What's the point in dubbing???? - Page 3  

It's "moot" not "mute." (moot = being debatable or a point of little value; mute = without speech) Sorry, but I had to get that off my chest--I was an English major and am a writer/editor and that's one common error that drives me nuts--no reflection on you tnchickenut!

Anyway--APBTs most certainly can be shown. The AKC is not the only show in town! I belong to an American Pit Bull Terrier club and we just had our semi-annual multi-breed United Kennel Club show. The UKC is a "real" registry, not a paper-hanging registry like the APRI or the Continental Kennel Club. The UKC was founded in 1898 and the very first dog registered was the registry founder Chauncey Bennett's dog, Bennett's Ring. For the record, I know *many* cropped and uncropped  APBTs and none of them have been used for fighting.

I won't deny that some people crop their dogs' ears to make them look mean, but generally those people don't have a lot of patience for dogs' ears healing or posting ears (Dobermans, not APBTs), so most of the time people who want tough looking dogs usually buy them cropped. There are easier ways to make dogs look tough, like spiked collars or whatever. There are plenty of idiots in any breed and they do seem to spread themselves around.

err...in the AKC they're known as American Staffordshire Terriers, still a "Pit Bull".  One of the first group of dogs registered in the AKC as Staffies was "Pete the Pup" (Lucenay's Peter) from the Little Rascals/Our Gang.  He was also a UKC-registered APBT. 

OK, It sounded like you were against Dubbing.

Chris

This not necessarily true. There are a lot of breeders (not just Game Fowl) that will dub there Large Comb breeding fowl. I know a few Leghorn Breeders that dub there Single Comb Leghorns so that they don't get frost burnt. Frostbite can lead to serious infections, fertility problems, permanent tissue damage, and even death.
There is more than one reason to dub a fowl and you are only seeing the one side...

Chris

Good point, pun intended

If you don't dub a Penedesenca in cold areas you may very well lose the rooster.

Someone mentioned that fighting birds was not enforced and I tend to agree especially in Hawaii and in alot of other cultures it is accepted.  The countries that abhor it are in the minority actually.  I attended cockfights as a kid with my father and political reasons aside the folks that did it were just as passionate about their birds as folks today on BYC only different. 

Someone told me they are building a pit on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.

At one point this was true. The UKC has since closed its APBT registration to non-litter-registered dogs, so dogs from other registries can't be registered as APBTs and I'm fairly sure that the AKC closed their stud book to UKC APBTs decades ago. They're pretty much different breeds now as is evident in pretty much any pictorial comparison.

I think one thing that gets forgotten in these discussions is that when certain characteristics are attained by artificial means, there's no selective breeding to modifiy the trait, and as a result less uniformity in the breed and occassionally the inheritance of bad traits disguised by surgery. I've been around naturally docked Australian Cattle Dogs (blue merle, blue eyed, into the bargain) which are utter failures as dogs, with immune system, eye and ear problems. Undocked German Shorthair Pointers often have ridiculously long whip-like tails that are easily damaged and often end up shortened by injury or vascular failure; Great Danes with natural ears can have the same ear canal problems as hounds. OEGBs are tough little blighters but one wonders whether the undubbed combs of a few batches should be observed to find out what might be happening that we don't see.

That is not the only reason that someone might dock or crop a breed of dog.  I breed and own Schnauzers and we dock and crop them because that is what the breed has always looked like.  I could care a less how tough they look I just want to keep the integrity of the breed.  I have raised un-cropped puppies and they just don't have the same look obviously.  Just like you have the choice to do what you want I should have the choice to raise my animals as I like!

If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that it's done for purely cosmetic purposes in both examples. 

Thanks.