I have two docked dogs, and I had a docked and cropped dog. The docking I can live with, as it really causes no pain to the dog when done at such a young age, but the cropping is another story all together. Lets just say I would never (by my own choice, my hubby is a different matter) get another cropped dog again.
The thing that many seem to forget in this debate is that the tail and the ears of dogs are MAJOR communication signalers, and by altering these, there are quite a few dogs that can have problems with dog on dog communication. I really think that both are unnessessary proceedures, 9 times out of 10, done soley for aesthetic purposes (steming from some historical fables) and nothing else - seeing as how on this side of the world it is very very rare for an undocked/cropped dog to go up against a cropped/docked dog in the show ring and win. For example, why are german shepherds and malinois not docked and cropped when in personal protection jobs, but rotties and dobermans are?
I can understand the crop on some terriers for hand holds, because is you don't grab the base (or thicker) part of the tail when pulling the dog out of the quarry's hole, you risk breaking or damaging the tail. But if your dog is a house pet, or some sort of sport competitor, I really don't see the point, and actually, it is benificial to have a tail in a lot of high speed, agile sports. Tails are used for balance ... if you slow down any film of any animal that has a full tail while running, twisting and turning, you will see just how important the tail balancing is to the over all performance of that animal (ie. the cheetah).
Just my thoughts.