842 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Deo. 21, 1805. 



In the revised edition of Stonehenge, bearing date 1883, 

 n the scale of points ears are valued at 5 out of a total 

 of 100, and it is further stated that the ears are always 

 rimmed for show purposes. At its greatest, the penalty 

 or uncropped ears in those days of cropping was trifling. 



Mr. Brereton's prediction that in all likelihood there 

 will be two specimens of natural ear evolved, giving rise 

 o endless confusion and wrangling, is a direct accusation 

 of incompetency against his club rather than a sound plea 

 against cropping. What is a specialty club for? Breeds 

 have been perfected from a much greater diversity of 

 parts than differences of ears, and of the breeds so per- 

 fected the bull-terrier is not the least. As for confusion 

 and wrangling, they are irrelevant to the subject. 



His last plea, that it is their opinion that in a few gen- 

 erations, if cropping is persisted in, nature if so aided will 

 stop reverting to such useless and unsightly appendages 

 as most bull-terriers' ears naturally are, is not at all easy 

 to understand. What is meant by aiding nature? since 

 cropping is a perversion of nature. Moreover, what is 

 common to a type is not reversion. If he means that in a 

 few years dogs will be bred with ears ready cropped, he 

 ignores the fact that mutilations are rarely inherited. The 

 great Dane has been cropped from time immemorial and 

 still there is no sign of nature deferring to the whims of 

 men. 



Mr. Brereton's statement that the English Kennel Club 

 now having the anti- cropping rule in force is an added rea- 

 son why cropping should be left alone here at present.as the 

 English breeders have yet to establish the ear, is most il- 

 ogical and inconsequential. After the ear had been 

 established in England, granting that an ear is to be 

 established at all instead of a type of ear, American 

 breeders would have made no progress in the meantime 

 and they would still have before them the task that Mr. 

 Brereton endeavors to evade now. On the whole he has 

 made a most illogical plea, begging the question entirely 

 and evading all discussion of the real issue, its cruelty and 

 its off ensiveness to fanciers at large and the public in par- 

 ticular. 



Mr. Clifford Wood. 



Mr. Wood predicts that if the rule against cropping be 

 passed it would result in the general abandonment of the 

 breeding of great Danes in thiB country. 



It is difficult to imagine that depriving the fancier of 

 the privilege of cutting off his dog's ears should have such 

 far-reaching and serious results. The dog's nobility of 

 character, majestic mien, activity, symmetry, usefulness 

 and fidelity count for nothing as against his ears being 

 cutoff. Is the pleasure entirely in owning a mutilated 

 dog? Does this artificial feature of the ears transcend in 

 importance all else combined? The affection for the dog 

 which rests on such a plea has not a very genuine lodge- 

 ment in the bosom of an owner who advances it. It has 

 more of the flavor of dollars and cents than true sports- 

 manship. 



Mr. Wood further sets forth that "the great Danes im- 

 ported to improve that breed of dog are imported from 

 Germany and not from England. It is idle to claim that 

 the prohibition of showing cropped dogs in this country 

 will produce any modification of the practice in Germany, 

 where the dog has been cropped from time immemorial. 

 If the proposed resolution prevails no one will import 

 for the improvement of the breed." 



So far as what Germany may or may not do in relation to 

 the matter, it is entirely irrelevant and immaterial to the 

 question. When cropping was abolished in England sim- 

 ilar pleas and similar interests had to be opposed. Many 

 predictions of dire disaster remain unfulfilled since the 

 dawn of creation. 



Mr. W ood states as a fact what he merely holds as an 

 opinion, namely, that if cropping is ruled out by the A. 

 K. C, no one will import for the improvement of the 

 breed. No one can possibly know that. The implication, 

 however, is that all great Danes are ruled out of competi- 

 tion and all incentive to improvement is at an end"; in 

 fact, a universal destruction of interest comes because an 

 owner can not cut off his dog's ears and force the muti- 

 lated animal upon those who disapprove of it. 



Mr. Wood rather dramatically asks, by way of perora- 

 tion: "Do the members of the A. K. C. wish to legislate 

 the great Dane out of the country? If so, pass the reso- 

 lution and kill great Dane interests; if not, kill the reso- 

 tion." 



That is entirely a perversion of the issue, as the whole 

 argument presented by Mr. Wood is a begging of the 

 question. He evades the main issue— the cruelty of the 

 custom. Show that the custom isn't harmful and cruel, 

 and the matter ends. 



This in the main treats of those who have letters in the 

 Gazette. 



James A. Lawrence. 

