were then shown photo pairs of smiling and blank-expression faces of unfamiliar people as well as of their owners. When shown photo pairs of either their owner or a stranger who was the same gender as their owner, the dogs selected the smiling faces most of the time, it was found.
Source: TOI

How do dogs learn to beg for food or behave badly, particularly when they are not paid any attention? It's a combination of specific cues, context and previous experience, says researchers. How your pet comes to respond to the level of people's attentiveness tells us something about the way dogs think and learn about the human behaviour, says university of Florida's Monique Udell, who conducted the study with her team. their research suggests it is down to a combination of specific cues, context and previous experience, reports the journal Learning and Behaviour.

Recent work has identified a remarkable range of human-like social behaviours including dogs’ ability to respond to human body language, verbal commands, and to attentional states, according to Florida statement. Udell and team carried out two experiments comparing the performance of pet dogs, shelter dogs and wolves given the opportunity to beg for food from either an attentive person or from a person unable to see the animal. They showed the first time that wolves, like domestic dogs, are capable of begging successfully for food by approaching the attentive human. This demonstrates that both species have the capacity to behave in accordance with a human's attentional status.

Source: TOI