History on Ear Cropping

hello

not start anything or saying this is how it really happened but an old friend of mine im 26 he passed on at 82
5 years ago he shared a story with me back when he was 17 ( that he remembers coulda been later 19ish) but anywho
he attened a sporting show in ontario with his father his fathers bitches opponent kept grabbing hold of her ear so his father on scratch used a buck knife and settled that problem his dog won she became a 2 time winner but with that story
he told that back somewhere in the old country of the dogs of stories passed down on the great breed that a sport took place and the dog had lost one ear a few months passed after the show and the handler of the one earred dog began to grow hatered of the floppy ear and he followed the bite line of the other ear and trimmed the bitten ear .....guess what what my old friend was getting at was the CROP

i had a female years back (7) took her out on a paid hog hunt where i live from a local farmer the hog grabbed hold of the ear and it did look stupid after it healed one ear and well she no longer had ears 7 months later....
personally i dislike the crop but with my hunting trips it benifits my dogs and yes when a dog gets heated they become unbalanced and with tail docking a apbt who the hell does that?

but anyway ALOT OF PPL will have a bucnh of shit to say so i will end ....hope that gave you some ideas on the trimming of the ears

 

About three years ago during the summer I was working late got a phone call from a neighbor who said he could hear a dog screaming in my yard
I hurried home because I knew what was going on well needless to say when I got home I had 1 dead dog and 1 with his ear laid wide open
From what i could tell Dozer had broke his collar ring and rip into a kennel where i was holding a four year old male for my cousin
The four year old must just held dozers ear and doz just twisted around and got a hold on the the breast plate and started knawing
Dozer has a jacked up ear but he is a live


needless to say I like the ears

 

It depends on who you talk to. There are old timers that used to do it as well.

 

yeah some people like it and some dont
some people did it cause they had to, some cuz they wanted to
good info on here tho, i personally wouldnt crop my dogs ears(gotta agree on not liking rabbit ears tho haha)
its a personal preference, nothin more or less...

 

In the dogs you will see and hear everything. There was a famous breeder who would cull any dog that was black.

The person that I used to know, used to crop everything. He would do it himself and just thought that it made them less likely to get grabbed when going for a hold. He did this for 25 years and would not let anyone tell him any different.

 

yeah the guy where im from who owned Chevy Red made a bundle of money cropping ears for people. Just part of the dogs but the still some good scientific info on the first page

 

The truth about the reasoning of why ear cropping was started in these dogs is commen sense. These are Working/Performance type dogs everything they did had a function or a purpose in the combat aspect. There WAS a reason as to WHY some Old Timers started too cut there dogs ears. Answer is #2. as it is the most logical and obvious one this aint rocket science LMAO.

 

i agree!...but both of my dogs ears are cropped..i show them..and i just prefer the"look" of cropped ears done right...i havent observed anything by cropping their ears thet effects there balance,causing infection,overheating etc..1 of my boys with cropped ears can damn near outrun a greyhound and jump and clear a 6ft fence without even touching the fence..and has won many "hangtime" competitons...but i also do like the "natural" look...but cant stand ones with hounddog ears!!...jmo

 

Why can it not be left to just a matter of opinion? If you want to crop your dogs, do it. If you like to leave ears and think it is detrimental, don't do it.

From a strict medical standpoint I would like to see any articles backing up #3.

 

sometimes you will see a pitdog with cropped ears because of heavy damage to them in battle.

sombody already said this sorry

 

Dog ear cropping is believed to have started with the Romans. In those days, infections due to cuts were a lot more deadly due to a lack of antibiotics. Ears were then cropped as a preventive measure to reduce the number of places another dog or animal could grab or bite. This practice came into wide acceptance at the beginning of the 19th century, when the French naturalist Lamarack proposed in his Philosophie Zoologique that characteristics that were acquired during the lifetime of an organism were passed on to it's offspring. This theory became widely accepted and thus, dog breeders came to believe that by cropping a dog's ears, the characteristic of short ears would be passed on to it's offspring. Info from UOP
The natural ear flap keeps dirt out of the ears. In a hunt it gives the other animal a non-vital target.

 

(1) It really all depends on who you talk to, I personally believe that it really never gave any advantages that a smart dog couldn't overcome.

(2) A lot of people that cropped the ears did believe this and you just flat couldn't convince them otherwise, Personally I never seen any advantages of having a dog with cropped ears or natural ears when it came to preventing damage or things of that nature. But I did like the idea of having the inner ear covered to keep not only the inner ear from being exposed but also should blood get down in the ears the dog is likely to shake it's head and give the other dog a opener.

I think questions three and four can be answered in the above posts.

These are just my viewpoints and it is one of those things that you can and will get a different answer each time you talk to someone, While I prefer a natural ear that doesn't mean I am against it and look down on anyone who has a dog with cropped ears. In fact I have had several dogs over the years that I cropped the ears on and still to this day should a bat eared dog ever cross my path I crop the ears on them...But for me it was always purely for looks and I never seen any benefits from either cropping or not cropping in the day to day life of the dog.

 

We're not debating about being pro or against ear cropping, just talking about WHY they used on dogs of the past.

If all it takes is a trip to the vet and a couple $$$ to give a dog a little advantage in the box, why didn't EVERYONE crop the ears? There were plenty of fast lane dogs with natural ears. After all of the trouble men went through to make a winner out of a dog, you'd think if the ear crop was an advantage that'd be the first thing they did as its relatively easy.

 

Damn some of you newbies come up with some mind boggling theorys like equilibrium, balance, cooling, dust etc??? WTF? LOL Did most old timers in the past really care about how there dogs ears looked after it got damaged??? LOL. Answer #3 was said by some old timers that didnt agree with the reasoning behind some old timers in answer #2. Way back then Cropped ears was done for FUNCTION and NOT for COSMETICS (LOOKS). Today in modern times the main purpose for ear cropping is for looks which is a matter of opinion and choice.

 

Again not all dogmen of old agreed with this reasoning but the ones that did,did it for a reason which is in answer #2. Im only answering the original post as to why ear cropping was done. The question you are asking is a more detailed and contraversial one which is similar to the contraversial STEROIDS debate and I aint going there cause I think I said TOO MUCH already LMAO.

 

It's not a better sense of hearing, rather than more accurate. Not sure in the case of the APBT, but for Dobermanns, cropped ears were essential for work. One was to hear better and the other for a HUMAN opponent to not have anything to grab onto (Dobe natural tails are somewhere between greyhound and PB). For facts on the hearing:

Dogs with floppy ears have a 20 degree radius of hearing. Meaning they can only pinpoint where a sound is coming from in a 20 degree cone. Dogs with erect or cropped erect ears can hear the source of the sound within a 5 degree cone.

I saw this awhile ago and it makes sense to me.

 

I do not like rabbit ears either!!

 

I believe you mean the term bat ears.

 

I once had three with cropped ears. They had no disadvantage or advantage of it.