 Mr. Lawrence, who is noted as a breeder and owner of 



?;reat Danes, presents a letter in support of cropping — a 

 etter in which all logic and consistency is thrown to the 

 winds. He uses contradictory terms in the same breath 

 and appears to be charmingly unconscious of it. He 

 describes the manner and conditions of cropping: "Clear, 

 cool or cold weather, cocaine hypodermically injected 

 into the ear, dressings with Friar's balsam and carbolated 

 vaseline every other day for eight or ten days, the puppy 

 in the meantime being kept in a well ventilated and com- 

 fortably warm room." How many men observe all these 

 conditions? Mr. Lawrence says: "At no time during the 

 dressing of a sore ear will a young puppy ever make much 

 effort to get away or show any perceptible sign of pain." 



He has a "sore ear," but unlike cases of other sore ears 

 in general the puppy shows no sign of pain. This state- 

 ment is in marked contrast to that of Mr. Fonda quoted 

 before. All the conditions mentioned by Mr. Lawrence 

 would apply equally well to the cutting off of a leg, or dock- 

 ing ahorse, and if done with knife or scissors, cocaine, and 

 afterward dressed well, it would be "sore," not painful. 

 He adds: "Ear cropping, as done to-day by those thor- 

 oughly understanding it, is among the minor cruelties 

 imposed upon the dog," First it was "painless," then 

 * 'sore," now we have got so far as a "minor cruelty" 

 when practiced by those who thoroughly understand it! 

 And what is it when done by those who do not thoroughly 

 understand it? Yet almost in the next breath he adds: "I 

 have no hesitancy in saying ear cropping is not neces- 

 sarily a painful or inhuman operation." No, it is a pain- 

 less '"'minor cruelty." He mentions with irrelevancy, as it 

 happens, that he once owned a St. Bernard bitch which 

 had. canker, and of the hundreds of great Danes he owned 

 he never had a case of canker; therefore, cut off a dog's 



ears and he will not have canker — not in the part cut off. 



Mr. Lawrence then cites the practice of dehorning J er- 

 sey cattle which are "wicked" to each other — a most con- 

 vincing argument that a dog's ears should be cut off to 

 please his owner's artificial standard of beauty. Then he 

 mentions that he saw a man training a setter afield — first 

 the man whipped the. dog, then he shot him for flushing, 

 inflicting a painful wound. 



The inhuman acts of one man or several men are rea- 

 sons why such acts should be suppressed instead of citing 

 them as being acts of greater cruelty to justify the minor 

 cruelties. It is not logical to assume that the minor 

 cruelties should be approved because greater cruelties 

 exist. But as Mr. Lawrence plainly had no perception of 

 the true question at issue, and was striving awkwardly to 

 prove what he wjshed to establish, it is but a natural con- 

 sequence that he should be unable to make a correct inter- 

 pretation, and should be inconsistent throughout. 



Then Mr. Lawrence says: "If the object of the Amer- 

 ican Kennel Club is to lessen the suffering of the dog by 

 prohibiting one custom practiced on three or four breeds, 

 what will they do with a custom so broad, disastrous and 

 cruel as exhibiting is to dogs? For what can possibly be 

 more cruel than to put a dog (and often four or five) in a 

 hamper or box and take them long journeys from one 

 show to another, in an overheated car one minute and on 

 a truck perchance in a piercing cold wind the next min- 

 ute; handled by strangers, after suffering for many hours 

 from want of food and water"— and so on with an exag- 

 gerated picture of what might possibly happen if an 

 owner sallied forth with special intent to impose every 

 possible hardship on his dog. With all the exaggerated 

 striving for effect, but conceded as good for the sake of 

 argument, the hardships enumerated are incidental to a 

 journey in striving to accomplish a useful purpose. The 

 owner himself may suffer many of the hardships enu- 

 merated; but unavoidable discomforts are distinctly dif- 

 ferent from deliberate and willful mutilation of the dog, 

 and are entirely irrelevant in that relation. 



Mr. Lawrence continues: "Thus the unfortunate canine, 

 born more handsome than rich, undergoes dog show hard- 

 ships, rough-tracked chases, thorny hunts, the pit, and 

 other cruelties without number, all for the fancies and 

 pleasures of man." Such a jumble of cant is rarely seen. 

 "Bough- tracked chases" afford the greatest delights 

 known to dog nature, and thorny hunts (of course all 

 hunts are thorny!) are no less to his pleasure. Left to his 

 own choice, the dog often goes hunting voluntarily, and 

 sometimes in his enjoyment of it remains away for days. 

 "The pit" is abhorred by all true fanciers, is unlawful, 

 and is confined to a very small class; but Mr. Lawrence 

 calmly groups dog show hardships, rough-tracked chases, 

 thorny hunts, the pit and "other cruelties without num- 

 ber" as being in the same class, all being presented as 

 good reasons why the small matter of cutting the dog's 

 ears off should be added thereto; for the implication 

 is that if the dog suffers cruelties without number, the 

 addition of a "minor cruelty" is of no consequence, the 

 more so as that cruelty is "painless." 



