PLEAS that tail docking of dogs should not hi-jack thoughtful, progressive and potentially hard-hitting Scottish animal health and welfare legislation were always likely to fall on deaf ears.

It happened again at last week's two-and-a-half-hour parliamentary debate on the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Bill, when tail docking got more mentions than any other topic.

The bill covers extended ministerial animal slaughtering powers to prevent the spread of exotic diseases, such as foot-and-mouth or bird flu; the new duty of care for all those in charge of animals; raising the age at which youngsters can buy animals to 16; and tighter controls on animal sanctuaries.

Part of the problem is that forming any legislation is a long and sometimes boring process. Holyrood's parliamentary committees taking evidence over several sessions have helped bring legislation-formation more to public attention, but MSPs can be sidetracked and proceedings are as likely to be worthy, but dull, as they are to be entertaining.

That is why reports of the environmental and rural affairs committee's spadework might get a paragraph here and there on a news page or rather more on this page, but the headlines have been for "Can Lobsters Feel Pain?" or "Tail Docking Of All Dogs Banned".

The lobster red herring - sorry - did not last long, but tail docking was discussed at almost every session of the committee, as it was during the parliamentary debate on the general principles of the bill last week.

It might be a small part of overall animal health and welfare, but it dominates MSPs' thoughts for the good reason that potential voters are seriously interested in it, including members of Advocates for Animals, the Scottish Countryside Alliance and a number of dog breed societies.

Ross Finnie, rural development minister, had announced earlier last week that tail docking of all dogs would be banned. That appeared to scupper the hopes of those, including the Scottish Gamekeepers Association and the Scottish Countryside Alliance, that working dogs, or at least some of them, would be exempt.

They claim that their dogs are docked not for cosmetic reasons but because they can injure their tails working in thick undergrowth and that causes more pain and suffering than docking a puppy at a few days old.

Finnie was unconvinced. He told MSPs: "The docking of dogs' tails is a controversial practice, currently permissible in law when undertaken by a veterinary surgeon. We proposed initially to exempt working dogs from this ban.

That, he said, was supported "wholeheartedly" by the British Veterinary Association. It was also supported, as he did not say but soon became apparent, by the SNP, with Richard Lochhead saying: "Mutilation causes unnecessary pain and suffering and should be outlawed."

Not backed, however, by Tory rural development spokesman Ted Brocklebank, who demanded that working dogs be exempt, as ministers had originally proposed. He said: "My own view has been influenced by years following guns and watching working dogs. I am absolutely in no doubt that tail shortening of working dogs is appropriate and proper."

He went on: "Frankly, I do not see the problem about allowing vets to decide, on a litter-by-litter basis, at an early stage in the dogs' lives, that tails should be shortened.

"Many vets are perfectly happy to do this and many vets have done this over many, many years ... The fact is that we are still going to shorten pigs' tails and lambs' tails and we are still going to be carrying out appropriate de-horning on cattle. So why are working dogs to be treated differently?"

A fair point, even if "docking" had become "shortening". That distinction was emphasised by Alex Fergusson, also Conservative, who stressed that whacking a tail off at the roots for cosmetic reasons - which no-one seemed to support - was not the same as reducing the length of a prospective working dog's tail by one half to one third.

"Its purpose," Fergusson said, "is not to be fashionable, it is to be practical. It is not to be cruel, it is to prevent future harm and distress."

He and others referred to a survey in Sweden that indicated that more than one third of working gun dogs there had suffered tail injuries by the time they were two and a half years old following an outright ban on docking in 1989. But the survey was later rubbished by Rhona Brankin, deputy rural development minister.

Liberal Democrat MSP John Farquhar Munro was against the ban as a life-long working Jack Russell owner. Docking their tails was "a duty of care" the Ross, Skye and Inverness West MSP insisted. He said: "An owner who does not dock a working animal puts it in real danger of pain and suffering as a result of damage it may incur in its working environment."

But Green rural development spokesman Mark Ruskell, who once worked as a volunteer in a vet surgery and whose parents had kept and bred working dogs, said he now believed there was a "weak case", based on "nostalgic tradition", for continuing the practice.

"Combining that with the evidence on the long-term negative impact on dogs' ability to communicate and maintain agility without a tail, I see no reason to maintain this illogical tradition," he said.

She said that if there was evidence of injuries to working dogs after the bill was introduced, the Scottish Executive might look again at the total ban.

Until, if and when that happens, tail docking will continue to appear the most important animal welfare subject in Scotland - which it clearly is not.

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