My Doberman's tail was not lopped off with a kitchen knife. His breeder, a world renoun breeder had a qualified vet do the surgery of docking and cropping. The tail is docked at 3 or 4 days old before the nervous system is even finished developing. There is no pain. If there were, it would be known. The puppies show no distress after coming out of anesthesia.
Secondly, cropping is done on the cartilge of the ear. It is a delicate surgery done under anesthesia and it cause some pain in the days that follow. My breeder said that the pups are sore for a day or two, (remember...it's cartilge, like getting your ears pierced, heals very fast) not very sore as they play, romp and jump all over eachother. By about the 3rd or 4th day, she said they were itchy, not painful. She would clean them with a cotton ball and the pups would lean into it to get a better rub down. Then at about 8-10 days following, the scabs are comletely gone, stiches out and that is that.
It is not the big deal some people want to make out of it. It's a surgery, yes. But there are and were reasons for cropping and docking which I will not elaborate here as it is in the article I posted. I just wanted to give the run down on the procedure in hope that you would rest assured that it is not as wildly abusive as some people, the media want to make out of it to stir people up. It's really quite ridiculous.
If people want to help animals that they think are being mistreated, why not concentrate on abuse? There are starving, beaten dogs who are chained to a tree all day, languishing for their entire life, who are used for fighting, dogs who have huge tumors that no one does anything about. Come on.....my dog is so loved and well cared for. To equate cropping and docking with some monstrous act is wrong.