J. H. H. Maenner. 



Mr. Maenner somewhat summarily disposes of the mat- 

 ter by saying that "the breeders of those kinds of dogs 

 whose ears are cropped would, as dog fanciers, doubtless 

 discontinue the practice of cropping if it would be a tor- 

 ture to their pets, and they ought to and do know more 

 about that business than other people. It is a good maxim 

 that all persons should mind their own business." (See 

 Section 655, Title XVI., of the Penal Code, which shows 

 that people in New York will not mind their own business. 

 See other penal codes also.) 



He further remarks: "In a treatise on the great Dane, 

 written by me for 'The American Book of the Dog,' pub- 

 lished in 1891, I stated several views on the cropping of 

 great Danes as follows: 'The ears of the German dogge 

 are generally cropped because it gives the head a bolder 

 and livelier expression and appearance. In England, 

 however, a strong opposition prevails against the crop- 

 ping of the ears of any breed, and the wish of the Queen 

 of England, as well as the exertions made by the Society 

 for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to put a stop to 

 this so-called cruelty, may be of no little consequence.' " 



Why did the S. P. C. A. exert itself? Why did not they 

 mind their own business? 



He continues: "The Queen of Wi'irtemburg, who visited 

 the exhibition at Cannstadt, 1889, expressed also a wish, 

 when admiring the beautiful German dogges, that the ears 

 might be left to them just as God created them. The 

 French, on the contrary, do not want a dogge with un- 

 cropped ears, and a German sporting paper, Hunde-Sport, 

 remarked not long ago: 'There is danger that America 

 will follow the example of England. We in Germany do 

 not crop the ears of our Hatzrude since the day before 

 yesterday; our ancestors did so centuries ago, and if it 

 will be admissible to draw a general conclusion from a 

 Greek coin, the cropping of ears was customary 2,000 

 years ago, and neither England nor America will alter 

 it. " 



The Greeks had a number of customs which we do not 

 imitate or approve at this day. 



He continues: "The same paper had in its issue of Jan. 

 22, 1890, the following: 'We have been informed that in 

 two cases owners of young dogges were indicted by 

 societies and fined for cropping the ears of dogs. Should 

 any one of our readers be fined on that account he is re- 

 quested to enter protest against it, and to ask us to name 

 him two experts who are ready to declare under oath that 

 the non-cropping of ears was the cause of continual suffer- 

 ing in the ears, so that the cropping had to be performed 

 in advanced age. Not the cropping of the ears is tor- 

 menting, but their remaining uncropped. We are con- 

 vinced that on such evidence the parties indicted will be 

 acquitted.' " 



Undoubtedly that was a day of hard swearers. 



Mr. Maenner is not quite so explicit in his recent com- 

 munication as he was in his article in "The Book of the 

 Dog," for he added after the above quotation: "On the 

 other hand, experts spoke and wrote against the fashion 

 of cropping ears. Professor Weiss, of the Veterinary 

 College at Stuttgart, says in the book, 'The Dog, his 

 Qualities, Breeding and Treatment in Healthy and Sick 

 Condition': 'The operation of cropping ears consists in a 

 tormenting for the sake of satisfying a nonsensical taste; 

 besides, according to the opinions of the greatest dog 

 fanciers, the dog looks, in his natural condition, much 

 better than after squandering any cruel art upon him; 

 moreover, the consequences of this useless mutilation do 



not cease when the ear is healed. The irritation caused 

 by it often has an injurious effect on the internal ear and 

 frequently deafness is the result.' " 



Mr. Maenner supplements this by saying: "Not a few 

 dog fanciers affirm that the exterior ear of the dog, being 

 movable, prevents the free entrance of insects, dust, rain, 

 snow, hail, etc. , protects against the changes of tempera- 

 ture, assists the animal in catching the sound waves and 

 thereby renders the sense of hearing more acute." 



Then he sums up by saying: "Thus we see the opinions 

 of experts as well as of fanciers differ and are diametri- 

 cally opposite with reference to the cropping of ears." 



It would seem further that even in Germany there were 

 people who heeded not the maxim that all persons should 

 mind their own business. 



The editor of "The American Book of the Dog," Mr. G. 

 O. Shields, in an editorial foot note said: "I wish to re- 

 cord here a most earnest and emphatic protest against 

 cropping, docking or otherwise mutilating dogs of any 

 breed. In my judgment these practices are cruel and 

 useless, and the taste or notion that fosters them is 

 erroneous." 



In the scale of points which Mr. Maenner gave he 

 treated the ears as follows: "Ears very small and grey- 

 hound-litte in carriage when uncropped ; they are, how- 

 ever, usually cropped." Here Mr. Maenner recognizes 

 uncropped ears. 



Thus it will be seen that the admirers of the cropped 

 breeds are not a unit in advocating cropping,' while so- 

 ciety at large has uttered a warning in its statutory laws. 

 The strongest admirers of cropping admit its cruelty in a 

 more or lees direct manner, and that it serves no purpose 

 other than to please the eye which is trained to an arti- 

 ficial standard of beauty. 



The Jurisdiction of the A. K. C. 



Let us now consider the powers of the A. K. C. in so 

 far as they relate to the Bubject. It is national in the 

 scope of its jurisdiction, and each of its members is an or- 

 ganized body formed on certain requirements concerning 

 purposes and competition. The clubs in the confederation, 

 through their delegates, make laws and determine the 

 action of the central body. Writers too often assume and 

 set forth that A. K. C. legislation has an arbitrary and 

 exclusive source within the four walls of the A. K. C. 

 office. Nothing could be more mistaken. Every club 

 within the Association has a right to representation, and 

 the acts of any meeting are the acts of the delegates 

 present, If any club neglects its right to representation, 

 its own negligence is not a just cause of complaint, and 

 it cannot justly complain of any legislation in which it 

 was too negligent to take part. If a number of clubs 

 neglect to send delegates, the cumulative negligence 

 forms no just ground for fault finding with those clubs 

 which did take action. 



As the jurisdiction of the A. K. C. is over bodies which 

 are public, and whose mission is the improvement of the 

 dog through public competition and exhibition, it can 

 exercise the powers with which it is clothed for the gen- 

 eral good of all its members. While it may not be able 

 to enforce direct and positive punishment for any infrac- 

 tion of its rules if an offender objects to the punishment, 

 it can enforce a negative punishment by refusing all par- 

 ticipation to this offender in its membership and benefitB, 

 Its legislation is not for the benefit of a class; it is for the 

 benefit of all concerned. 



Should, therefore, the A. K. C. decide that cropping is 

 harmful or obnoxious to the majority and the general 

 good, it does not thereby abolish cropping, but it abolishes 

 it from its jurisdiction. 



The voices of those who have an interest in the general 

 com petition is to be heard with as much consideration as 

 the voices of thoBe who are in favor of cropping, and if 

 the majority considers that cropping is a cruelty— so ob- 

 noxious that they do not care to compete against or be 

 identified with dogs so mutilated — they do not transcend 

 their powers when they do so rule. 



In the rules governing bench shows, rules VIII. and 

 IX., castration, spaying, total blindness, deafness or lame- 

 ness absolutely disqualify, The power to make this rul- 

 ing is indisputable; the matter of cropping is of like 

 character for ruling if the A. K. C. chooses to take cog- 

 nizance of it. 



If cropping is abolished in A. K. C. shows it in no wise 

 deprives an owner of the pleasure of keeping as many 

 cropped dogs as he chooses. He can hold shows of his 

 own or with those who will join him if he so pleases. It, 

 however, leaves all specialty clubs free to act as they 

 choose; they can indorse cropping or abolish it. The A. 

 K. C. can only act within its jurisdiction, and within 

 that it has powers to act, for it would be an absurdity to 

 assume that a central governing power has not the neces- 

 sary power to take necessary action. 



Cropping. 



As to the merits of the case, it is easily understood that 

 though cropped ears may please an eye long accustomed 

 to an artificial standard of beauty, they may and do 

 offend the sense of humanity of many others. If the 

 humanitarians are so numerous that their members are 

 in a majority, and their sentiments so earnest that they 

 will force an issue in the matter, there is no good reason 

 why the majority should not rule 



The plea that the changes would prove destructive to 

 the interests of the breed is not to be entertained for a 

 moment. It rests entirely upon an assertion, ex parte at 

 that. When a standard is more or less conventional, 

 made so in part by mechanical means, thus being more 

 or less artificial, it is not difficult to modify it. In this 

 case it is only whether a dog's ears shall be cut off or not. 

 If any fanciers retire from the field because their favor- 

 ites, in their mutilated form, do not meet the recognition 

 of those who object to the mutilation, there may be others 

 who will come to the support of the breed — others who 

 now may hold aloof for humane reasons. 



As to the action taken in England against cropping, 

 there is no possibility of misunderstanding it by the un- 

 prejudiced. It is simply one of the acts which come into 

 tangible being in all civilized countries when the causes 

 become of sufficient importance to interest the general 

 public. It is in keeping with the better sentiments of hu- 

 manity. 



To sum up, the custom has the sanction of relatively a 

 handful of individuals, whose fancy for it is correspond- 

 ingly small as against the general opinion of fanciers at 

 large and of the general public. 



The specialty clubs which nave the interest of the 



